At the end of 2022, I ripped my rotator cuff on Christmas Eve. Apparently too many improper chaturangas in yoga. A chaturanga begins with you in a plank position on your yoga mat then lowering yourself to the ground using your upper body strength.
Apparently I wasn’t doing it quite right for many months; therefore, injuring myself.
Now, I didn’t know anything was wrong until I got into bed on Christmas Eve. I couldn’t quite get comfortable as my shoulder began to throb. I had no range of motion unable to reach upward to turn off my bedside lamp. No biggie… I am sure this will resolve itself, I thought.
It didn’t.
The pain intensified as the next couple of days wore on between Christmas and New Years. (Not the best time to get an injury when everyone is basking in their sugar coma while trying to catch a few days of vacation.) As the pain increased, I held my arm tight to my body like a chicken wing to protect it popping Advil and applying hot packs. Nothing helped.
I had no choice, but to seek help to resolve this.
Someone suggested I see a physiotherapist. I thought physiotherapists were reserved for people in car wrecks or special mobility issues. I had no idea they could help with every day injuries. I felt silly going to a physiotherapist for a yoga injury.
Yet, the pain was too great to ignore.
At my first appointment, I expressed my reserve about coming to a physiotherapist. In a bantering moment she joked, “What do you think you have? An injury is an injury, doesn’t matter how you got it.”
Boy! Was I happy I made that appointment. After one appointment, I felt confident that this was going to work. After beginning my assigned exercises, the pain subsided. I was on the road to recovery and so quickly! I was so relieved.
Now I looked like the silly one, keeping myself in pain for no reason.
So, why are we so resistant to get help?
First, we often have limiting beliefs around asking for help.
We think it won’t work.
We don’t know it’s fixable.
We are afraid to admit we need help.
We think getting help is weak.
We think it will resolve itself.
We don’t know where to get help.
We don’t want to spend money on something that might not work.
These are the same beliefs people have around leadership help. You know you could use some help, but not sure what steps to take.
Here are 5 ideas you should know about getting help, especially, with leadership:
Problems that aren’t addressed get bigger
Leadership problems don’t just come out of nowhere. They are usually festering for awhile. Just like my rotator cuff, I could feel a weakness in my shoulder for a very long time. I just thought it would resolve. It didn’t. Eventually it got to a breaking point. Think about if you've ever tried to break a credit card in two pieces. It doesn't break easily. You have to bend it back and forth until it breaks. That’s what my should did. That’s what happens with leadership. It bends and eventually it breaks. Address the issue long before it becomes something bigger and more immediate.
Problems don’t just resolve themselves.
Leadership issues don’t resolve themselves without some out sort of intervention because it usually involves the transformation of a leader. We all get stagnant. We all have blindspots. How do you know if you are doing your best? What are you learning about leadership? Coaching goes a long way to help build confident leaders. It raises a leader’s self-awareness and equips them with new skills.
It’s not silly to get help.
Leadership problems can be real, they can be painful and they will intensify if we don’t address them. Address the gaps.
Feel like a million dollars.
Just as I felt amazing after my first physio appointment, my clients walk away feeling confident after just one leadership session because all their fears about what leadership coaching is melts away. Thought partnership is powerful. One of the top comments I receive when people engage me as a Coach is I feel good or I feel confident. They feel like they can walk away and try a new approach.
You will get results dependent upon your effort
You will get results. How much is up to you. When the physiotherapist assigned me my exercise sheet, I thought she told me to perform the 3 different exercises three times a day. What she actually meant was 3 exercises once a day. In our conversation, the number 3 was thrown around a lot, so it got confusing. Long story short,I tripled what I was supposed to do. Guess what happened? I got really fast results. At my follow up appointment, I had incredible range of motion, way sooner than expected. She thought I was a rockstar. I just misunderstood.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting to get a different result. That is the power of the coaching process, you will get a different result because you're going to try something different that week based on the conversation we had about what you're looking to achieve.
Need some leadership intervention? We should talk.
If you or your team are interested in building your leadership toolkit, we should definitely chat. Let’s see if there is something we can do together to help your leaders become more effective.
Coaching Question: What holds you back from getting help?
Want to start your week off inspired?
Receive weekly leadership letters from me with messages like this of thought leadership, practical tips & coaching. Sign up for Coach In Your Inbox to get access. You will automatically get your leadership freebie when you sign up.
Comments