Beliefs That Inform My Advising Approach
Everyone is working with a different definition of what it means to be an advisor, coach, consultant, or mentor.
To me, our titles are less important than how we define them.
What does it mean to you to hold that role? What are the beliefs, principles, or practices that inform what you do and how you do it?
Here’s a list-of-noticings turned collection-of-beliefs that inform my work:
Change happens when we start with what is, not what we wish were true. We cannot build something meaningful and sustainable if we’re not able to start from the reality of our own businesses, lives, capacities, and resources. Related: When coming up against the same problem again and again, look for where you’re unable to tell the truth about what the problem really is.
Structure drives behaviour. We do not have to will and force ourselves through change, we can invite ourselves into it. Design for the change you want. Hint: Healthy structures give you access to more of yourself.
If everything has to be *just so* for it to work, it’s not workable. This goes for your business model, your content calendar, and just about anything, really. What do you trust yourself to stick to on both high and low capacity weeks? Create containers that hold the width of you.
You can give people advice without telling them what to do. You can offer a path without prescribing it.
Don’t expect yourself in others. Don’t expect others to think like you, act like you, or use shared language. Even—especially—when they’re similar to you or in close relationship with you (i.e. clients, employees, or partners of any description). The fewer assumptions you make the more room there is for true understanding—and—possibility.
Which brings me to: Let yourself be surprised.
And also: Let people be different than you. Don’t rush to collapse the space between you and someone else by flattening your understanding of them. Seek to understand, rather than make people understandable.
Selling certainty is lucrative in the short run and cheap in the long run. Better to set people up to navigate uncertainty well.
To be strategic is to choose. Strategy is, at its most basic, a conscious choice in a given direction. To be strategic is to acknowledge where you have choice and to use that choice wisely and well in favour of what matters to you. Strategy as a practice is spending more time in your business leading and shaping, rather than reacting.
To sustain is to return. What do you have to return to? Most business advice takes us away from our centre and very little returns us. A sustainable business is one that has foundations we can return to and build on.
Aiming allows for emergence. We often start with one definition of success and as we move towards it, it shifts. This isn’t a failure. This is a natural byproduct of being an active participant in your own life.
See also: Well-defined goals aren’t required to start strategic work. A meaningful direction is, and a direction can be as simple as a question. Then we aim, act, adjust. Aim, act, adjust. As Pema Chodron reminds us, “The process is the path”.
Because: Rigidity isn’t the goal. Listening and responding is.
We contain multitudes. It is normal to be of more than one mind on a thing. And we don’t need to be all of one mind about a thing to move forward or do good work. The goal is not to have all of you pointed in the same direction, it’s to choose which part of you is leading.
Tension is generative. Western culture is quick to collapse any unknown, uncomfortable, or undefinable space. But there is so much wisdom here. When we’re able to hang out in this space a little longer than we’re used to, we’re able to gather some of that wisdom. More than anything, tension reveals what matters to us.
The information we need is available to us. All the information we need to get to the smallest next step is available to us. All we have to do is listen and ask the right questions.
See also: Everything is workable. There is always room available to us somewhere. It may not be the room we want but it’s the room we have and, often, that’s enough.
It’s not my job to have the best ideas in the room but it is my job to help the best ideas surface. The humility of this work is that it’s not about who has the answers or sometimes even getting to answers at all, but did we have a conversation that couldn’t have otherwise happened? Did something get revealed that otherwise wouldn’t have?
If I’m judging you, I’m not listening to you. Holding skilled space means being mindful of my projections, judgements, and limits so that we’re led to your answers, not mine. Your business, not mine.
And: If you have to worry about managing my reaction to the information you’re sharing we’ll never get to the information we need. A client should never be made responsible for the practitioner’s emotional state.
Finally: I can only meet your dark corners to the extent that I’m willing to meet mine. The more compassionate I can be with myself the more compassionate I’m able to be with you.
Do you have a list of beliefs or principles that inform what you do and how you do it? Email me, I’d love to hear/read it.
