Consider the cost of losing your patience with your team, peers, customers and family. What if you never lose what you need most in sales & management? How would this impact your performance, attitude, stress and relationships? Here’s the secret to finding eternal patience, peace, and how you can double your team’s productivity.
Where Did I Lose My Patience?
Are you a patient communicator? Do you shift from coaching to telling and become FRUSTRATED when the person isn’t “getting it” fast enough, especially when you already know the answer? When you’re not getting your way in a conversation, do you shift from collaboration to interrogation, steamrolling people with your agenda?
Patience builds trust, while impatience erodes it.
The Number One Trust-Killer
One of the core principles of coaching is respecting each person’s individuality. If you’re detached from your agenda, and care enough to respect each person’s individuality, strengths, opinions, communication style, skills, goals, values, motivators, how they like to be managed, and their role, you will naturally become more patient. A natural by-product of letting go by making them and their agenda the priority.
However, if you’re coaching in your own image, or feel self-imposed or external pressure to get results fast, patience is lost, the shoulding begins, the directive manager emerges, and the erosion of trust follows in its wake.
Think about the last time became impatient. Now, ask yourself, why?
Patience is a Choice
Here are typical reactions I hear from managers why it’s so difficult to be patient due to the pressure to perform. The irony is, your impatience is creating the very barriers to greater performance, coaching, collaborating and trust! See if any of these apply.
- I already know the answer.
- I don’t have time to ask questions.
- They’re not getting it.
- They told me they don’t know what to do.
- They should know this.
Here’s what managers don’t share until I dig deeper for the truth. Or, how they feel and their assumptions of the truth.
- If I ask a question, I lose control.
- What if I don’t know the answer?
- What if this conversation drags on?
- What if we don’t arrive at the right solution?
- What if I’m not a good coach?
- What if I lose credibility?
- I’m their boss. Just do your job.
This is attitude breeds impatience!
Acceptance is the opposite of judgment. Judgment causes the demolition of patience. Therefore, acceptance is the gateway to eternal patience.
Never Lose Your Patience Again
Your patience is in your thinking. Patience doesn’t require an external shift but an internal one.
In every conversation, your approach and outcome are created by your beliefs and assumptions. Here are the two that apply to this conversation.
- I already know.
- I don’t know.
Let’s ride these statements through to their conclusions. Notice the experience the manager creates by holding on to the belief, “I already know.”
- I already know ➔
- I’m not curious. I know the answers. ➔
- I’m no longer listening. ➔
- I’m living in the future expectation, not in the present. ➔
- I’ll ask some questions but assume most facts. ➔
- They’re not getting it.➔
- I’m busy. ➔
- I’ll stop asking questions and tell them what to do.➔
- Trust is lost. Coachee confidence is eroded. ➔
- Manager thinks they saved time and helped ➔
- Coachee felt unheard, disrespected and unappreciated. ➔
- Coaching and trust is tarnished. ➔
The Outcome: They leave frustrated from damaging conversation. Now let’s walk through the progression of this conversation when the manager thinks from a place of, “I don’t know.”
- I don’t know ➔
- I’m curious to find out. ➔
- Being curious causes me to be present. ➔
- If I’m in the moment I can be patient. ➔
- If I’m patient I can intentionally listen. ➔
- I’ll create relevant questions to gather facts vs. assumptions. ➔
- Trust and the value of coaching is strengthened. ➔
- Co-created something greater together. ➔
- They both leave empowered and inspired over a high-value conversation.
Beliefs always precede experience. What you believe is what you create.
Ego Free is the Place Leaders Need to Be
Get over yourself and get comfortable with thinking, “I don’t know,” rather than, “I already know.”
I do know fuels the assumptive, Chief Problem Solver role. I don’t know stimulates curiosity and questions. If you don’t know, you seek to understand. This creates trust, reciprocity, and better results.
The more present you are, the more patient you become.
Patience is reflected in your ability to be present.
Patience is a gift. Without it, trust, and your coaching and selling efforts are damaged and compromised. You can’t master the core competencies of a salesperson and coach, especially the ability to actively listen and be in the present moment.
When you let go of your self-serving agenda, you’ll notice you’ll naturally have more patience, enjoy the coaching process, and create the results you ultimately want.
The Tao of Eternal Patience
If you ever lose your patience again, being present is the GPS to find your patience. And the last time I checked, the present is where the magnificence of life happens, and where you honor your primary objective of a leader. To make your people more valuable.