“Have you seen this report? It shows you how wrong you are. Have you thought about doing your job?”
Maturity coaching helps people to address any of the following “undeveloped” or “under-developed” areas of their professional life. Lack of maturity shows up most obviously via interpersonal behavior. If you watch how someone behaves, over time, you’ll notice certain patterns. Here are some telltale signs when an otherwise competent professional would benefit from maturity coaching:
1. When their communication is “taken the wrong way” by others, but there’s no apparent effort on their part to clean that up. “Why should I?”
2. Blame and discrediting the other person is the norm. They don’t do it on purpose — they don’t have to. It is automatic behavior, learned long ago. When they don’t like someone’s behavior, rather than having an adult problem-solving conversation, they blame them for what they did wrong.
3. Emotional outbursts that damage relationships, hurt other people’s morale, cause resentment and feelings of contempt by others.
4. Unskillful but defended behaviors such as interrupting mid-sentence, a tendency to talk without acknowledging what the other person has just said, having the one right answer (presuming nobody else could possibly have part of a solution), gossip, lying, playing games, retaliation, taking credit for other people’s work without recognizing their contributions … the list goes on.
Instead, maturity coaching helps focus on any of the following areas:
- Social skills of empathy, honesty, willingness to listen, focus on learning, take feedback to heart, not dwell on the past or get stuck in the negative
- Emotional intelligence, such as emotional restraint (not just blurting out the first thing that comes to mind). Respond – rather than being purely reactive and potentially harm the relationship – to strong emotions like anger or intense fear.
- Self management – ability to manage mood and emotions – not in our “right mind” and taking responsibility for that without damaging the relationship. Ability to have an adult conversation about what matters to both parties. To turn complaints into requests. “Put out 100% of what you want, 100% of the time, and be available to negotiate any differences.”
Contact us to discuss whether we can help with these or other services.
