Four Ways to Shift Your Thinking & Your Conversation
When you feel boxed in, these ideas can help you find a little elbow room in your thinking
Sara Beth left a job she liked for an opportunity to work for her dream boss, someone she admired as a leader, at a new organization. Then, a few months in, the organization restructured and she found herself under the leadership of a VP she’d never met before.
Sure, she was grateful to still have a job. But also … she was frustrated and a little sad. She’d made a brave move to a new organization, and now her reason for doing so was gone. Sara Beth felt stuck.
That relatable feeling of being stuck
I know Sara Beth isn’t the only one feeling that way. I’ve done a dozen podcast interviews in the last two months (see here for a 3-minute clip from a recent one), and almost every interviewer asks some version of this question: What tips or tricks can you offer to help us get unstuck?
Maybe you can relate to the feeling of being stuck. Do any of these fit?
I am stuck in these circumstances; there aren’t a lot of options.
Our metrics are stuck: we’re not seeing the growth we need.
This meeting is stuck—we aren’t making progress.
My thinking is stuck—I need some fresh ideas.
I am stuck in my career, or a job I don’t love.
I wish I had a magic fix for you. But of course, the true answer of how to get unstuck is, “that depends.”
However, podcast hosts don’t love two word answers, and neither do my coaching clients. So I’ve learned to ask questions that help folks get their thinking and their conversations unstuck.
Specifically, I’ve learned to ask questions that help people shift perspective.
Getting on the balcony: Questions for shifting perspectives
Things look different when you change where you stand. Adaptive leadership offers the advice that leaders should “get on the balcony” regularly. Why? Because from the ground floor, a scene may look and feel frenetic. But climb up a level or two and you can see the broader picture. Maybe you can find the pattern in the movement, or see the obstacles ahead.
Getting on the balcony gives us an opportunity to shift perspectives. In conversation or in meetings, questions that shift perspective are useful for getting us unstuck from our unhelpful ways of thinking or conversational cul-de-sacs.
And here we get to the “tips and tricks” those podcasters hope for. Because you can keep in your back pocket a series of questions that help you shift perspective in conversations. Pick the question or questions that are right for your context, adapt them to fit your circumstance, and then see how the conversation gets flowing again.
There are five types of shifts I often employ in conversations where someone feels stuck:
From what you can’t control to what you can control
From short-term to long-term (and vice versa)
From systems to individuals (and vice versa)
From judge to learner
Of course you have to adapt these types of shifts to the context you’re experiencing. So when Sara Beth felt stuck with a change of leadership she didn’t want, I might have asked a question like, “You can’t control that, but what could you control here?”
In answering that, she might have found she was able to negotiate how the move occurred, making sure she kept responsibility for a favorite project about which the new VP was unaware. Or that even if the old boss was no longer her supervisor, she could ask for a mentorship relationship. Or to meet for coffee once a quarter, to maintain their relationship.
Sara Beth could use the other types of shifts here too, to get her thinking unstuck:
From short-term to long-term—If a year from now, things were going really well with the new VP, what would that look like? What should I do today to make that happen?
From judge to learner—Instead of judging this situation as unfortunate, how might it be lucky? What could I learn from the new supervisor? What could I learn about myself?
From individual to system—I’ve been thinking about this as an individual, but I’m part of a system. How might this shift make my work more visible in the system? How might I better meet our mission?
Test drive the four shifts
It’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to avoid the feeling of being stuck. But you don’t have to stay that way. These four shifts are great “tips and tricks” to keep in your back pocket for getting your thinking or your conversation unstuck.
For more on getting unstuck, see this post that offers a different formula—what does X look like from the perspective of Y?
BONUS QUESTION
My grandmother recently told me a story about my mom, when she was a child. The backyard of their family house ran into the backyard of my great-grandparents’ home, so as a little girl my mother was often called upon to run items between the two houses.
One rainy day, she was asked to bring a slice of pumpkin pie to her grandparents. She took off across the backyard but quickly found herself stuck in a muddy patch. Unthwarted, she bent down, lifted the heel of a boot with her hand, and unstuck herself. The pie slice slid off the plate in the process, but no bother—she picked it out of the mud, popped it on the plate, and continued across the yard.
With the strong constitution of Midwesterners born in the 1800s, my great-grandparents ate the pie anyway.
How have you gotten yourself unstuck? What was dropped in the process?
And, would you eat the pie?
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio