Quest 2019: We Work

This week, the theme has been about work. It has been one of those weeks where the energy was building and I couldn't quite put my finger on the reasons why. Perhaps it was the instigation on Tuesday to bring your young genius to work... there were elements of that which bothered me.

Bringing my young genius to work could actually backfire, I thought. My young genius was highly studious, curious and a little 'soft'. I let the words float around, was it soft? It was more kindness, often misplaced in those days:

Curiosity
Intelligence
Kindness

Much of my week has involved an endless variety of meetings, as it usually does - along with some coaching sessions. Each day I reminded myself about my young genius at different points, sometimes looking at my list before I went into a particularly long meeting for example. The one I had the most difficulty with was kindness, and this really surprised me.

It surprised me because kindness and creativity used to come easily to me. For milestone birthdays I would plan for months, designing a uniquely personal gift, possibly even making a card and wrapping it in the most exquisite ways. With the odd exception, I realised I don't do this any more, period. I delved into the why? When did this apathy begin? Why does it exist? What is the secondary benefit of holding onto it? The answers don't bear going into here, suffice to say, there's more work to be done there (ouch!)

This is around the time I gave up on gifts...

Although that bubbled away in the background, it wasn't contributing to the pressure I felt rising as each day wore on. Perhaps it was about trying to crack the code on my routines by doing something differently?

With all the festive events happening in the city, I chose to take different routes home. This took me past Christmas lights, different parts of the cities and showed me how routine my commute is.

Changing it up took more effort in terms of changes but I also found it took more energy because I had to focus differently. The people were different, the places different and it seemed to take longer. It's like the first time we go on a trip somewhere, the outbound always seems faster than the return. I can only put that down to familiarity - it seems to take longer to assimilate the journey when things are new than when they are not. Still, this wasn't the source of the crescendo of energy I felt coming.

What I did enjoy was finding new ways to get to familiar places and being able to create a new route on the map in my head about the placement of things. No mean feat in a sprawling collection of villages that is London.

The last part of this week's instigation was about creating productive change for a person or customer. As I've been practicing my coaching skills with people, this week provided at least two or three opportunities for me to create productive change. I felt I had achieved it because the people I spoke to and worked with seemed to take a lot from our conversations which they were going to apply in their lives. In the past week, I had been working with an employee in my team in the same way and it seemed to be going well...

This is where the pressure broke. I received a call from my team member today to tell me she was resigning. I wasn't surprised, in fact I felt like I'd heard it already; and actually thought I had dreamed it. In our last coaching session, we had talked about confidence, future directions and the actions she would take to work towards a promotion. She seemed renewed and energised but this week when I saw her at the office my intuition told me that there was another story. I paid no attention to it and focused on all the other issues.

It seemed the coaching sessions had turned on a light for her and the universe answered that call by putting an old colleague back in touch to offer her a dream job that she couldn't refuse. And so there it was... that niggling feeling gnawing away at me deep inside revealed itself in the most awkwardly beautiful way. I cant help but think it’s a kick for me as well. The transition in 2019 must come!

A tough week indeed, but it won’t stop me. Bringing my young genius to work allows me to bring more of my authentic self to the tasks I perform and the interactions I have. In reflecting on the qualities, I see that as a combination they work well for a Coach, which is what I am aiming to do more of in 2019. My young genius was always listening and providing advice to others based on a vast repository or intellectual knowledge. Through curiosity I can ask better questions and with kindness, I can approach each person with more compassion and love.

Changing my routines forces me to look at the world differently and to interact with it more. I noticed I was less engaged with my iphone on this voyage around London because I was more interested to see where I was, what was happening and make new connections around the city, the streets and buildings.