When will I listen?

Recently i had the opportunity to deliver a training for an organisation in another country. They had seen my work and reached out, they said, on the basis of wanting what I offer.

By the time I showed up to deliver the 2-day training, I was feeling controlled and overwhelmed by the sponsor’s constantly evolving expectations. I felt inadequate and out of touch with my best self. But then again, my best self wasn’t really what the client even wanted.

How did I get to that point?  Why did I let myself carry on through a bumpy and strangely controlled planning phase to ultimately fail myself as well as the client? In the end it was indeed a failure – I did not at all deliver what they wanted.

My gut told me early on during the initial contracting process that it wasn’t the right project for me and that I wasn’t the right person for them. I should have said no. Really. It would have been best for everyone, and I felt that in my gut and in my bones: my nervous system was screaming NO!

Why?

Why didn’t I listen to my own signals? Why did I keep going with the negotiation, making an agreement, and continuing with the programme planning where my contributions and ideas were never good enough? Why did I get on a long-haul flight which I felt was irresponsible in the first place?

Why did I spend 2 days watching the clock just waiting for the programme to be over rather than fully, deeply engaging with the participants? 

Why did I put myself through that?

How we override what we know

Was it for the money?  Some kind of prestige?  Trying to rise to a challenge? Just filling an obligation that I fell into?

I don’t exactly know. It was a bit of all of those. It was also an experience of day by day losing a little piece of myself, my integrity and my sense of competence. I felt more and more trapped. At each step, my rational brain convinced me that it would all be OK and that I should follow my commitments.

I kept thinking I could show these sponsors what I was capable of, that they just didn’t know my work. And when they didn’t want my content and bit by bit the programme’s objectives shifted primarily to topics outside of my areas of expertise (and interest), somehow, I still told myself, I could do it, I would do it.

The lesson that’s forming for me now is that fiercely honouring a value of commitment and obligation one day, can lead to the violation of other values like integrity and excellence the next day.

I know others have suffered from this juxtaposition of values – where we hang on to some important values, forgetting that there’s a richer and more complex fabric of values we could be honouring. It would have helped to pause and look at exactly this – what values am I honouring here? Which am I violating? I think that might have provided a good clear picture, more trust in what my intuition was trying to tell me and a good wake-up call.

The next time my body, my gut, my intuition, my sixth sense tells me to stop, I sure hope I listen, because I do not want to repeat that stressful and unpleasant experience again.

And to be clear, the worst part wasn’t that the client was unhappy – I received the news about the abrupt end of our collaboration with deep relief. The worst part is that I put myself thought 6 weeks of stress because I wasn’t bold enough to follow my intuition and just say no.

Influence or manipulation?