Brad[1] had come a very long way. He had bottomed out as a result of losing his senior leadership position with a large corporation, navigated through a difficult divorce, and depleted most of his hard earned resources. Through shear determination, persistence and hard work with the added support of executive coaching, he was able to replenish his burnt-through assets and reestablish himself in an even more successful and fulfilling career. Brad had developed the ability to powerfully connect with and truly accept himself. This also contributed dramatically to achieving the same with others in his life and in his new leadership role. He had discovered his true purpose in life and built the confidence required to address the challenges that would most certainly present themselves in the next phase of his personal and professional journey.

In one of our weekly executive coaching calls Brad exclaimed, “You know Bob, now that I’ve got my career back on track I’m ready to explore a relationship with someone special in my life and I’m not sure what the next steps are. Can we go there ?” The result was to work through clarifying what that special lady would be like when she showed up in his life. Having accomplished just this, Brad shared  “this was a great exercise to go through, but how and where do I find her?” We discussed this at length, and then I suggested, “What if you now put this on the backburner for the time being and get on with the life and career you’ve so capably created.” At first his response was incredulous, and asked “So why did I do all this work to just put it aside?” I instinctively responded, “Trust me my friend, that special lady will show up and tap you on the shoulder when you absolutely least expect it!” I simply trusted my intuition and blurted it out. Because of the deep relationship we had developed during our coaching relationship, he agreed and carried on with his caeer and other personal priorities. Guess what? Just as you would have expected, he literally bumped into her 3 months later at a social event. In one of our calls shortly thereafter he came on to one of our regular coaching calls completely energized, exuberant, over the moon, saying . . . . “She showed up and she’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Can you believe it?”

But! Isn’t there always a but involved? Three months or so into their relationship Brad showed up on a coaching call and was clearly not his normal upbeat self. With some delicate probing, he shared that “my girlfriend and I were discussing where they might go out for dinner the previous evening. I asked her where she wanted to go. She then asked me where I wanted to go. I said anywhere where you want to go. Then she blew up and dumped all over me, accusing me of not ever stating my own preferences.” He went on to say, “I’m not sure this is going to really work out (between us)!” This was toward the end of our call when I typically leave my clients with an inquiry—a powerful question—for them to explore and write their thoughts down to be shared at our next scheduled coaching meeting. For Brad the inquiry I left was “What’s in the fear my friend?” I simply trusted my intuition and again blurted it out. He found this question viscerally intriguing and agreed to work with it.

Our follow up meeting was amazing for both Brad and myself(I am constantly learning from my clients). I asked Brad, “So let’s visit the answer to the inquiry I left you.” He very calmly and confidently said that “The inquiry turned his life around.” Now I was taken aback and asked him to go on. Brad said, “Do you remember when we explored the concept of the ‘Three Yous’?”. I asked him to remind me. “Well,

1. The first you is the Spiritual You. It’s the real you. It’s my spirit engaged in a human experience through me.
2. The second you is the Adult You. It’s the person on the other end of this phone right now who is very capable of taking care of myself, my life and career, and those around me that I care and love.
3. The third you, is the Child You. It’s my little boy, Bradley, who agreed to so many things so long ago when I was growing up that are both helpful and not so helpful now as an adult, as a professional, as partner.”

He went on to explain that “My Child is constantly telling me that I should do this, I shouldn’t do that, I’m not tall enough, smart enough. My child can be at times anxious about the future, fearful about what is happening in the moment, sad at times, and sometimes even feeling a sense of shame. As a result the little boy in me can often get in the way of my making important changes in my life and work and tries to keep things the way they are. By the way, my Child also gets excited, is playful, as well as adventurous. The thing I’ve learned from my coaching is that only I can take care of him when he gets concerned. By going quickly inside myself when my Child is trying to take over and interfere, I’ve learned how to tell him what he most wants to hear. How much I love him that I’ll protect him, and that he doesn’t have to worry about me. I encourage him in these moments to leave things in my very capable adult hands and go play and enjoy himself while I take care of business. Doing this in my minds-eye within nano-seconds helps to quickly reduce much of my anxiousness and stress, and allows me to  powerfully move forward with the life or job challenge that I face in those moments. Yes, I now make a point of ensuring my Adult self manages my relationships and not my Child.”

“I got it” was my response, “But what has that to do with your current relationship?” Brad put it very eloquently by stating, “My Child had taken over my personal relationship with my girlfriend because he was afraid of being abandoned again!” He then declared, “As of this evening, I’m going to share with my girlfriend what I just discovered about myself and let her know that she will be dealing with my Adult from here on in!” Well the bottom line was that he did just that and they’ve now been happily married for a number of years. He has exceeded all the possibilities he created—personally and professionally!

I’ve found variations of the foregoing situation with other clients, particularly those leading and managing within organizations. These organizational relationships include bosses, peers, subordinates and others inside and outside the organization. It might explain in part why people sometimes derail in those organizational relationships and get into a very dangerous and slippery slope at work. These key relationships often end up deteriorating, and possibly, end in termination of their employment. Is this something you’ve observed? What’s been your experience? How has this shown up for you? Have you seen this phenomenon manifest itself in significant others around you? I would enjoy hearing what your feelings and thoughts are on the matter?