I’ve mentioned in previous blogs on this site a group of inspiring and talented people I have the privilege to coach and watch flourish.
I find that working with really talented people isn’t just an opportunity to help them to develop and progress, THEY help me too.
This year has been a prime example of that. With so much change all around us and new ways of doing just about everything, having access the thoughts and experiences of people I respect and admire has meant I’ve been able to adapt and thrive much more easily than I otherwise would.
The advice hasn’t always been what I thought I wanted to hear, and it hasn’t always felt supportive at the time, but it’s always come from a good place and it’s always turned out to provide me with at least one or two nuggets I’ve put into action.
Back to the 11 people on the talent programme I designed. They’ve had a monumental year. Alongside transforming how they do their day jobs to meet the new challenges and ways of working in the ‘Year of The Pandemic’ they’ve thrown themselves into development challenges on our programme that would make many crawl back under the duvet and claim the WiFi is ‘down’.
They’ve had challenges and it took quite a bit of time to find their team rhythm. They had initial setbacks and uncovered issues they didn’t think they could overcome – but they did. And after a while, they got the taste for beating expectations. They found momentum, they found team performance, they found personal confidence and re-set goals to more ambitious levels.
AND THEN CAME THE CRASH.
They’ve recently found themselves with a set-back just as they approach a critical milestone. Focus has turned to doom and gloom. “The successes count for nothing because now it seems we’re not even close to good enough”.
So, it’s now my turn to use reflections on my year to offer them some food for thought.
I’ve been working on a new, large scale, project for the past 12 months that has been a technical, time, money and emotional challenge. At times it’s been a gleeful experience. At times it’s been a series of the worst days I’ve had for years.
Throughout it all, the trick has been to focus on why I want to do it and why I believe in it.
But also, there’s been an interesting learning – success isn’t linear. I have periods; sometimes days, sometimes (when I’m lucky) weeks when everything is turning to gold. And then there’s a glitch (sometimes it feels more like and then there’s an earthquake of bad news). To begin with it felt like the meaning of those ‘glitches’ were ‘this is going to fail, it was never meant to work, what’s the point’.
But I’ve realised that this is just the pattern of success when you are breaking new ground, doing challenging things, creating innovative solutions. Whether it’s 2 steps forward or three steps forward or four steps forward …. the one step back is actually a valuable part of the overall experience. It lets me refocus on things that need to be fixed to make the success even better. It also tells me I must be asking myself and the project challenging questions (because otherwise it would just a be a series of low impact deliveries with no setbacks and little sense of overall achievement.
So IF you are one of the 11 I’ve been mentioning, take a look back at the previous blog you inspired me to write https://in2minds.net/2020/05/fix-the-problem/ and remind yourself that you’ve been having this same non-linear success pattern all year too and that this latest setback is a gift of an opportunity!!
If you’re not one of the 11 (and I bet you wish you were) watch this space to find out how they come back bigger and better.
