“She does good work, but no one ever sees it.”
That’s what her boss wrote me about Katrina when he arranged her coaching program with me.
I liked Katrina the moment I met her. But I could see where and why she was having trouble.
She is crazy intelligent and very serious. When she concentrates intently, she frowns. She concentrates and frowns at you a lot. If you don’t know she’s simply concentrating, she looks pretty unhappy.
She is also timid about expressing her ideas. When she finally gets going, it’s just too many words, and too much detail. You simply get lost. You can see she’s really smart, but you have no idea what she just said. You nod politely until she finishes.
When Katrina is challenged, she goes quiet and melts into the background. That’s not a good thing given that she lives in a challenging high-tech world.
Yet, Katrina was very eager to learn. She had read lots of books, but they hadn’t helped. She was really looking forward to working with a real coach.
I coached Katrina on three things:
How to create “key messages”. Key messages are concise. They enable you to say a lot in a few words. Your statements become distilled essence. Most importantly, they’re easy to grasp, easy to remember, easy to communicate. Only when you create all three of these with your ideas, do you get word-of-mouth, which is what you need for people to pass your ideas along to others. It’s what you need to win hearts and minds.
I coached her on how she shows up on camera. No more frowning timid mouse. She is now beautiful, radiant and charismatic. It all comes from within, but she looks like she had a makeover.
Katrina is also now warm and welcoming to challenges. She treats them as opportunities to create deeper understanding. No more running away. She runs to meet them. They melt in her presence.
Katrina took all her crazy smart intelligence and applied it to mastering what I taught her. She made fast progress. Results were immediate.
As Katrina applied what she was learning to her meetings and presentations, increasingly she was asked to present to higher and higher levels within the organization. To her boss’ team. Then his boss. Then his boss. She was called to attend critical meetings and make high stakes, high visibility presentations. It was quite heady.
We wrapped up our coaching program as I tracked her ascending successes and enjoyed her new confidence. We stayed in touch because we’ve grown quite fond of each other, and we like to talk.
Yesterday, I received an email from her. The Executive Vice President, who is so high above Katrina you would have to take an express elevator to get there, has requested that Katrina head up a new team. Katrina will be the Executive Vice President’s single point of contact, the project will have senior leadership visibility and it has, in her words, “the potential to be a complete game changer for the organization”.
Katrina has skipped so many levels in rank between her and the Executive VP to whom she’ll be reporting on this project, it almost surpasses belief.
She not only has visibility, Katrina has credibility. She’s also been given a rare opportunity to spread her wings and fly with freedom to create a team, a project and results that will showcase all of her talents. She’s walking on air.
If I had told Katrina that this would happen in our first coaching session, she would have thought I had lost my mind. If I had said, “You will be reporting directly to the EVP on a dream assignment with extremely high visibility with the senior leadership team and all the freedom to create you could ever want,” Katrina would have sent me off as delusional.
I didn’t know this exact thing would happen. But I wasn’t surprised. I knew it was going to be major. And I knew it was going to be good.
Most people keep their dreams small because they’re afraid of failing. They’re playing the game not to lose, instead of really playing to win.
What I know is that communication makes it all happen. Causative Communication. Communication that enables you to communicate so well, your intentions become reality. You can completely transform the world you live in when you master this level of communication.
Whatever you dream, that is what I wish for you.
What IS your dream?
It can come true.
Be the cause!