Stay longer. Move faster.
Find momentum in what seems to be holding you back.
Coaching and hands-on partnership for executives leading ambitious technology initiatives.
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When protecting momentum starts costing you progress.
We often think that challenging thoughts or emotions take something away from our drive forward. So we push them aside or defend against them when they arise.
But when we’re trying to make something important happen, this comes at a cost. Keeping them out takes energy. When we give them no place in the conversation, we can miss risks or concerns that need attention.
And our team and partners take their cue from us. The message can become: anything that might spoil the moment is not acceptable. Important feedback arrives late. People are more concerned about playing it safe. Progress takes more effort.
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Give it a place. Decide what it calls for.
When emotions can enter and reservations are voiced, you can work with what they mean for the initiative.
Sometimes you might call it an accepted risk. Sometimes you might take responsibility. Sometimes you might say, “Actually, let us figure that out.” Sometimes a concern needs attention somewhere else.
How you respond is formative. You help establish what matters, what people can expect, and what they can act on. You also set an example: difficult things can be acknowledged, and we can still move forward.
This is how staying with the difficult can help you move faster. Important ideas and concerns surface earlier. People can act on them sooner. You can adjust expectations, roles, resources, and ways of working while those adjustments are still straightforward—before misunderstandings become commitments and concerns become setbacks.
Don’t ask if the story is real. Ask what’s real in your story.
The last phase …
The way a difficult phase looks while we are living through it is often strikingly different from what later turns out to have mattered.
The last phase of a project at work. The argument with a partner around home duties. The dissatisfaction with how you spend your off-work time.
Those can be genuinely uncomfortable und difficult periods in our lifes. Ironically, if we look back at them later what eventually changed is often quite different from what we thought would make things better.
It is kind of funny, when we settle serious doubts about our how we spend our evenings by eventually re-reading an old favorite book.
But it has real consequences, when we have put a lot of pressure on ourselves and others to make something work we feel is necessary.
Relationships suffer. Resources are wasted. People burn out.
My work is around that gap in perception between “in a difficult phase” and “after a difficult phase”. Entering this gap has the potential to:
Change and make a difference every day by becoming clearer on what is now and find ways to move forward that create lasting progress
Avoid damages and risks to what is valuable by becoming less identified with the necessity of stories that keep us bound
Confidence without the need for perfection by accepting the your full experience and not getting attached to future outcomes you can’t control
Emotional - cognitive - presence coherence by reflecting and modulating your responses progressively