Can you help me? Four words we should say more often.
Three years ago, I took a deliberate turn onto a side ride from the career superhighway. It felt like a big move at the time, I did not know where the new road would lead but I was willing to give it a go. My safety net was that I could always find an on ramp back to the highway if I needed or wanted to. I find that thinking about your safety nets are helpful to encourage a more courageous step.
Here we are 3 years later, and I have not needed or wanted to find that on ramp. Why? Because I am loving the journey that is the side road. It started as an exciting adventure, morphed into spinning wheels, some circle work and finally a path emerged.
One of the challenges I faced was that I had spent the previous 20 years forming teams of people with complementary skills and trying to provide environments for individuals and the collective to do their best work individually and collectively. I was accustomed to having experts on tap, from IT, marketing, finance, data analytics to sport science and sport medicine. Plug into an expert and play! And my new world, well was just me. I needed to revert to the beginning of my career working in women’s sport where it was all about being a Jill of all trades and finding ways to get stuff done on small budgets with very few people.
I had less structure. No executive team, annual schedules, or board meetings to create a rhythm of work. The realisation came quickly that I needed to scaffold my day, week, month, and quarter to help me prioritise and focus on what was important. Be clear on what I was aiming to do.
It was a different sort of courage required. My mum used to tell a story that she was occupied one day being CFO (Chief Family Operator) of four young children and the postie knocked on the door and calmly told her that “your little one, Belinda, she’s on the garage roof.” This was not unusual. I was well known for climbing skills and equally known for not being able to get down. My older brother was the one that came up and stepped me through the exit plan. It was a similar position I found myself in…. I have got myself up here with a set of skills refined inside an organisation, but here I am on my own and do not know how to get down. By now, my brother had better things to do!
So, what should I do? The wisdom came from close to home when my partner during general conversation one day said, “you had a coach when you played sport, why don’t you get a coach to help you now.?” It is often a simple comment from someone not neck deep in the problem that hits like a bolt of lightning. An obvious step that I could not see because I was busy climbing.
I explained the situation to me great friend Michelle Loader (Future Leadership) and asked her for advice. Without hesitation, Michelle pulled on her network and suggested a coach who expertly helped me find my way from where I was, to where I wanted to go. It took me a little while to wrestle with her questions but wrestle I did. I will be forever grateful for asking the question “Can you help me?” and even more grateful for the talents and generosity of Michaela Healey (Magokoropractice) for helping me find my path. I was right, the side road was the one I was after and I haven’t looked back