The Powerful, Positive Spotlight

I had a fun conversation with a newly appointed people leader:

“What’s your greatest fear in this new role?”

After some thought, it became a single item with three parts: ”Not meeting the expectations of: My boss(es); my team; myself.”

“Hmmm. And, here in your first week in the role, what are the expectations of the three?”

“My boss: Not sure. My team: Don’t know. Myself. . . there’s so much I’d like to accomplish, and the list keeps growing and shifting!”

“You wanted this role. What were you thinking it would look like?”

“There’s so much room to improve: I want to. . .”  and the hopes/ plans/ objectives were clearly laid out.

“You sound pretty clear on the expectations for yourself – tell me again about that fear?”

“My objectives, goals might not be aligned with those of the team or my boss”

“Ah. So the fear of not meeting your own expectations is more than simply not meeting your expectations - not accomplishing your objectives?”

“yeah. I have all these ideas of what I would like to accomplish in this role. I might be completely off-line with this. The team might disagree, or have other ideas. My boss might figure it’s not important - and none of it might be given the go-ahead!”

“So. . . I hear lot’s of “might” and “might not” there. What are your plans to gain clarity?”

“I have a first meeting with the team this week, and hope to get their thoughts – what they think is required – that will help me put all of these things - my own objectives - into order. It might add to my list, and maybe we are all already on the same page as to what we could do, and it might even provide insight as to priority of each objective.

And I have a 1-on-1 with my boss next week – I hope to find out what their expectations are at that time. I’ll ask anyway.”

“So, your greatest fear is not meeting the expectations that your boss, your team and you have for yourself in this role?”

“yeah”

“And in this first week, you have no clarity on the expectations, really, of any of them, including yourself?”

“yeah”

“And, you, in this first week have a plan that you have already begun to act on to gain the clarity.”

“yeah. I guess I do”

“And what will this clarity provide?”

“The ability to properly plan, prioritize, and start knocking off the objectives”

“Can I offer an observation?”

“yeah.”

“It looks to me like your fear is backlighting one of your super powers - like a spotlight!”

“huh?”

“Your fear - not meeting the expectations of the three – got you planning. You have created and activated that plan to bring to light, clarify and align the expectations of three. This in turn will allow you to make the plans to move forward, with the agreement of all three.

Your fear effectively highlighted what you needed to do and got you going. . . and by the end of next week you’ll have the ability to put a plan into action.”

“Fear that’s examined yields powerful discoveries about you at your best”

~ Marcus Buckingham from Love+Work

There was a pause.

“Oh!”

And with that there was a broad grin.

“Tell me about that fear again?”