How Do I Know When I am Ready for Coaching? - Descript
In the Thursday session this week when we were talking about psychological safety and a couple of coaches were talking about what happens in the scenario where people in workshops. Judge you and this whole topic and notion about are we good enough to do this?
And so far you all have not had a chance to practice and so far you have been hearing about things, you've been talking about things, and you haven't had the skills and. Practice being able to do it, and a lot of you took the self-assessments and there's a lot of things that you have that you've identified that are lower incompetence than other things, and so it's feasible when you get into situations where you're asked on the spot, you will feel the pressure to perform.
And I want to talk about that pressure. I want to talk about this notion and where it comes from and what you should be doing right now
in lieu of not having the practice. I say this to everybody in Tech Fleet, it's in the handbook. Everybody thinks that when you have a level of skill and you have a level of experience that you can perform, that you'll be great at what you do.
And where does this come from? I think that this comes from a root in school. The way that we are a lot of times brought up in the world. I was the oldest of three and there was constant external pressure for me to perform,
saying that there disappointed in me if I didn't perform and. Uh, constantly feeling and being told that it's not good enough. B plus isn't good enough. You can do better. You gotta get something that makes it in this life. You gotta do something that
you feel you can perform in. It was all about this notion in school too. Being in the classes of high performance, you had to prepare for a great college, and that was my world. And I know others' worlds are very, very, very different. But I have felt this pressure to perform my entire life. And a lot of us feel pressure to perform in a lot of ways.
And this notion of perfection has been magnified
by everything that we hear. Everything that we see go on in the job market. Everything that we have been experiencing in school is all about get the A. If you get a B, if you get a C, you fail. And if you don't pass, you're not good and you gotta be great.
And this is ingrained in a lot of us and as a teammate coming in learning cross-functional teamwork In tech fleet, there are 10 to 20 people. Relearning and unlearning that mindset of perfection that they have to get the perfect result, that they have to say the right answer, that they have to think the right things, and when they don't,
they feel ashamed.
They feel judged. They feel like they're a failure. They feel like people are judging them, and that is supernatural. Very natural, not supernatural. It's very natural. It's normal.
Why is it so normal? It's because we're. Undoing the habits that are so deeply rooted in us about good and bad and perfect and not perfect, and right and wrong in terms of work.
And it's a story that we tell ourselves.
The story that we tell ourselves is, if I only had more skills and more experience, I would be great. And I'm not great because I don't have skills and experience, and when I make mistakes, it's the worst thing because I'm letting others down and they expect me to perform.
And if I make a mistake, they're gonna judge me.
Teammates feel that we might feel that on a job. We might feel that answering a question in school. We might feel that with friends. We might feel that in sports. We feel that in a lot of situations. Not everybody feels that, but I did. I do. I don't think it ever stops,