I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of the derailment of career trajectories and what might cause it. It first came to my attention when I worked in leadership development and I discovered the research by the Center for Creative Leadership which found five derailers that get in the way of leaders’ continued success:
- Difficulty adapting to change (the most frequent cause of derailment);
- Difficulty building and leading a team;
- Failure to deliver business results;
- Lacking a broad, strategic orientation; and
- Problems with interpersonal relationships.
These might be areas that you wish to work on in your coaching sessions, to prevent yourself from derailing, before it happens. And this is all about coaching you as a person not coaching the problem, see a previous post.
And there are ways that we can show up to coaching that will derail the whole coaching process, no matter what the content that we bring. This post is about those derailers – ways that you, the Thinker, might come to coaching that will detract from the value that you can wring out of your coaching.
These are the derailers that I have seen time and time again – please do not let this be you:
Derailer |
Encouragement |
| Not wanting coaching, but doing it because it’s expected of you. |
Please don’t waste your time or your coach’s time. It’s frustrating for all concerned.
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| Not really wanting to change anything. |
That’s your prerogative and if that’s the case, coaching is not necessary for you at this time.
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Expecting your coach to mentor you rather than tapping into your inner wisdom, bearing in mind that this is about becoming the person/leader you most want to be, not about skill-building, which you could get from training or YouTube.
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There is no one right answer about who you wish to be.
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| Not identifying what is most important to you to bring to coaching. |
There is no set curriculum – this is a curriculum created by you, which will never be repeated by anyone else ever again.
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Treating this coaching like every other conversation you have with other people.
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Coaching is very different in that its aim is to get you to new thinking, not to go over old ground. |
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Not bringing your whole self to the coaching, vulnerabilities, emotions and all.
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It’s only when you are honest with yourself and your coach that you can do the work that most needs to be done. |
| Blaming everyone else for what is not working. |
We can’t work on those other people in this coaching, we can only work on you and how you will influence the situation and people.
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| Claiming to have tried everything and believing that you’re in a helpless situation. |
If you think you are helpless, that will perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are hopeful and believe in possibility, that will open new trains of thought.
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| You resist creative ways of accessing new wisdom and insights. |
If you step into the invitations your coach offers, you may be surprised at how much new thinking you can access through art or music or movement.
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| You bring small, insignificant (to you) issues to think through. |
Whilst coaching can be a great place to think through anything and everything, you will get the most value from focusing on things that are most important and meaningful to you.
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| Booking back-to-back meetings around your coaching such that you are rushing at both ends. | Coaching needs you to be hydrated, oxygenated, and brain-fed. And it requires you to arrive in a state that will allow for great thinking, rather than being flustered. It also needs some reflection time after the coaching to consolidate the learning. 15 minutes on either side of your coaching can be enough to support some spaciousness. |
| Turning up late, cancelling at the last minute or not showing up at all. |
This is your precious time that you are squandering, disrespecting yourself and your coach. How is this representative of how you show up in other areas of your life? Putting yourself last and/or disrespecting other people’s time?
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| Becoming distracted by texts, instant messages, email pings, and phone calls. |
You can’t think deeply if you keep looking at those incoming messages. It takes many minutes to get back to where you were if you allow distractions to take your mind elsewhere. Turn off all sounds and sights so that you can be totally present for the deeper thinking.
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| Bringing so many issues to each session that you can only work with them at a superficial level. |
Are you doing this to avoid going deep and looking at yourself? How might you choose the one most important issue to work on?
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How many of these might derail you in the coaching process? How might you embrace the Thinker’s Mindsets instead?
