Steve Harris is a Business Strategist & Executive Coach. He's the CEO of EdgeEcution, a High Performance Coaching Company in Dallas, Texas.
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It’s my first article for Forbes Coaches Council—no pressure, right? And while I’m typing, I don’t really have a title yet, but I know my editor’s going to help me come up with something great.
I’d like to share a few thoughts that might help you handle analysis paralysis and the quest for perfection as a leader that can inevitably lead to you getting stuck and doing nothing.
1. Start from nowhere.
Weird, huh? How do you start from nowhere? It’s simple. The word nowhere is also a combination of two words: now and here. So let's start from “now” “here.” Where are you now? Before you begin your quest to get “there," let's find out where “here” is.
I’ll use myself as an example. This is my very first Coaches Council article, and I really want to make a good impression on anyone—in this case, you—who reads it. I mean, you’ve got to be some sort of genius to have your work published, right? Wrong. You just have to care deeply about the people who you want to share your knowledge with. Initially, I was caught up in analyzing how I’d write the perfect article. I was going nowhere. Then I realized I was all in my head. So I scrapped all my drafts and started from “now” “here.” What was my "now"? Sitting on a plane headed to New York for a conference at the United Nations. I was anxious about making a good impression as well as personal and professional connections that could lead to business opportunities—and also realized I hadn’t turned in my first article.
2. Forget about what you’re not and focus on who you are.
Still keeping this as honest and practical as possible, in writing my first Coaches Council article, I’d scoured the profiles and articles of many amazing coaches, and boy was I intimidated. Such amazing accomplishments from incredible people shaping the world with their experiences. I tried to adopt their “coaching voice” and professional mannerisms, and as I kept reading, I realized something: I’m not them, and they’re not me.
As amazing as they are, we might not share the same experiences. I’m a Nigerian business coach who moved to the United States with my family a year ago to share my message with the world and hopefully make a difference. My point is, don’t be intimidated about who or what you’re not. Instead, inspire people with who you are. Write in your own voice, sing in your own key, speak in your own comfortable accent, share your own life experiences. In a time where many people are caught up with being a copy of someone else, it’s refreshing to see someone being original and unabashedly themselves.
You might not want to make a million dollars and that’s OK—and you don’t have to feel pressured by others who might want that for themselves. You might not want to work at a Fortune 500 company and become vice president of the company. You might want to work from home and watch your kids grow up and take them to dance recitals, and that’s OK. Heck, you might want to walk the red carpet and sell out a show on Broadway, and that’s OK too. As long as you’re willing to put in the work to become what you want, more power to you. Embrace what makes you different and respect shared similarities.
3. Remember it’s OK to fail… forward.
Most people don’t like to fail. Maybe it’s because of the feeling of shame that’s often associated with it. But if you’ve ever watched babies form their first words, do they feel ashamed because they couldn’t form a first string of sentences that would make the best orators green with envy? Are babies embarrassed that they can't go into a full sprint right from a crawling position? Nope. And do their parents yell at them because they can't win a 100-meter dash right out of the gate? No, that’s unreasonable.
Give yourself grace. Chances are you’re going to suck at first, and probably a couple more times than you’d like. But if you fail forward and have a mentality to grow through the process, you’re going to gain way more traction than folks who were so scared to fail that they never even got started.
4. It takes time.
If I had a dollar for each time I said this to myself, I’d probably be a millionaire by now. As a new immigrant to the United States, I’m in such a hurry to partake in the American Dream. I mean, who wouldn’t be? I work hard; I ain’t no slouch. But when I’m too hard on myself, as I often am, I remember one of my favorite scriptures, which says, "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." I know a little bit about agriculture, and every seed has its own gestation period. Some seeds need a month to get to a harvest, others might need five months. Like Warren Buffett said, "No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant."
My point is, you can’t rush certain seasons and processes. I know we live in an “instant generation” where we’re constantly trying to rush outcomes. Like microwaving an instant meal, paying more to skip the airport security line and so on, we can be pretty impatient when our life results don’t move as fast as we’d like. Give yourself time to get rooted. That’s going to help keep you grounded.
I totally enjoyed sharing this article with you, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for reading my first article, and I hope you’ll stick around for the next one. I’ll try not to keep you waiting.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
