Catalyst for transformation

When I met Sue King at a business conference in Rome some years ago, I didn’t know that she would one day become my transformation agent. Sue was facilitating a workshop on authentic leadership, guiding participants to find their unique style through a series of exercises fusing the intellectual, emotional and physical spheres. Our meeting was one of those perfectly synchronistic occurrences in which the universe responds to a conscious intention.

At the time I was contemplating working with a professional coach. I felt a bit stalled in my career and didn’t know the best way forward. Enter Sue: a fellow Canadian and professional leadership development coach whose practice combines classic coaching methods with techniques taken from the world of theatre and improvisation. All of this, she argues, helps people get “out of their head and into their body” where a deeper connection to purpose can be found.

A Lesson in Being

Sue and I didn’t start collaborating right away. I soldiered on for another year after our initial encounter before working up enough courage to make a real change. By that time my frustration at work had escalated, for a whole host of reasons that would be familiar to anyone navigating the corporate world. Needless to say I was racing ahead at my usual 350km/hour Ferrari pace, only this time it was straight into a non-stop series of political roadblocks that were increasingly difficult to avoid. I had a choice: change direction or crash and burn.

At our first working session, Sue asked me the first of what would be many thought-provoking questions during our five-month coaching partnership: What if your end goal was to Be? I remember thinking to myself, Did she hear me correctly? I’m talking about making a plan, taking action, and moving ahead in my career. I couldn’t reconcile Being with my success-focused work ethic, not to mention the primary reason for seeking out a coach in the first place: forward and upward career momentum.

Of course I was not unfamiliar with the living-in-the-moment thing. I had actively practiced yoga and meditation during my theatre days. But what did all this have to do with professional mobility? In typical Type A fashion, I had come to our first working session equipped with a Life Plan. My expectation was that Sue would help me bring this plan to fruition. “Being” was not what I had signed up for.

Uncovering Your Gifts

After digesting the Being idea for a week or so, I decided to give Sue’s approach a try and open my mind to a different way of thinking about my career — and life. After all, if it didn’t work I had already mapped it all out and could somehow muddle my way through, as I had so many times before.

Our early conversations focused on questions about the “impact I have on the world” and, as Sue puts it, the barriers that get in the way of realizing the full potential of my unique gifts. This sounds a whole lot easier than it is, particularly for someone with innumerable interests, whose path has taken countless twists and turns, and for whom the idea of gifts, or passions, brings more confusion than direction.

I’m just not one of those people who has known since the age of five that I want to be a doctor and heal people, or build a business from the ground-up. I don’t have an exceptional singing talent or sporting ability to entertain and inspire others. It wasn’t at all obvious to me what I could do and, more importantly, how this would make a contribution to the world.

This led us to the second part of the coaching equation: working through the reasons why I was seemingly paralyzed in routine, hesitant to tap into the creative spark that fueled the early stages of my career.

Introducing The Fear Monsters

What emerged is that somewhere along the way I had buried the more eccentric aspects of my artistic nature while adapting to higher levels of responsibility at the office and home. I postponed creative pursuits, citing a lack of time and exhaustion for the gap, all the while becoming increasingly resentful of the circumstances pulling me farther away from these dreams. Working with Sue brought forward what was really behind these excuses.

First I had to face some rather determined voices in my head — which I like to think of as the Fear Monsters — accusing me of being a failure. Their song and dance goes a little something like: “If you were meant to be a writer, you should have had articles published in major news outlets by now. It’s too late. Forget it.” and “You won’t get anywhere because you didn’t do A, B or C (enter reason here).”

Next I had to let go of some real voices of criticism in my life. To be clear, these were not kind, helpful voices of constructive feedback in the name of mentorship or caring. Rather, they were of the intentionally malicious variety, for reasons that can only ever be known to this particular brand of bullying perpetrator.

Over the course of the coaching process, however, I realized that all of this is neither here nor there. Ultimately, it comes down to our intended impact — and not the mechanisms we use or the degree to which society evaluates the quality of these contributions. If my creative pursuits connect even one person to a new story, idea or person of inspiration, then my job is done.

The Transformation Continues

A few years have passed I embarked on this journey with Sue. Today I incorporate many of the lessons learned into tangible changes: albeit, not entirely in the form expected and certainly not without more than a few surprises along the way. It’s a constant balancing act to tame the Fear Monsters and embrace the blessings of every day, particularly on difficult ones when office politics or other energy suckers get in the way.

While I haven’t exactly sold the house and packed it all in to pursue a six-month backpack tour of Asia or make documentary films (both on my dream list of things to do one day), I did set in motion a few small creative projects. I also learned an important lesson in balancing needs – in my case, the security and comfort of a stable home – with the desire to do something transformational.

I still don’t know what tomorrow will bring and it continues to drive me bonkers that I can’t control this. But I understand that the outcome is less important than taking the plunge in the first place — and embracing each step along the way.

Watch for an upcoming CultureRISE Talk with Sue King on turning intention into action.