Nobody wants an incompetent surgeon to operate on them and yet it is the surgeon with a terrible bedside manner who has the most trouble with malpractice lawsuits.
We want a well-trained pilot to fly the plane but it’s the reassuring voice before take off that we need to hear.
Well-educated people are valued in society, and are easy to spot, they have certificates on the wall, but for those with soft skills that make a difference, there are no certificates that can capture what you do.
When I quit all my accreditations, I was not turning my back on everything I had learned, I just didn’t see the point, in continuing to educate myself when I wasn’t paying any attention to developing myself.
Change the system, change the behaviour.
The question How do I get people to listen? This is a question that I had been trying to answer all of my coaching life. I didn’t know it until other coaches asked me the very same question, and then I stopped to think about my answer.
How DO I get people to listen?
I used to think being an “expert” was enough. I conflated being an expert with being a coach. I did that by answering an easier question since the real question was too difficult. How do I become an authority within my field?
People listen to authority. Ok, some people listen to authority. No, you are right, most listen when it suits them but only if it suits them.
I’ve changed the question. This question came to me, at the bottom of the pit, with no income, no accreditations, and no coaching practice. It’s the question that I kept coming back to when writing this book.
[Note: This blog is taken from a draft of my forthcoming book Good Coach Bad Coach.]
Why would anyone want to listen to me?
Maybe it’s a question that comes from a place of self-doubt but it is also from a place where status and certificates don’t mean very much at all. And that’s the place I want to come from as a coach. Not a place of authority or expertise but a place of enrollment, empathy, and service.
I need to earn the right to coach from scratch each and every time.
If you could start again, knowing what you know now. Why would anyone want to listen to you?
Change the question. Change the system. Change the behaviour.