Alice, Engineer
Alice works in a large and complex organisation. Her job requires her to balance reactive projects with strategic longer term goals but priorities often shift and she has huge numbers of incoming emails to deal with every day. After being recommended by a colleague, Alice came to me for help with prioritising her workloads.
“I felt frustrated that I was working really hard and delivering a lot each day, but I didn’t see any progress on my bigger picture goals. Personally I was looking to gain experience in different roles at work and gain promotion but I also wanted to feel I was achieving the longer term goals of my organisation too.”
Often the jobs that shout at you to be completed in the short term aren’t actually helping you achieve your goals. Alice found that working as part of a big organisation meant her To Do list was always growing, but not always with constructive tasks which progressed her own agenda.
“Learning to say no was a big part of my work with Lucy. She taught me to avoid being distracted by tasks for other people which didn’t help me drive forward my own strategic goals. It’s about enabling other people when it helps you move forward but being confident to say no when tasks are a distraction.”
Working with a coach often helps people take a step back from the situation at hand which always provides useful insight.
Alice says, “Talking to someone else means you can slightly detach yourself from your situation and look at things objectively. This objectivity has been the single most powerful thing for me because it means I feel less personally responsible for what’s going on around me. Lucy suggested that I look at things as if I was an outsider advising myself – now I see issues as interesting problems to solve rather than something impacting me personally. This has been so helpful to find clarity in challenging situations.”
Coaching definitely takes time and dedication but employees like Alice can find great value in understanding better ways to work within their team and wider organisation.
She says, “I’ve never been coached before and I found it actually a far more intellectually challenging experience than I expected – which exceeded my hopes. I wanted to feel challenged and that sessions had been practical and useful. Lucy really questioned me on my thinking and transformed my perspective.
I’d say you do have to devote time and thought and energy to coaching to make it worthwhile but you get so much more back that way. It can be hard to commit to that but for me, it created so much more time in the long run than it took away initially. It’s nice to feel I made a positive decision to tackle difficulties at work and I now feel so much more in control of the situation and confident about the future.”