She was so busy trying to fix her colleague, she forgot she has her own whole-a$$ job to do.

She was so busy trying to fix her colleague, she forgot she has her own whole-a$$ job to do.

A client came to me frustrated with a colleague who was "getting in the way."

They're both leaders. Both critical to the company's success.
And my client felt stuck.

"They keep saying they can’t give me these basic things," she told me.
"This should be so simple, and they’re making my job impossible." 😡

She was focused on tactics: How do I get them to prioritize what I want? How do I get them to change their approach, the way they work? How do I get them to do it “right”?

Sound familiar?

*Of course* it’s frustrating when collaboration doesn’t flow smoothly.
The tricky part is, that frustration can easily suck us down the rabbit hole of trying to fix how a colleague works, what they prioritize, or how they think.

This is a trap.

I offered her a gentle nudge: You have a whole job to do. A big job. Do you want to spend your valuable time, energy, and expertise figuring out how someone else should do their job?

Uhhh… no?

Exactly.

So what did she do instead?

A simple question, starting with the company’s North Star for the quarter.
"We're both responsible for [North Star]. I am confident we can do it. Can we work together to figure out how we hit our goal?"

The results: an actual productive conversation. 🤩

Did it change everything overnight? Of course not. 😂
It did start a new chapter to their relationship - one based on collaboration.

She didn’t need to do their job. She just needed to get them on the same side of the table to say: "We're solving this problem together."

Tell me you've also gotten stuck trying to change how someone else does their job. (We've all been there, right?) 😬

Image: grumpy Clint Eastwood with the text “There’s two ways of thinking! My way and the wrong way!”