I got a very short e-mail from a colleague first thing this morning; all it said was “Can I meet you for a coffee this morning?” Now this colleague is generally very upbeat and positive, so what was it that resulted in my first thought being “I wonder what’s wrong?” Perhaps it was the sparseness of the e-mail; perhaps my recent history with the organisation for whom she works (which has not been happy) predisposes me think of problems rather than opportunities; perhaps I even have a broader disposition to believe that people are more likely to contact me when things are wrong than when they are right.

I admit to being a bit of a Mr Fixit, whose first thoughts on being presented with a problem are often “Do this, do that, do the other” rather than “Well what do you think the options are?” A constant challenge of my, and no doubt others, coaching practice is to avoid this tendency to offer solutions and simply to sit and listen, asking good questions and reflecting the opportunity to solve the problem back to the client.

It turned out that the meeting presented both a problem and an opportunity. A problem because we are losing another key member of staff, and opportunity because its offers the chance to re-examine our management structure and the roles and responsibilities of the senior staff in the organisation.

Today’s challenge to you is to think about your default position when somebody contacts you or makes an announcement. Do you default to thinking about all the problems, challenges, all of the negatives about the situation? Or do you default to thinking about the communication more positively, looking for opportunities and believing that what you are about to hear has the potential to be all for the good?
There is a link back to last week’s topic about metaprograms because a further pair of metaprograms relate to whether or not we tend to move away from pain or move towards pleasure. I will write about this “Towards/Away From” pair of metaprograms in a future blog.