03 July 2008
We all go through life filling up buckets with new things.. ideas, desires, loves, hobbies and interests... and then they seem to disappear and fade away and are no longer that important..
One of the many reasons that people want to be coached is that they have lost the spark or interest in their job, business or project and are unable to explain why this has happened or what has happened. Certainly some times the individual should never have got involved in the career or business in the first place, but whatever the reason for running out of steam and there can be many reasons for this, one of looking at it is with the use of a seesaw diagram and different sized buckets.
What I have discovered with my clients is that we all generate interests in subjects, projects and also friendships even falling in love during the course of our lives and these interests and relationships can be depicted as buckets of different sizes. Some of them are micro small, the equivalent of a quick read of a magazine article, or a small bucket, which would be the equivalent a half day trip to a concert or museum, a big bucket which would be a few years study of a subject and some of them are huge and almost bottomless like a life long hobby of wine making or building a business. Whatever size they all start off by being totally full and occupy one side of the seesaw. On the other end of the seesaw is an empty bucket into which all of the energy in the form of interest, time and curiousity is placed. This bucket of energy is exactly the same size as the bucket on the other side of the seesaw and obviously it will range from very small to a huge, ginormous bottomless vessel. The thing is that we don’t know how big these buckets of energy are at the beginning. We only discover how big or small as time moves on.
As times goes by we move energy from the full bucket to the empty one as our curiousity and interest grows but often there comes a time when the energy bucket becomes empty and the corresponding bucket on the other side becomes full. When this happens the seesaw tips and at this moment the individual’s interest begins to wane as their energy bucket just does not have the resources to make it as interesting. This will eventually result in a non-interest in the subject and a mere shadow of the what it felt like at the beginning, which could have been minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or even years ago.
All of this can feel very unsettling at the time almost as if we are not being true to ourselves. In fact this feeling is completely natural as our brain and neural systems settle into a new way of thinking and sensing and over time this will uncomfortableness will pass as new things replace the old.
If you found this interesting then you will be interested in a recent blog on the bucket seesaw principal about how behaviours creep up on us http://www.coachinginsight.co.uk/content/view/381/56/
©William Barron
Coaching Insight
July 3rd 2008
06 July 2008
Many successful women in business have a number of male brain traits - visual, can see 3D space, good at strategy, assertive, courageous and all becuase they inherited some male brain genes from their parents...
One of the delights of coaching is the privilege of explaining to my clients about themselves that they knew already but were never able to put two and two together and make four. All of us constantly receive comments made by friends but we because we live with ourselves 24/7 we never really make the connection that maybe the comment is about something that is unique or even extraordinary. For example, the translation of a comment about the ability of ladies who have a natural talent for furnishing and decorating interiors of houses is that they are definitely visual and have a 3D brain. This often means that the lady in question is probably good at reading maps, is able to dimensionise a piece of furniture that fits exactly through a doorway, up a flight of stairs, or in a room as if she had measured all the angles, the width, the depth, the height before hand in minute detail.
Oh my goodness you might think then what are the other male brain traits that the lady has? Maybe she is good at numbers, good at visioning, more confident than most ladies, good at things like making decisions or leading others, able to take control of a situation, courage to go out their own in business or travel alone, etc.
The fascinating thing is that ladies with these traits are often taller than average, present themselves well and are attractive. The challenge with this is that other women are often jealous of their looks, their appearance, their confidence and their decision making ability. This often begs the question does the lady occasionally have trouble with other ladies but does not know why. Once all the above is explained .. two plus two equals four… she will understand.
On the other side of the coin, ladies with male brain traits often seem to get on really well with men due to confidence, decision making ability and leadership behaviours, forgetting about the gender attraction for the time being. These types of ladies just seem to be more relaxed and happier in the company of men than with women.
The situation then is that the other female gender attributes come into play like softness, empathy, listening, support and nurturing, which when overlaid with their male brain traits results in an extremely powerful combination. This rare combination is often found in ladies who get to the top in business because they have discovered their core behavioural gift of the dual gender brain. The potential drawback of all this is that sometimes under stress the toughness caused by the male side can bring about an overkill by the lady concerned as she is too soft, too glamorous, too sexy that over compensates and therefore is seen as overkill.
Sometimes one can see flirtatious behaviour of attractive women, aided by the fact that they are able to do numbers, read map, make decisions and be tough. This has the effect of creating huge jealousies in other women, due to their success with men. The women who are able to read these signals and are able to curb these excesses, use their softness to help other women make decisions or help them with numbers. Therefore the lady with the dual brain, who has some training and knowledge of Emotional Intelligence as well, is a formidable adversary for any man or woman, especially in business. If there is one lesson to be learnt is be aware of the dual gender brain and look out for the tell tale behaviours.
©William Barron
Coaching Insight
July 6th 2008
First 1 Last