"is it really a problem?"

At the start of my coaching journey, one of my very first coaching lessons happened to be one that formed the deepest impression. The lesson was basically for a coach to determine whether someone is ready to be coached (and work towards change) because as you could imagine, if someone is not ready, the coach can only influence change to a very limited extent. This posts share more about how that looks like but this is the statement that has deeply latched in my mind:

"it's not a problem until the person says it's a problem."

"Wut...." was my honest reply when I heard that. How does that even make sense for a coach? Isn't it our duty to identify the problem for the client, work out solutions, and to influence change? The statement felt almost dismissive to me. Well, if you are feeling the same, let's explore that together. We will start off with an activity first:

• Imagine a time in your life when someone came to you to rant/complain about a relationship/job/situation
• As a helpful confidant, you listened attentively and proceeded to share lots and lots of thoughts, suggestions, advices, etc, to help the person out
• That person listened to you, nodded his/her head, acknowledged that s/he will do something about the situation
• A period of time later, you realised your friend is complaining about the same relationship/job/situation again. Nothing got worse (thankfully) but nothing got better too. Nothing has changed.

Question: How did you react at those instance? Does any of these thoughts arise: "what's wrong with this person?", "I told you so", "Again???", etc?

I think majority of us might have gone through similar experiences ourselves. I mean, we could be that person who wasn't changing things! So if we take a step further and think about why was there a lack of change, it is often boiled down to a lack of impetus for the change to happen. This lack of impetus could likely be due to the lack of awareness about the (severity of) actual problem.

When there is a lack of awareness, it disallows someone to truly understand the problem and the need to change, which itself is a big topic. Change is often uncomfortable and tough, hence humans are resistant towards change. Without the acknowledgement that there is a problem to be changed, we can see why many people are not actively striving towards making a difference for themselves.

In a coaching context, this could potentially lead to a less effective session as the client is not certain enough about making the change. In a work context, people might just do things unwillingly and new problems arise since they don't understand the purpose of the change.

So what can we do when there is a lack of awareness?

1. Invoke awareness about the problem + deepen the "pain". Some questions you can try using are "how is this situation bothering you?"; "what would happen if this continues for another 6 months?"; "how will you feel if things do not change?" From the response, we can see the person's stance on the problem's severity. If the person continues to be uncertain/do not see a severe problem, you should...
   
2. Let the situation continues and monitor the status. This sounds counter-intuitive but it would be the best step forward when there is a lack of awareness. Sometimes the situation resolves itself and there is no more problem! Sometimes the problem becomes bigger, the pain would elevate and that is when the individual would start to see the 'real problem'.
   Note: In life-threatening or critical situations, this shall not apply. Seek professional help.

When it comes to point #02, the temptation for many of us is to share our opinions, give more examples, create more perspectives, so the other person knows that there IS a problem, SOLVE it! I can understand that intention. Naturally, we would not want our family/friends to suffer or to be in a situation that is unfavourable to them. We want to help them out.

However, our own past experiences (the exercise above) have shown that such "advices" often fall on deaf ears, or even if there is any "change", it is just going to be temporary. A more helpful change is one that is lasting and has long-term effects, this takes time to develop. In addition, it is also important for us to keep in mind that us wanting to "help more" could be us projecting our own experiences/expectation on other people, which is something not ideal since we are all different individuals. What might be a problem to us, it might not be a problem to others. Be patient.

Understanding this has altered the way I look at my relationships with others. I began to understand why some people behave the way they do, I also felt less uptight as a person because I stopped feeling the 'responsibility' to pull people out of the trench, but to become more like a lifeguard who is monitoring but always ready to jump in when someone is 'drowning'. Do you pick up any new learning for yourself too? Share with me in the comments below!

I thought that people who like to "help" would relate heavily to this post, so share it with your "helpful" family members or friends as a conversation topic -- "It's not a problem until the person says it's a problem.", what do you think?

If you are looking to understand a problem or to work through a problem, speak with someone, that helps. If you wish to speak with an unbiased 3rd-party, I am just a booking away: