Shooting yourself in the basket
She added: “I always feel as if I’m a few bad decisions away from being exposed as a fraud.”
A client requested my services because she was told she needed to learn how to “get out of my way.” Though successful by everyone else’s standards, her 360 Assessment from her colleagues told her that her negative perception of herself was keeping her from achieving her potential. Worse, some of the feedback she’d gotten that really “stung” was that it appeared as if she was really unhappy. This devastated the client, because she said “I’ve always thought I was a happy person.”
She was very smart and had a clear grasp on how to make the people on her teams look great. And, as long as her work wasn’t challenged (and it often wasn’t), it too was top-shelf. However, when something she’d done was questioned - or even simply asked to be clarified - she felt “seen.” She said, “first it starts with the sweating. Then my mouth gets dry, and I feel like I forget to breathe.”
She added: “I always feel as if I’m a few bad decisions away from being exposed as a fraud.” She said that she makes mistakes “in bunches, because when I’m challenged, I feel like I’m basically being told I’m a screw up.” Then she makes a mistake and she becomes so fixated on the error, “I take my eye off the ball and make another one, then another one.” She said at that point, she shuts down, sure she’s going to get written up and then fired. Yet, in the 12 years she’s been with this company, and the 18 years she’s been in the industry, she’s never been written up.
We got on the basketball court. After the five-minute preamble about how bad of an athlete she was, and how she was always the last one picked in elementary school, I asked her if there was anything else I needed to know about her incompetency, because I felt like I pretty well understood. She smiled and was willing to get to work. I told her that this openness was going to save her.
I showed her the proper way to shoot a basketball, keeping her elbow close to her rib cage, extending her arm and following through with her wrist pointing directly at her target. She got it quickly, not surprisingly.
“But the ball’s not going in the basket!” she said, disappointingly.
“But the ball’s not going in the basket!” she said, disappointingly.
“I never told you to shoot the ball in the basket,” I said. She looked at me like I was from a planet only coaches come from.
“I never told you to shoot the ball in the basket,” I said. She looked at me like I was from a planet only coaches come from. I told her I wanted her to try to shoot the ball as close to the basket without making it as she could. If she made it, that was actually not good, but the closer to making it the better. It removed the pressure and we celebrated her misses. She was nailing the exercise and her confidence was increasing palpably.
I then asked her if she wanted to try making 20% of her baskets. She’d have 20 tries, so she’d need to make four. I told her to try to fulfill her 20% as soon as she could. She not only made four out of her first five shots. She went on to make 12 out of those 20, or 60%, surpassing her goal by three times. On the last shot, which she swished, there were tears in her eyes.
Even though I knew the answer, I asked her why she was crying. “Because I’m better than I think I am.” I asked her to repeat that every day, three times a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night. She now plays in a co-ed basketball league and emailed me after her first game. “I celebrated my near misses, and talked to myself during the game. It was really fun to learn what I could do to get better. After her third game I got another email. “Guess who scored a basket? Guess who scored a basket? Guess who scored a basket!!!”
Her most recent 360s have been glowing.
This is why I love what I do.