By Jantine Wijtsma
Julia was a financial administrative assistant, who wasn’t able to deal with stress at work. In her team, one manager came after the other, and the team was not really efficient any more. There was a lot of miscommunication. According to Julia, she was the only one who still cared about the clients.
In the meantime, the number of clients increased spectacularly. The firm helped people in debt and the number of clients was growing enormously due to the recession. The team experienced a lot of stress. As is often the case however, the management team didn’t take action until Julia was almost burned out.
When I coached Julia with MindSonar, her scores were high on “away from” and “mismatching”, and her main Graves’ category was “safety”. We analyzed the scores. Julia recognized her need for safety. Safety that had disappeared after one of the managers had left the team.
In addition, she couldn’t stop worrying about how to avoid (team)problems, clients that didn’t respond the way she expected, colleagues that didn’t meet her expectations in busy times, and so on and so forth. She kept on going over these unrelated subjects.
I often use the “miracle question” from Solution focused therapy, as Jaap taught me in teh Certification Training, when I want to teach a client how to use meta programmes on problem solving more efficiently. It focuses on what clients want to achieve rather than on the problem(s) that made them seek help. The approach does not focus on the past, but instead, focuses on the present and future.
In Julia’s case, learning to focus on what was more or less good in herself, her job, and in her team was a relief. She also learned to match her new manager in his Meta Programs. This gave her more self confidence, because he listened to her and began to acknowledge her problems.
The fact that she could communicate effectively with him, was also a stimulus to communicate better in the team, which she succeeded in pretty soon.
I was glad Julia was able to learn so quickly. It satisfied both the firm and the client, and ………. myself as well!
Very interesting story and it was a great way to help her feel better in her current situation and take control over what she was supposed to control. There are many work places with situations like that and changing people from the staff always affects the other members, specially if the one who goes is the boss.
Mind Sonar seems to be a wonderful tool to work in meta programs and I wanted to ask if coaching with mind sonar can be done with a team or if it has to be done one on one.
It can be used with individuals as well as with teams. In the certification training there is a section on working with teams. Here in Holland we have developed a MindSonar team building program for T-Mobile.
I can really understand this case, there are some of us who need to know what comes next and have a very hard time handling the unexpected and when things just go wrong. However, there are ways to learn how to see the options in every situation and to have in mind that things can go one way or the other, once that is understood things get better.