I had an unusual coaching conversation last week. The executive started complaining as soon as I picked up the phone, ‘I was expecting an email before we connected. I have been completely clueless about what would happen here and had nobody to contact.’
I felt as if he was accusing me of being unprofessional. I took a long breath and withheld myself from getting triggered before I uttered calmly, ‘The phone number in our records is wrong. The last character was typed wrongly and we could not reach you.’
For a few seconds, there was complete silence.
Then I enquired, ‘Did you have an opportunity to go through the email that contains my TEDx Talk and ebook along with the other details that get you ready for the first coaching call?’
The response was a defensive ‘No.’
Typically, my office gets in touch with the person to understand the context and reconfirm the appointment, which we could not do as the mobile number was incorrect and we had to email for a callback and here we were on the call.
Following this, we had a two-hour-long conversation and what came as a surprise to my client was: he was operating from extreme judgment and certainty.
In this case, a few judgments he carried was:
- Professional coaching interactions take place only on a video call.
- The coaching call was to happen on Zoom.
- The Zoom link was to be shared via email.
- The coach is unprofessional.
- This is not the kind of person he would work with.
while he could not remotely think of entering the phone number wrongly and missing out on reading the email.
Later he shared how fixated he was on his worldview and the dozens of big opportunities he has lost because of this.
Shift from certainty to curiosity.
If you are not getting what you want, take a pause! Intercept your judgment. Be curious.
Often you would realize, how limited your thinking was.
Change your game!
Vivek