When Dr. Rosemary Lynch began her executive coaching career in the late 1980s, she quickly found herself drawn to coaching women. When asked what attracted her, she responded, “Their highly developed intuition and sense of awareness. These were real assets because they allowed us to begin the coaching assignment from a higher-level launching pad.”
As Rosemary, who is Director of Organizational Effectiveness Coaching at Ayers, shifted her focus to coaching female executives, she began to recognize common threads woven through the stories they told. “It became clear to me that these women were relying on similar behaviors in the workplace. And these
behaviors were letting them down, drawing criticism from people around them and leaving them feeling inadequate.”
Responding to the issues and dilemmas she saw women facing in the workplace, she developed a set of *10 principles to help her clients and their peers.
Distinguish between reacting and responding—Recognize that reacting and responding are two separate actions. Once you’ve identified the nature of your reaction, make a decision about how to respond—or whether to respond at all.
Create consistency between your head and your heart—The work you do and the options you choose should not only be right from the perspectives of business and ethics, they should also represent what you truly want to be doing. This requires a degree of reflection about which aspects of past work you’ve most enjoyed.
Shift to being proactive rather than reactive—If you define what you’re looking for, you create criteria that provide an excellent basis for evaluation as opportunities present themselves. Pursuing a career becomes a proactive and conscious activity.
Be proud of who you are and what you’ve done—Many senior executive women are not practiced in formulating a positive self-assessment. Many were raised in an era when a woman who regarded her capabilities or appearance in a positive way earned a reputation as being conceited or boastful. Learn to give yourself credit for being the person you are and for your accomplishments.
Identify and understand sources of anger—If you are frequently angry, it’s important to figure out why. You might be angry with yourself or a particular situation in your life and projecting that onto others. Consistent demonstration of anger in the workplace prevents healthy interactions and limits opportunities for advancement.
Learn to let go—Once a situation has passed, review what you’ve learned and release the episode. As much as you may want to bring the event back so you can do or say something differently, you can’t! Obsessing is not only unhealthy, it deprives you of valuable energy you could be using to influence and improve something happening in the present.
Maintain an objective outlook—How do you see the world? Do you engage in blaming? Do you find yourself labeling people and events good or bad, right or wrong? It’s so liberating to know you can learn to be an observer rather than a round-the-clock critic.
Play tennis on your own side of the net—Imagine your job, and your life, as a tennis game. Don’t hit the ball and then run around to the other court to make sure it gets hit back properly. That’s the other player’s job. You have to stay on your own side of the net to develop more balanced interactions.
Self evaluate—It is very important to evaluate your own performance and behavior while learning to heed your intuition. When there is a dichotomy between how you believe you’re performing and the feedback you receive from someone in the workplace, don’t automatically give credence to the other perspective without assessing it for accuracy.
Feel free to “act as if”—This final principle applies to the others by helping you understand how to approach each new behavior you would like to master. It isn’t necessary to “feel changed” before acting. In fact, new behaviors need to be practiced over time until they become part of who you are. That’s when change will occur.
* ©2005 Rosemary Maxwell Lynch, Psy.D. All Rights Reserved. Δ
