WHAT THE THERAPIST SAID.
View from Cameron House in Alexandria, Scotland during a leadership workshop for Ipsen.
People often bring their second worst problem to therapy.
It’s not that they intentionally hide the more problematic of their problems, more that they are subconsciously - or actively - running away from it. The easier of the problems is the one we tend to focus on in a sometimes desperate attempt to reach a place and feeling of resolution and achievement.
It’s why so many of us stick around for so long in problematic, or indeed toxic, relationships and why we put up with the at work. It’s just easier to address the smaller, more achievable problems than it is to face the scary ones.
I thought a lot on this notion that a therapist’s job is partly to help uncover and deal with the real issue without being too distracted by the one presented. It struck me that this is exactly the situation I find myself in with clients who I work with in an advisory capacity. They present me with a problem such as: “we want our people to behave in this way; how do we get them to do that?”, or: “our people are doing this, but we’d like them to do that; how do we help them?”, or sometimes even: “things aren’t right in our leadership team/culture/process; how do we fix them?”.
The heart of these issues is not where the company focus normally is. So often it’s an issue with culture, or values, or trust, or even leadership focus, for example. The second worst problem is the one brought to me, but which helps sign post where the primary problem is.
I’m back in England this week working separately with global bank HSBC, two of my coaching clients, and global consumer brand giant P&G. Each of them present a different challenge, or focus, and yet they all have people at the heart of the issues they face.
The issue isn’t separate to the individual, in the same way complaining about being “stuck in traffic” isn’t an accurate acceptance of the real problem: we aren’t stuck in traffic, we are the traffic.
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