Bill Gallagher coaches a law firm partner who kept clashing with a rising employee. The partner realized he'd been writing people off and defaulting to blame. Shifting to 100% responsibility for his impact transformed his leadership and deepened his relationships across the firm.
Have you ever noticed that there are certain kinds of people that you just do not click with? Certain kinds of people you actively avoid, certain kinds of people that are really hard for you, and you know them and you recognize them in an instant. So, hi, everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. We bring shows, tips, ideas, deep dives, conversations with gurus, with CEOs, all that and more about how to get the growth of your company going well and how to develop yourself as a leader. So we deal with people with strategy, with execution, cash, and the leadership required to grow and develop your company. And we put these shows out every week. There are hundreds of them. Now. You'll find that entire back catalog of really interesting thoughts and ideas and tools that are really timeless. You'll find all that and more wherever you got this. ITunes, YouTube, Stitcher, Spotify, et cetera. Or you can go to our website@scalingcoach.com, search it there, find the full downloads, all the links, that kind of thing, everything there, and more@scalingcoach.com all right, so back to this example. I was coaching a managing partner of a growing law firm, and this guy was really great and intelligent and caring and passionate about developing himself as a leader and growing his business, that kind of thing. But he suddenly found himself really, really triggered and confronted by an employee, a person who really a rising new leader, but somebody who was really uncomfortable for him to deal with. And their style, like, everything about this person just really, like, triggered the guy. And he was like, how do I deal with this? Like, there's nothing that I could point to. He didn't have anything that was, like, company values, that kind of thing, like, where he should just get rid of them. But he found himself just, like, personally triggered by that personality and a little embarrassed at the fact that, like, a personality style issue was so, so much of a trigger. Well, anyway, here's the thing. I asked him to see who else and where else he had people like this, where he'd been triggered. And even more importantly than that, I asked him to notice what it was that he did when people occurred for him a particular way, not this particular style of trigger, but, like, all kinds of things that he didn't like. Right. And he was a little overwhelmed because as he started to notice this, he realized, and he saw it with some of the people he loved the most, not just the people he worked with and cared about professionally, but his wife and kids as well, his extended family members. He could see where when he didn't like dealing with somebody's personality. Rather than address all of it, he would just kind of write it off, he would like wall it off and he would go, well, you know, relationship's 50, 50, I'm going to do my part. And they've got to do their part. If they can't do their part, then there isn't. So he brought self awareness to the way that he sort of wrote people off and the limits he had on people, that was really eye opening and humbling for him. And then he also began to notice where he had limits on what he was willing to do and where he was willing to go. His insight there was that a relationship, a successful relationship is 100%, 100%. This is true of our romantic relationships, our family relationships, our friends, our co workers, our vendors. Like everything, it's always 100%, 100%. It's not 50, 50 that I'll do your part, you'll do my part is a kind of a chicken shit move that we make that makes very little difference in the interaction. But if you're 100% responsible for the way things go and the person like you looking at you in the mirror, how you're being in the world, you'll start to alter things that will actually impact the relationship and that other person will shift naturally as well in sync with who you are as a reflection reaction to what you're putting out in the world. So he began to take full responsibility for it, for his way of operating that didn't work and his boundaries and his limits. And he began to notice in particular about that person that he was dealing with. He noticed like a real depth and interesting details about the person. Beyond some of the personality traits and the stereotypical like presentation that the person had. He got deeper with people that also showed up then in his family relationships, his loved ones, that kind of thing. In other parts of his life, he actually got more connected as a result of seeing how much he didn't want to interact with this person. And he became over about the next year of thinking about this, someone who didn't want to have any type of person that they didn't want to be with. He became someone who was like, I just want to be like everyone, who could see good in everyone all the time. He became really transformed by this whole thing. It was really awesome to watch. And his law firm worked better together, achieved more of their goals as a result of that transformation that he had. Remember 100%, 100%, he, he transformed himself. He took on this shifted way of being as a leader. And then there was a huge ripple around him in the whole company. I hope that's helpful. I hope you hear something for yourself as well. I know it made a difference for me not only as a coach to have that interaction, but to apply that to myself in my own life. So thanks so much everyone. We'll talk to you again next time, like subscribe, et cetera. Get these tips and ideas and things every week in your feed, wherever that might be. Or@scalingcoach.com we'll talk to you again. Keep scaling up.
