I’ve got a riddle for you.
What is scary, quick, empowering, easier than you think and can result in making $15,000 in under 10 minutes?
I just came back from lunch with a client of mine who literally changed his life this December with one conversation.
The crescendo of our work in 2018 ended in taking a few sessions to prepare for a conversation with his boss about what is and is not working for him in his current role.
Let me lay out the scenario.
My client is 29 years old, highly skilled in many of the technical aspects and project management for tech startups. He has spent the last 5 years moving from company to company and role to role purposefully to acquire the skills to manage projects at a high level and ultimately to be diversified enough in skill sets that he can start his own company doing what he loves.
He was recruited to his current role about 15 months prior to this conversation. In the past 6 months he finds himself overworked, under utilized, under appreciated and frankly not growing at the rate that he’d like professionally. He gets paid well and loves that but values his well being and career growth over the income. His professional love languages are growth and purpose.
He’d been thinking it was time to change a lot in life, go out on his own, start consulting while he prepared to launch his own tech startup. He’d been setting up life to do just that for about 2 years. Through our work he was finally ready to speak his truth to his company’s ownership about his desires to transition out of the company.
We both knew this was a potentially life changing Courageous Conversation.We worked through his desires, values, challenges, perceived obstacles and of course…his fears.
His story was that his direct manager wouldn’t get it, wouldn’t care and would smile and agree while looking for his replacement.
My challenge to him was to first see his direct manager as a human and not just a cog in the machine of capitalism. Then my second challenge was to learn to approach the conversation with a belief that there was potential to bring even more value to his company during a transition. We worked on the language, the energy, the intentions and I held his feet to the fire for scheduling the conversation.
The result…
A few weeks later he has a new perspective. A new pathway towards his future career goals and a $15,000 bonus if he stays through the end of the year.
And within weeks the company has restructured his role, given him less work to take home at night and on weekends and started to implement more of his ideas for streamlined employee on boarding, communication and workflow.
This shift has enabled him to find joy in his work again, work a 40 hour work week, feel he is being appreciated and utilized and has given him a lot more time, energy and money to move forward with his long term vision of creating his own business and the life that he really wants.
Consistently, when I help my clients step into these challenging conversations…it goes their way and often better. The original desired outcomes is overshadowed by the new options in front of them. They not only make more money, have more sex, communicate better with loved ones and create more time for rest and relaxation, but they feel a sense of calm and confidence that they had never experienced before.
Courageous Conversations are life changing. What’s the conversation that you’ve been avoiding? On the other side of that conversation is what you think you want…or a much better outcomes.
If you want to find out more about how a simple service can help you create these kinds of conversations in your life, click here.