Coaching Tip 12 - Please....Please Yourself
08/12/08 17:18 Filed in: Coaching
Tips
“I don't know the
key to success, but the key to failure is trying to
please everybody.”
Bill Cosby
Quite a few of us have a challenge in saying “no” to other people. Maybe you are one of those people, or have people working for you that need to learn to ‘just say no’.
What causes this to happen and how can we stop saying yes automatically and say no when this is what is best?
Bill Cosby
Quite a few of us have a challenge in saying “no” to other people. Maybe you are one of those people, or have people working for you that need to learn to ‘just say no’.
What causes this to happen and how can we stop saying yes automatically and say no when this is what is best?
I most often see this behaviour when people are
running their “Please Others” driver. I have written
about drivers before - the term comes from the field
of Transactional Analysis (TA). Drivers relate to
decisions we made early on in life in order both to
(and this sounds dramatic) ‘survive and perform’. Be
aware that we don’t run all of the drivers all of the
time - we unconsciously run them according to the
situation we are in.
One of the choices is to ‘please others’ and whilst all of the driver strategies will be successful up to a point, when we unconsciously over use them, they become counter-productive. In particular, I have found the persistent running of Please Others to become counter-productive in allowing people to move forward in their careers.
Each driver has a corresponding permission - for Please Others the permission is to ‘Please Yourself’. We need to raise awareness so that we go from the unconscious running of the driver (Please Others), to the conscious choice of the permission (Please yourself). How do we do this?
Like many things - it is important to stop... and create that little gap between stimulus and response where we can make a choice. Stephen Covey talks of this in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - he changes the word responsible to “Response-Able”. We are only “Response-Able” when we achieve that gap between stimulus and response.
So the first tip is to practice taking a pause after hearing a question - take a breath in and consider the question. Even if we give the same answer as if we hadn’t paused, it is good practice - the questioner will know you are listening and are giving your proper attention to their request.
Ok so far - but if you are running a Please Others driver then it may well be uncomfortable for you to say no.
In that gap where you are Response-Able, consider this question: “If I say yes to someone else, what or who am I saying no to?”....
If I say yes to this extra work am I saying no to my own work, no to my own plan, no to getting that extra time with my kids I promised?..... This isn’t selfish. It’s only sensible to consider the implications upon you and your stakeholders before you answer yes.
Another way to approach this is to ask yourself in the gap: “What is the higher meaning or consequence of this action for me or my work?”
It could be that when you ask yourself this - you realise that saying yes automatically will have a set of consequences that you really aren’t willing to live with.
As we are countering a long practised habit, this takes some effort to consciously practice and courage to say No.
Are you going to do it? Well, you'll just have to Please Yourself!
One of the choices is to ‘please others’ and whilst all of the driver strategies will be successful up to a point, when we unconsciously over use them, they become counter-productive. In particular, I have found the persistent running of Please Others to become counter-productive in allowing people to move forward in their careers.
Each driver has a corresponding permission - for Please Others the permission is to ‘Please Yourself’. We need to raise awareness so that we go from the unconscious running of the driver (Please Others), to the conscious choice of the permission (Please yourself). How do we do this?
Like many things - it is important to stop... and create that little gap between stimulus and response where we can make a choice. Stephen Covey talks of this in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - he changes the word responsible to “Response-Able”. We are only “Response-Able” when we achieve that gap between stimulus and response.
So the first tip is to practice taking a pause after hearing a question - take a breath in and consider the question. Even if we give the same answer as if we hadn’t paused, it is good practice - the questioner will know you are listening and are giving your proper attention to their request.
Ok so far - but if you are running a Please Others driver then it may well be uncomfortable for you to say no.
In that gap where you are Response-Able, consider this question: “If I say yes to someone else, what or who am I saying no to?”....
If I say yes to this extra work am I saying no to my own work, no to my own plan, no to getting that extra time with my kids I promised?..... This isn’t selfish. It’s only sensible to consider the implications upon you and your stakeholders before you answer yes.
Another way to approach this is to ask yourself in the gap: “What is the higher meaning or consequence of this action for me or my work?”
It could be that when you ask yourself this - you realise that saying yes automatically will have a set of consequences that you really aren’t willing to live with.
As we are countering a long practised habit, this takes some effort to consciously practice and courage to say No.
Are you going to do it? Well, you'll just have to Please Yourself!