I have a client—let’s call her Sue—who was locked in battle
with a formidable but conquerable opponent: medical bills. The problem was that
Sue was never one to get behind on bills, and when her son broke his arm, she
paid a lot of the bills in full (yikes!) at the expense of her mortgage, on
which she then fell quickly behind. Luckily, she had a steady income, so it was
a comfort to know that her problem had a simple (if stressful) solution. She
just needed to cut back, track her spending, and weather this storm with
patience and planning. In a few months, Sue could be back on track and ready to
start saving. But after the first meeting, I wasn't so convinced that she had
the drive to do it.
I’m sure that “steady income” alone has made some of you
jealous. In my experience with clients, this is often the deciding factor in
whether or not a coach will be able to help a client make progress. So to hear
that Sue had a steady income was exciting for me, because I consider myself a
problem solver. I like to experience new challenges and unfamiliar territories,
because that’s what fuels my curiosity in life.
Unfortunately, that curiosity comes with a curse: the Curse
of the Shiny Object (AKA a short attention span). When a problem pops up, I
want to solve it—right here and now, before it floats away on the breeze. So
when it comes to coaching, I run into problems with my patience and focus.
That’s not to say that I’m a bad listener. I always work to hear my clients
out, empathize, and find myself asking good, leading questions (after all, I've
been through training over a dozen times by now). Where I run into problems is
in taking all the information they've given me, and narrowing down my focus
onto a few manageable pieces. When we touched upon the idea of a budget, I
started a budget. While working on the budget, we ran into student loan
payments, and I switched gears into debt prioritization. When we entered her
interest rates, I suddenly wanted to know what her credit situation looked
like. Sue tuned out, and for good reason. I had the skills to lead her to
water, but when I didn't slow down to prioritize and focus, she assumed that
she needed to drink the whole lake.
When we met for her next appointment, she was quick to let
me know that she “didn't do any of that stuff we talked about last time.” I
asked why, and she told me what I should have known: “There was just too much
to look at.” Since she was kind enough to identify where we went wrong, it was
easy to correct it, and in that second meeting we made an emergency budget to
get her through to the next meeting, for which she’d be bringing bills and a
list of her debts. I realized quickly that Sue was a very driven woman, but she
needed someone to help her map out a plan and hold her accountable. I needed to
be her focus, so that she could worry about doing the work.
I know it sounds so basic, but it really dawned on me that
in the hour we meet with our client, we are seeing just a brief glimpse of what
composes their life. While it might seem like they’re presenting us a dozen
different problems, that doesn't mean we need to solve them all at once. As
with habit-change, even the most basic tasks take time and effort to
accomplish. As a coach, it’s my job to make the process as simple and logical
as possible. I’m now happy to report that Sue is nearly caught up on her
mortgage, and is still waiting on a large tax refund. I’m also happy to report
that the tax refund is the only item on our agenda for the next meeting, as we
allocate it one account at a time.
