How are you letting go for agility and success in our rapidly changing VUCCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Culturally Complex, Ambiguous) world? What are you letting go of: Perfectionism? Being right? Fear? Resentment? Clutter? Outdated systems? Control, or power over, rather than delegating and developing your team and/or family? Impatience?
Like my Magnolia tree shedding its leaves, my coaching client blossomed after letting go of wanting to convince others they were wrong. He was able to shift from being right to seeing a cultural difference in communication directness and pace. He learned he could increase his impact and effectiveness in negotiations and with building cooperation with external partners (his coaching goals) by adjusting his own communication rather than expecting others to change.
Who will support you in shedding so you can blossom; letting go for agility and success?
What resources will you put into place? When will you do this?
“I want to look at my impatience with my coaching client’s progress,” one of the coaches in our Coaching SUPERvision group said. Through our reflection and feedback process she recognized how her impatience and judgment were mirroring what the organizational system (and possibly her leadership coaching client) was experiencing as they downsized. She left the session with new awareness and ideas of how to shed the impatience and judgment so she and her client could blossom. One of the participants contrasted our Coaching Supervision group with her peer group “where everyone just tells you your coaching is great”.
What are you letting go of to move ahead? What is essential for your greater agility and success, to unlock your potential, your team’s, your organization’s, your family’s, as you move through transitions? As I continue to release as I clear out my home and office, I am becoming clearer on how to live my more spacious life, stepping forward with trust.
As I coach high potential leaders as they are promoted, they often need to let go of control and their reliance on examining all the data to make decisions in order to keep up with the demands of their new office. Their increased agility and success includes delegating and relying on their intuition more.
Coaches, ready to continue your development, with Continuing Coach Education, through reflective (part of the updated ICF competencies) Coaching SUPERvision? Sign up for our next group cohort!
To your full potential, prosperity and peace (and our success, we are in this together!),
Marilyn O’Hearne, MSW, MCC, LLC; CQ MCC
PS Click here for 3 Steps to Sustainable Success Agility as well as links to how the World Bank has implemented agility for success plus an HBR agility article.
PSS For the original June 6, 2014 post of how I was shedding like my Magnolia tree in preparation for my Asia Pacific journey, you can read below. The above was added April 2019 and updated March 31, 2021
Shock & Loss in the Midst of Excitement & Adventure!
I look out my second story office window at a flowering Magnolia tree. Saucer sized, white fragrant flowers against the deep green, glossy leaves. In the spring, prior to the Magnolia blooming, it sheds about one large paper lawn bag of leaves per week. Messy! “Put off your old nature…and be renewed in the spirit of your minds.”
I continue to untether, to shed some of my “old nature”; the leaves are dropping as I prepare to embark on my three month Asia Pacific journey. Several inches of my hair cut. Volunteer activities passed on to others for a season. Communicating my change in availability, including time zones for United Nations coaching calls. Talking with my 92 year old dad about our plan in case something would happen to him while I am thousands of miles away.
I experience some loss (in addition to my excitement!) as I continue to untether from familiar activities and people and prepare for new adventures, discoveries and relationships.
I remind myself as I am getting into my car to drive to appointments or see local friends that I will not be doing that for 3 months, hoping to lessen the inevitable moments of culture shock*: “What have I gotten myself into? What was I thinking?”
And, from experience, knowing those moments of culture shock can and will be brief. I will practice staying present (a Coaching Core Competency!) and thankful in the moment, delighting in new discoveries, as I untether and put aside my old nature, being “renewed in the spirit of my mind”.
Just as Richard Rohr describes in “Falling Upward”, I realize that in order to go up (blossom) sometimes I must let go (leaves dropping), descend, and even experience some darkness and loss. I expect to emerge transformed and enriched, and look forward to continuing to share that journey with you.
Where and how are you untethering enough to be “renewed in the spirit of your mind”, to open yourself to new discoveries, perspectives, and transformation? What are you experiencing as you do so?
*Culture shock: a feeling of confusion, doubt, or nervousness caused by being in a place (such as a foreign country) that is very different from what you are used to. (Wikipedia) Anyone in any type of transition may experience this!
