What is the one thing in your job you find the most challenging?
What is the one thing that makes you feel most uncomfortable?
What is the one thing that you know you need to overcome to become better, to be more effective, to grow
What is your own personal ‘Elephant in Your Room’?
These challenges may hold the greatest barrier to your chances of success, but they also offer you the greatest opportunity to grow.
The Other-side of Self-Confidence.
Though we may become extremely strong in some areas of performance, beneath the veneer of self-confidence we project there is a fragility that may undermine us.
This fragility has the potential to stunt our growth and stop us from achieving the success we desire.
It is particularly prevalent with people in positions of responsibility for results:
- Leaders and Managers: Avoiding discussing contentious issues and making difficult decisions.
- Salespeople: Who struggle to sell to a big customer for fear of damaging a relationship.
- Traders and investors: Failing to back their ideas, keeping their risk size too small.
- Analysts: Always making the safe call and never admitting to making a wrong call.
- Quants: Forever tweaking their system/signals to perfect them.
Within Areas of Discomfort Exists Huge Potential for Growth.
‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Viktor Frankl,.
At the root of this discomfort lies your potential for growth, but equally the failure to address these areas of discomfort places limits upon yourself.
If you are avoiding confronting these issues, then it it highly likely you are finding ways around them.
The problem is they do not go away, they just come back to hit you another time, often with greater ferocity.
Not surprisingly those who are most willing to acknowledge their discomfort and to work with it, are often those who succeed the most.
You Can Change, But There Are No Easy Paths.
The good news is that you can deal with it.
The good news is that you can do something about this. .
But there are no ‘5 easy steps to overcoming your discomfort’.
Nonetheless here are some steps you can make to start the process of helping yourself.
1. Note the things that make you feel you uncomfortable that you would like to address but cannot.
2. Note your key strengths that support you in your work. – It is important to appreciate these strengths as they will be a key ally for you.
3. Of the things noted in point 1.
– What would you most like to eliminate if you could and why?
– What might make your future world look like if you could overcome these challenges, and why?
4. What are the potential downside risks and future threats to you if these areas of discomfort are not addressed, and why would that be?
– What might your future world look like if you cannot break through these challenges, compared to your response in point 3, and why might that be? (Try to be creative and expansive in your thinking).
5. Seek feedback from others:
– Work colleagues, reports, managers, trusted business relationships.
– Husbands, wives, partners, good friends:
Some Dos and Don’ts for feedback.
• When seeking feedback, first ask people to tell you what:
-They think ‘You do well’.
-They ‘Value most about you’.
-They think ‘You can improve upon?’
– ‘You need to get better at?’ and ‘Why that is?’
• Ask those giving feedback to be as frank and honest as possible:
– Do not ask them to point out where you are weak or failing, they will not want to tell you that. Instead frame the questions as:
‘What they feel you can improve at? and why?’ – Make it an invitation from you to them, to help you know yourself better.
• Do listen intently.
• Do take notes.
• Do not interrupt them.
• Try not to get defensive. – If you do get defensive, try and notice what you are getting defensive about. – In that defensiveness may be a rich seem which may contain some of the unconscious barriers holding you back.
Finally
Do not make this a one-off exercise.
Commit yourself to revisiting this exercise at future times.
Improvements takes time: Rome was not built in a day’.
If you enjoyed this article:
You may enjoy some of our other articles which explores a range of themes related to human performance in Financial Markets. This includes ‘It’s not the Markets you Overcome, It’s Yourself‘, and ‘Helping Traders Discover Their Inner Diamond‘, and other posts on our Articles Page.
We are passionate about working with those who want to better themselves.
If you are curious about any aspect of our work, or would like to understand more about how coaching could help you or your business: Then please email me at steven goldstein.
