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Meg Edwards
What's on your plate?
My most recent Ah-ha moment came recently while working with a client. While we had accomplished a great deal during the initial coaching, he really didn't see the value in doing a weekly review. This gave him a system that he sometimes used, but not always, so he continued to work in a reactive way by doing things as they showed up, sometimes missing things and dropping balls along the way.
We were working together in a telecoaching session to build more consistency in his weekly review process when it happened. I was explaining the value of the weekly review, trying to make it click. Now from experience I know I can tell you why it works, and I can show you how it works, but sometimes it takes an ah-ha moment for people to really realize the value. For him, this was the moment...
During our weekly call, his agent called on the other line to tell him about a great opportunity to have his work displayed by a large publication. This was great news, what an opportunity! But the work had to be submitted that day. It was a huge undertaking, and his concern was the deadline was too soon.
I thought, lets see where we can go with this. First I asked him what the successful outcome would be, which we identified and noted. Next we did a mind sweep for the whole project and made a project folder for all the paperwork that was bound to come if he signed on. Finally we identified the very next actions he could take.
He was now excited and beginning to see the possibility of getting it done. We then did a quick weekly review to get all his other ducks lined up and to see if there was anything else that might need his attention. We got a complete inventory of his current projects and his action lists clear and complete. In quick succession, he checked his calendar and made a two-minute call to reschedule a meeting he had later in the day. He then looked at his upcoming calendar to see if anything else needed to be changed. Now he was rolling and he could actually see how everything could be reshuffled to make room for this new exciting project.
Now his "runway" level of work was fairly clear when this new project showed up (remember he had been doing weekly reviews, just not consistently), but it made him aware that by maintaining a clear and current inventory of all that was on his plate, he could quickly renegotiate prior commitments (hard to do when you don't know what they are), and free up the energy and focus to tackle the project at hand.
The ah-ha moment... you can't plan on them, they just have to come. And for us coaches, it's just great to be there when someone has one!
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