“Sir, will you be in your office this morning? Apologies for the short notice, I was hoping to meet with you if you have some time. Thank you.”

I got this Viber message from one of our Gen-Z management trainees. Matt (not his real name) had graduated from our program and now enjoys the rank of production supervisor.

I sensed something serious and texted back “Sure. Come over.”

He showed up overwhelmed, frustrated and worried. A colleague (let’s call her Julie) was leaving the organization and their boss wanted Matt to take over Julie’s work until her replacement is hired. That meant a thorough turn-over from Julie to Matt.

Except that Julie filed to use her remaining unused leaves prior to her last official day, leaving Matt only two days for the turnover. That’s hardly enough to learn Julie’s multiple tasks, let alone master them so there won’t be any disruption.

I asked Matt, “What are your options?”

Matt gave three options but it boiled down to “Sir, what can I do? I only have two days!”

I detected a self-limiting belief. So I asked “What are your limitations?”

He responded with a puzzled look, but after a lot of looking at the ceiling (sign of thinking), he realized he was assuming there’s nothing he can do about Julie’s leave.

“Aha” I said, “so now what can you do?”

It took a while, but Matt decided he can talk to his boss and overrule Julie’s leave until she had properly turned over everything to Matt.

“Now,” I pressed on, “what if Julie protests. What can you do?”

It took Matt more gazing at the ceiling, then he exclaimed with a huge grin, “Clearance!!!” The game plan is for Matt to ask his boss to talk to Julie, ask her not to push through with her leave, and involve HR to send the message: no turnover to Matt, no clearance.

“So, Matt,” I asked, “what is your key take-away?”

Matt replied, “I should have no assumptions.”

I put down my coaching hat and said, “Actually, everyone has assumptions. It is to identify them, then challenge them. You were assuming that Julie’s timeline is inflexible, thereby putting you in a tough spot. Once you broke free from that self-imposed limitation, you came up with the clearance strategy.”

Lessons:

1. One of the coach’s jobs is to evoke the coachee’s awareness of self-imposed limitations.

2. If the coach can sense what those limitations are, it is better to let the coachee discover them, even though it will take him a long time to “get it”. Resist the temptation to jump in, play the rescuer, and spoon him the answer. Keep the sacred space. Respect the silence.

3. Once the limitations are exposed and challenged, a specific way-forward can be created. The coach can facilitate by asking “what if” questions.

I asked Matt one more question. “What are you feeling now?”
He smiled a bit sheepishly and said, “I have clarity.”

And clarity is what we coaches are here for.