I've drawn a new boundary around my professional life: no more leadership team coaching.
I'm away for an incredible conference in the US this week to refresh my direction for 2023. Taking inventory has helped me to start by culling what no longer brings me joy.
Here's a brief lowdown on my personal thinking process
(If this bit is boring to you, skip to the bit on drawing some bullsh*t boundaries of your own.)
When I look at the parts of my work I love (and those I don't), I can see some clear themes, which I use to set criteria for applying my energy. Those themes are:
- Providing helpful frameworks to change people's thinking
- Seeing them applied for immediate results - at scale,
- Exercising my creative freedom.
I like to find the sweet spot between deep personal resonance and meaningful reach.
Things that meet those criteria: Not An MBA, online courses, speaking at events, writing and creating guides and tools.
Things that no longer meet them: coaching.
The things I'm keeping
The things I love aren't perfect. I struggle with hearing how constrained my students, readers, and delegates are in their operating environments and the stunning consistency of corporate bullsh*t across sectors and organisations. I let it get me down on a personal level sometimes. (Boundary alert!)
But with training, speaking and writing, I see a shift due to my time, at a scale I'm proud of. Conferences can be hard going, for all the reasons Steph Clarke outlined in this great LinkedIn post, but I like to think I'm part of the solution, not the problem.
The things I'm ditching
Coaching fails on a few criteria: scale, visible results and values alignment.
Something about the underlying premise fundamentally rubs me the wrong way: teams of highly paid, highly ranked leaders who can't work together to help the people who depend on them and need to pay someone else to do their job.
Over a year or two, I watch people working their guts out and trying their best lurch from one restructure to another, subject to the whims of their corporate overlords. They leave their long-term thinking in the room with me, and go straight to short-term panic as soon as the budget or environment changes. There's never enough money to support their teams with enough resources, but always enough money for retreats and belly-button gazing when they can't get their sh*t together.
(To be fair, this may mean I'm not a good coach. Either way, it's enough reason to know I'm done with it!)
What I've learned
1. The closer or more implicated I am in perpetrating unhelpful corporate crap, the worse I feel.
2. The more I feel like I've reached people at scale, AND on a personal level, who are ready to make changes, the better I feel.
3. The more creative freedom I have, the more joy I bring to the task at hand.
How to use this thinking for yourself
What's dragging you down?
Chances are, a personal or professional inventory would yield similar results: things you love, things you like, things you tolerate, and things you can't stand. That's fine, for the most part—unless you're sacrificing parts of yourself that shouldn't be sacrificed.
Things like your values, your integrity, your personal time, your emotional energy, or the quality of your relationships.
In that case, it's time to take action. Here's what you can do.
Five steps to reduce the bullsh*t in your life
1. Take inventory
List all the things you've got on, and put them in a sorting pile: love, like, tolerate, hate.
2. Find themes and set criteria
See if you can spot some themes - what do these things have in common? What underpins the stuff you love? What values are being violated by the things you hate? Use those things to set the criteria for what you direct your energy to. My criteria are usefulness, value alignment, scale, and creativity.
3. Consider alternatives
Consider options to reshape or remove the things that aren't serving you. If they aren't serving you, they aren't serving others either. I know that if I'm a jaded coach, I'm a sh*t coach. By the same token, if you're a disillusioned HR leader, checked-out spouse or contemptuous customer service person, you're not doing a good job of those roles either.
4. Draw new lines
Set new boundaries around the things that threaten your personal and professional peace. If you can reshape the problematic things to align with your values and needs, do that. If you can't, get rid of them.
5. Check-in and reflect
Reassess how that's made you feel. If it hasn't helped, you've got deeper stuff to deal with. Spend some time with a pen and a journal, or even a therapist, working out what some of that might be. If it has helped, keep going.
For more on how to set great boundaries, check out this article. It's packed with helpful thoughts and ideas and is a key resource in Not An MBA. In fact, our current cohort did this exercise just this week, putting in place fresh lines around their energy and attention so they can be better leaders, professionals, and people.
Have fun - and let me know how you've got on!
Til next week,
A
Alicia McKay
