Measuring up

Over the years I have come to see a few patterns in human behavior around me that appear to be critical to team or organizational success. One such pattern is behavior that used to puzzle me: people who seem to have a lot going for them behaving in ways that appear counter-intuitive or even self-defeating. Curiosity led me to coaching and coaching led me to understanding.

After some 100 hours of coaching individuals, during which I have had the privilege learning about those things people usually don’t talk about I discovered one thing that stands out consistently among all others: people seem to be trying to measure up to standards which drives the no longer puzzling behavior.

Standards may be one’s own as we might see in a highly ambitious person who set challenging goals for him or herself. But such standards usually have a history. They are often unconsciously or consciously adopted from a parent, a spouse or a friend. Sometimes these are only imagined.

I am reading Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet and see a life determined by imagined standards of the protagonist’s childhood friend. I see presidential candidates (and presidents) driven by a need to prove something. I see children bully or withdraw, being loud or quiet to prove something to self or others. I see colleagues get into trouble because they blame others for their ‘not measuring up.’ I see supervisors unwittingly reinforce standards that ignite childhood feelings of inadequacy.

Entire lives are determined by this desire to measure up or avoid altogether measuring up. It drives people to be on a relentless chase to get to the top, to do risky things, to hurt others, to be disagreeable, to fight or do the opposite: to run or fall into depression, to avoid risks, to stay in low jobs, to please or appease.

There are interpretations and assumptions as well as limiting beliefs that often stem from our childhood and the dynamics that played out in our families. These determine whether we will advance or hold ourselves back. We bring old standards into our current life and project them onto others, usually authority figures, who become the new standard setters. In hierarchical structures, supervisors and managers often unwittingly become the screens on which we project these old standards.

We blame others for our stuckness when the sense of being stuck comes from within. The voice on our shoulder, the inner critic, tells us we are not good enough and that we should try harder or give up. Imagine if we could brush this creature off our shoulder, tell the inner critic to shut up; if we could set our own standards of success, redefining the ones others set for us, and then pursue them, unencumbered by someone whispering, ‘you can’t do this, you are not good enough!’

This is the joy of coaching, to help others discover that they are, always, ‘good enough.”