Name It to Tame It!

Tweet: When emotions take over, they thwart logical thinking for you to find creative solutions to your problem. So, by naming the cause you can change the outcomes course.

As their career coach, clients often come to me all roiled up about something that is really eating them up. Often it is their frustration about something that they are unable to do or conquer. When what is happening to them repeats itself with regular frequency their frustration level rises to a high enough level that it affects them emotionally.

When they reach that state an important part of their braintheir amygdalagets into action and at this point their ability to analyze a situation dispassionately and logically becomes increasingly diminished. Amygdalas main function is to provide you the emotional capacityeven impetusto put you in a mode where thinking and rational analysis are subordinated to emotional responses. One of the key functions of this part of the brain is to provide you with a flight or fight option as if your survival will be driven by that decision without having to analyze and think much.

One example of a recent such client was when she came to me after being in a new job for the past three or so months in a chaotic company. During these three months her part of the organizationand even the company as a wholehad gone through three re-orgs. During this process she has been shuffled to three different bosses without formally being assigned to any. So, the first boss remained as her go-to-boss after initial round of restructuring when she was assigned to a second one as her work boss. Even my client did not know what that meant in the context of her workflow and accountability.

In a month after that she was assigned to yet another boss in new function without redefining the first two relationships. So, now she had three bossesall reporting to the same VP, two levels upnone of whom knew what reporting role they would play in my clients ongoing work accountability, yet they each keep giving her tasks as if the other two did not exist. To make matters worse none of them were willing to take the time to define the requirements of the task they wanted her to perform because of their fear of yet another re-org, where any investment they made in her onboarding to their team would be a wasted effort.

As if this were not bad enough, her three bosses had repeatedly made her look bad in meetings where the VP was running them. So, in just three months my client was being perceived as a slacker, unable to complete a task without being micromanaged, and as someone who needed to be spoon-fed to get anything out of her in a meaningful way. Knowing her as I do for the past six years she is an exact antithesis of this perception.

During our meeting, as she was sharing her nightmare, she got upset enough to tell me that she was seriously thinking of quitting and finding another job as what was happening at work was causing her to lose her self-confidence. She now had three bosses and just to keep up with the work that needed to be done she was regularly spending 12-14 hour days, just treading water. Even then she was getting beaten up in meetings in front of the VP.

When I asked her about why her bosses did not give her the requirements for her to complete her tasks, she told me that she had repeatedly requested such information from them but no one was willing to heed her request as they were themselves too busy to manage that key part of their responsibility. So, when she had complained to the VP about this before, the VP surmised that it was her fault that she could not persuade them to give her what was critical for her to perform her task.

So, when we reached that point in our meeting where is saw quitting as her only option (flight), we decided to analyze the situation and take charge of it before such an option was considered as the only wise one to pursue. What I realized was that although she was frustrated about her workflow and accountability she could not namethe monsterthe source of her frustration so that we could deal with it and then tame it. After some analysis we concluded that her source of frustration was her concern that she would be labeled an order taker and someone who shows no initiative in how she performs her work. So, we labeled her anxiety as perception fear. What this means is that my client did not want to be perceived as someone who is a mere order taker and as someone who needs constant supervision to get anything out of her.

Once we were able to get to this point we decided for her to meet with the VP and change the tenor of the meeting from being defensive and complaining to being defiant. In her previous meetings with the VP she had complained about how none of her bosses gave her any instructions and how the different inputs she got were in conflict with each other for her to do any task properly. What this often resulted was in her inability to deliver a quality and timely output for those tasks. This was the root-cause of her perception fear.

So, in that meeting she logically laid out for the VP how her current working arrangements with the three were untenable and whatever perception that was being formed about her work habits were the result of this poor arrangement. Once he understood this problem she then asked him to directly assign her a task with clear requirements, context, and clarity of expectations to see for himself her ability to deliver with minimal supervision. With some reflection the VP was able to give her such a task. Luckily, what he gave her was well within her expertise and skills that she could complete it without breaking a sweatand on time.

When the VP saw the outcome of her efforts in a few weeks he invited her back into his office and acknowledged that her work was well done and that he would make sure that her future assignments would be flowing from a single source of accountability. He also assured her that he would now back her up in meetings if someone complained about her being a slack.

Mission accomplished!

So, by going through the exercise of the naming the monster that was causing this untoward grief and frustration to my client, doing the root-cause-analysis, and then confronting the person who could quell that monster my client was able to move forward without further grief and wanting to quit her job. So, the next time you are confronted with a flight or fight option in your job try taming the monster by merely naming it first and then dealing with its root-cause with your logical brain in full gear!

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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