Driven to Excellence

My mentor, my greatest teacher, was my mother - a very gifted, a very caring teacher, psychologist, counselor, and therapist. I think about her many lessons often.

I am also reminded of a good friend and colleague who said there exists the 5/10/85 rule which I have modified to a 5/10/15/70 rule. In any line of work, or all lines of work, 5% of the practitioners will be truly excellent. 10% will be good to very good. 15% will be fair, and 70% will be mediocre at best.

What makes the difference because those in the 70% group and those in the 5% group? I look to my mother who was, in my not at all objective opinion, in the excellent group and would call it drive. Certainly, she was intelligent, and had a big heart and soul when it came to her students and clients. But she was driven to be one of the best. Second best was not in her nature. She instilled this same drive in her children.

At the same time, there was a dark side to her drive and, I believe, one of her reasons for being a teaching and counseling psychologist. She sought out the helping professions in order to heal her own wounds: her brother’s death at the age of 5 from polio, her father’s suicide, and her mother’s suicide. As I considered this some years ago, and took an honest look in my own mirror, I realized that she became a counseling psychologist to attempt to heal herself. As well, she was driven to excellence in an attempt to heal herself.

Why did I study counseling psych? Healing myself was certainly one of the motivations. It doesn’t work. We cannot heal our own wounds, our own darkness, by healing others. We can only heal ourselves by seeking the help of another. I know many other coaches who have gone into the profession seeking to resolve their life inconsistencies. As I said, it doesn’t work.

It can, however, create drive and determination. Why? Because what we seek will forever elude us. In my opinion, and this is all opinion, it is drive that leads people to the top 5% of any profession. By that, I don’t mean monetary earnings as much as an attitude toward continuing growth, development, excellence, and perhaps perfection in a sense. My mother’s desire for healing prompted the drive but did not create the drive.

Certainly, intelligence, practical knowledge, and an ability to empathize are important for coaches and counselors. However, much can be accomplished when there is a drive for realizing excellence in what we do.

There is a second key component as well, or so I believe. That second component is truly loving what we do. In the process, we become invested in that area of ourselves, and then end up investing, to a great degree, in ourselves. This past weekend, a friend asked me what I love about teaching - and that is what I see as my chief role, being a teacher - whether through writing, one-on-one coaching, seminars or webcast programs. My answer was, “I love seeing the light bulb go on.” This has been true since I was presenting seminars on communication skills back in the 1980s. I love seeing the light bulb begin to glow. As I say early on in any presentation, “I don’t care if you get the right answers; I care that you think.” Do I truly love watching people get it? Do I ever! That is the most fulfilling part of my work.

As I think back to my mother and her career, I see that was a huge part of her as well. It would seem I have learned much from her.

What are your opinions with regard to my opinion that people enter the healing professions seeking to heal themselves and that this inspires drive? What are your huge payoffs from the work you do? It seems there is so much that we can learn from each other and that helps all of us find that next step, that next rainbow, that next horizon.

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All the Answers; None of the Questions

At the age of 60, I have reached that wonderful and glorious life position of recognizing that I don’t have any of the answers and am not all that sure of most of the questions. Most of my clients, however, are not quite there either in age or cognitive/emotive processes. With the occasional extreme client, of course, there are no questions, only answers.

Yet, when a person has all the answers and is not interested in asking any questions, how can there be growth, learning, becoming more? There can’t. There can only be stagnation. I am reminded of a line from a wonderful book by Richard Bach entitled Illusions. In discussing the concept that everything is in a constant state of change, one of the central characters says, “If perfection is stagnation, then heaven is a swamp!”

In looking at my “I have all the answers” clients, I am drawn to this metaphorical comparison. When we cease to ask, when we cease to want to learn more, our lives become the swamp. This is true for our clients and just as true for us as coaches and therapists. The recent post on the life position of needing to be right and needing others to be wrong, and the many responses in the various groups where it was posted, demonstrate this very point almost as if battle lines were drawn. There were those who asked, “Have you considered discussing [an idea or concept] with your client?” And, there were those who said, “Clearly, your client is suffering from [disorder]; this will fix him.”

These two tones prompted me to consider many things. At the top of the list was this concept of Questions and Answers. In coaching, we are taught to ask, ask, ask. We are taught there is no such thing as having the right answers, only the right questions. With regard to my own training in psychotherapy, I was taught that I didn’t have the answers, that the client would find the answers herself or himself (insight) and that their healing must be their own. I recognize that this isn’t a universal view. So too in coaching. There are many coaches who believe they do have the answers.

The truth is that none of us has answers for others. How can we? Do we live in their reality? Do we hold their beliefs as the ruling structure of our lives? Do we have their years of life experience? No, none of these. Do we know what is best for our clients? I don’t think so. However, they do. And when we can bring that out in them, when we can help them find their own answers by asking their own questions, then a difference can be made. Notice, please, that I didn’t say we can make a difference. We don’t make the difference. Our clients make the difference - or not - their choice. Our clients are the heroes in these sagas, not us. When we make ourselves out to be the heroes, we rob our clients of their greatest tools for self-healing, and then knowingly (or at least it should be) become the villains. We become crutches that keep clients crippled. We foster dependency and transference. We do nothing for them and even less for ourselves.

I would like to ask how you work with a client who thinks he has all the answers. Second, do you believe we have a responsibility to continue growing ourselves? If so, how do we best accomplish that?
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The Need to Be Right; The Need to Win

One of the most challenging situations I have run into in coaching is with clients who NEED to be right or NEED to win. The thing I have discovered is that these folks don’t merely need to be right/win; they need other people to be wrong/lose.

Have you ever known someone who always needs to be right? Have you noticed how often these people also need for others to be wrong? It isn’t enough to merely prove their point It’s more They go out of their way to demonstrate how others are wrong.

Similarly, there are people who need to win - whether at a game or in some other form of competition. Again, winning is not enough. There is a clear need for others to lose. This person needs to completely dominate and decimate the opponent as if, only then, does he feel victorious.

Think of it this way: If, in a competition with another person - whether verbal or game related - I need to have the other person proven wrong or beaten thoroughly, what am I saying about myself? Can we, as human beings, intend harm through competition, and not harm ourselves in the process? In other words, this approach to competition is an extreme example of the person who needs to put others down in order to feel better about himself. As we know, that doesn’t work. There may be a moment or two of self-gratification that is immediately followed by an internal reaction that is far less satisfactory.

It is my opinion that the right person or winner in this case, with each victory, digs the hole of lost self-esteem just a little bit deeper - losing ground with every won battle until the war itself has been lost.

So, what can we as professional coaches, do to help a person with this life outlook? Recently, I had a client who fit this exactly - a huge need to be right (and others wrong) and a need to win or be the best (and others lose or be less). Of course, there were other behaviors that coincided with this. He is a very insecure person, a person who attaches his self-esteem to others (teachers, mentors, family members, clients), and a person without a clear sense of direction. Another question might be, “Where do we start?”

I started by asking the client one key question which was, “Where do you suppose you learned this - your need to be right and win at all costs?” Clearly, he had never been asked this question since his reaction was akin to the “deer in the headlights” look. In response, he asked, “What do you mean?” Although my training included not using the word “why,” I will occasionally when I intend to put a client on the defensive. So I asked, “Why do you always need to portray yourself as the ‘best’ at everything you do when you are not necessarily the best?” That earned me a second look and, “What are you talking about? I’m . . . .” and he proceeded to list his achievements. I countered this with, “But you’re not [and gave an example of a leader in the field he was using].”

This went on for nearly an hour with example and counter-example. I recognized that there was a very real probability that this client was going to walk as I was confronting his safe-self mechanisms. However, he didn’t.” At the end, I asked the first question again, “Where do you supposed you learned this?” My client began to identify some of the defense mechanisms that had been developed during his teen years and how they came to be and we began making some progress.

I am reminded of the old adage that, in order to rebuild, we have to tear a structure down completely. This seemed to be the approach I was taking based on my own sense of how to best help this client.

I would be very interested in hearing from other coaches, who have had clients like this, to hear (read) how you have successfully helped someone move beyond their need to be right or win at all costs.

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Authenticity: Many Keys in One

So many of us invest time and energy in trying to fit in or trying to be what others, including our clients, are looking for.  In the process of doing so, we sacrifice a great deal of what is true:  true for ourselves, true for our path.  In doing so, we give up pieces of our identity and our purpose.

A key that is many success keys in one is Authenticity – being our truest and highest self.  We know we have found this point in our lives when we can honestly say, “I am who I am.  I do what I do.  If people like me and want to work with me or be with me being who I am, than that’s great.  And if not, well that’s okay too.”

It takes effort to reach this life position.  It takes self examination.  It takes a willingness to answer important questions like:  Who am I really?  What is it that I most want out of life?  What is it that I most want to do?  What is my life purpose?  How can I best benefit others and myself?

These are tough questions to consider and tough questions to answer yet answers can be found.  Sometimes, the answers change as we change.  After all, that’s part of growth.  Stagnant life positions are a lot like stagnant water – swamp like and smelly.

So how do we find the answers to these very challenging questions?  Well, how would you help a client answer these questions?  They are just as important with your clients, whether you offer life coaching or business coaching, as they are for ourselves.

Some might consider journaling or essaying.  Some might consider meditation or contemplation.  Some might consider sitting down with a good friend, a mentor, or a coach and starting to work through defining, dissecting, re-defining, and re-thinking the answers in order to progressively come closer to our most accurate definitions of “who am I.”  They are multiple venues in which to work through these – all equally valid.

What are the results?  From my own experience and the experience of my clients, I can say that increased happiness is one.  Others include a better sense of self, a clearer mission and vision, and the ability to take just a few more risks in order to have what we want.

We all have so much to offer others and ourselves, or ourselves and others.  That can be done best, most thoroughly, most effectively when we are coming from a place of our truest and best self, a place of authenticity.

As Howard Thurman said, “Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do and damned if you don't.”

And, as Neil Simon said, “Don't listen to those who say, ‘It's not done that way.’ Maybe it's not, but maybe you will. Don't listen to those who say, ‘You're taking too big a chance.’ Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today. Most importantly, don't listen when the little voice of fear inside of you rears its ugly head and says, ‘They're all smarter than you out there. They're more talented, they're taller, blonder, prettier, luckier and have connections…’ I firmly believe that if you follow a path that interests you, not to the exclusion of love, sensitivity, and cooperation with others, but with the strength of conviction that you can move others by your own efforts, and do not make success or failure the criteria by which you live, the chances are you'll be a person worthy of your own respect.”

What could possibly be more important than being worthy of our own respect?  When we find our own authenticity, we find it all.

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