Coaches' Corner~Liked

For once in my life I have made a great decision.  As you know, I coach coaches to do a better job by systematizing their practice and learning more about their target market.  It is a good time to re-visit the three things that a coach brings to the table and they are an objective, outside opinion; an accountability partner and different results than achieved before.  And in that regard my coach excels and so will yours.  If you are a coach and you do not have a coach, get one right now today!

One of my maladies that has been brought to my attention is my desire to be liked.  This desire can get in the way of one’s effectiveness because the desire is so strong, that fear grips one if they are not liked.  If one is in fear, the client they are responsible for is the big loser for just like the president with a secret cannot effectively govern because he is worried that he will be found out, the coach in fear will not be effective because his motive is eliminating fear rather than helping his client.  This blog is about the growth I have achieved as a direct result of getting clear that much of my behavior in life resulted from my fear of being uncomfortable in a pathological way.

I attend a well-known church with a pastor who is known for his controlling style of governing and an ability to strike fear in the heart of whoever his volunteers is at the moment.  During the orientation to my new position as deacon, he said that customer satisfaction is key and that we ought to risk his ire in the hopes to satisfy the customer and if we got yelled at, then we got yelled at.  I received this admonishment with my usual cavalier-looking demeanor but I must say I was shaking in my boots.  I love taking care of the customer because that makes them like me and say nice things about me and keep me out of fear.  But I only like it is long as it is not uncomfortable.  That was before tonight.

It was my second time serving communion and the routine had not yet become second nature to me.  But things were working out quite fine which was different from the first time.  I felt empowered and was glad to meet the needs of the congregation as well as the pastor without difficulty.  I was standing in line after marching in with all the other deacons like we were soldiers of some kind all in order of our height.  I was singing away after passing out the juice and crackers to the folks in attendance.  For the benefit of those not familiar with the ritual, communion is symbolizing our identification with Christ and the idea is the juice signifies his shed blood for our redemption and the crackers symbolized the bread Jesus broke during the Last Supper.  Jesus knew he was going to die and was bonding with his disciples and uttered these words, “As often as you do this, think of me when you do it.”  So this was a very, very solemn moment.  As part of the ritual, the pastor asks for people who wanted to take communion but did not receive it to raise their hand.  All of those who wanted to receive it were served and we were singing away with the rest of the church.  The trainer that night had done a great job of equipping me for what needed to be done and all was well.  That was when it happened. 

Now I had always given the impression that I knew what I was doing no matter what I was doing or where I was doing it.  I was always the guy in a department store that people walked up to and asked for help.  If I was in the state capital, I was always mistaken for a senator and if I was in a hospital, they always addressed me as Dr. So and So.  The deacon to my right gets a pass in this case because he tapped me on the shoulder during this solemn moment to tell me that someone needed some juice who wanted to take communion but didn’t have any.  I hesitated because I didn’t want to get yelled at.  Everyone was in the mood so to speak and why was I just being told this right now?  Quickly I revisited the orientation moment when the pastor said to err on the side of the customer and this was a customer needing help.  I could have ignored the customer and the deacon who told me about the problem or I could tell the deacon to my left and see what he would do.  I had said to more than one person that fear of the pastor is not sufficient to leave a customer wanting and now I was gripped with fear.  I would have to travel the entire twelve feet toward the pastor in front of the whole church to tell him that someone had messed up?  I could have been yelled at or worse been embarrassed by the pastor or even broken the mood of the moment.  I weighed all that against the person not receiving communion and reasoned that I had to do something…and do it quickly.  I left the line of men and moved toward one of the pastor’s assistants and delivered the message that someone needed help.  Much to my surprise, the assistant told the pastor and the congregant was taken care of.  I was ecstatic that I had made the right decision and avoided getting yelled at too.  The assistant looked as if she was relieved also and a crisis was averted.

Without the growth experienced by having sessions with my coach who resonates with me, I am sure that could have been a fiasco.  I cannot wait to tell him this story.  Telling me that I depended too much on being liked was probably hard for my coach but had he not told me that I could have simply froze and damned the congregant to hell or worse.  Your clients have similar situations and many of them want to be liked but they are not present to the destructive nature of allowing the desire to be liked to decrease their efficiency.  Maybe you are a coach who wants to be liked as well and are not doing your best work.  We all want to be liked but we must balance that with meeting the needs of the people we are tasked to serve.  Getting over ourselves and our desire to be liked is a critical part of growth that leads us to becoming extraordinary.