It’s not all about you!

 By Dr Tim Williams

When the people we support are not making the progress we’d all like to see, the temptation is to worry that it’s something we have not done as a practitioner that is at fault.  We can sometimes even find ourselves blaming the person – “They’re just not committed/motivated/ready!”

Both these extremes are understandable but, for the most part, pretty unhelpful.

It's not all about you!

I have 3 children and several years ago, I was talking to my wife Alison about one of them and my eldest spoke up with “What about me?”  I responded, slightly irritated with, “Life’s not all about you!”, to which he responded “Well it should be!”  And I think we hold that, as practitioners, that it is our responsibility to get people to where they say, they want to be.  We are wired to sort and to solve and save and it takes a lot for us to shed these self-imposed and system-imposed burdens.

Get curious

Instead of feeling despondent or critical, let's instead get curious and take some time to reflect on what might be going on.  We can even do this with the person we are supporting and invite their thoughts into the mix.  This might feel like a courageous step as it is acknowledging that things are perhaps not going as well as we’d hoped…but it’s happening anyway, so let’s shine a light on the ‘elephant’ in the room!

It could go along the lines of:

“Would it be ok if I made an observation?” (Stop here if they say ‘No”)

“What I’ve noticed is….we don’t seem to be making progress with this….What do you think?”

You might be surprised to find out that their thinking has moved on quite a lot, even though their actions are yet to catch up.  Equally, you may both agree that coaching is perhaps not the right intervention, or there is something else going on – see below.

Two questions I have found helpful to reflect on are:

1.    In what way is this situation, not about me as a practitioner?

In other words, what else might be going on for this person, which means that they’re not able to make progress on this goal?  For example:

·      Other priorities, that have remained hidden, creating ambivalence.

·      Low activation (Confidence, Knowledge and Skills), where behaviour change goals are less useful

·      Low Motivation (Pre-Contemplator/Contemplator)

·      Lack of 'opportunity' to do the new thing – i.e. maybe super motivated and capable to do it, but opportunities are absent.

·      It’s simply the wrong goal/focus.

2.    In what way might this situation about me as a practitioner?

In other words, what might I need to reflect on, in order to support this person to make progress in their thinking or doing.  For example,

·      What could I do to increase their confidence, knowledge or skills in their area of focus?

·      How might we work on motivation?

·      What else am I not yet aware of, which could be getting in the way?

We know that there lots of reasons why people don’t change their thinking or behaviour, let’s not assume that is all about us.  And if it turns out that we can do something differently, we can, and that’s good too.