Gold Nugget Coaching

Recently, almost simultaneously, two of my coaching clients had a similar kind of challenge arise. Both of them came up against middlesence career issues—where to go next in their well-established and successful careers. When you’re “stuck” in the middle of an issue like this, the way out often just looks like a nebulous blur. But with some work, the nebulous blur begins to take shape and a solution begins to form. Of course, in retrospect—after the problem is solved, we often realize that the answer was staring us in the face but we couldn’t see it. So how do you go from a “nebulous blur” to seeing a solid solution? One of the primary keys is by creating “distinctions.” Since distinctions are such a critical component to getting “unstuck,” I thought it would be valuable to spend some time here talking about them.

Simply put, by making distinctions we separate one thing from another and, in the process, we give each of these things names. Distinctions enable us to see what literally wasn’t apparent to us before. I read recently that some experts think that when Columbus’ ships appeared off shore, it’s possible that the natives on-shore literally didn’t see them because they had no experience of, no distictions for, what was there almost in front of their faces.

For another example of seeing vs. not seeing what’s in front of your face, if you’re in the produce section of the grocery store, there’s a blur of items and colors organized in some manner by the store—you probably don’t know the store’s organization scheme, nor do you care. You just want to get a head of romaine lettuce and finish your shopping, and you have clear distinctions about romaine lettuce.

So, first, you scan the entire display looking for the visual distinctions of  “green” and “leafy.” Or you may look for the sign distinction of “Lettuce.” Using these distinctions, you zero in on what you want, basically ignoring everything else—it’s all pretty much a blur, although some things may momentarily register, like “red pepper” or “carrots.” But at some point in your budding culinary hobby, a recipe calls for “starfruit”—for which you have no visual distinctions like shape, color, size, etc.

Lacking any visual distinctions, you literally can’t see starfruit and are reduced to actually asking for help to find it. But I guarantee that once you have the distinction “starfruit” and know what it looks like, when you do a future scan of the produce display, they will stick out like peppers and carrots. Eskimos have manydifferent names for different kinds of snow vs. our one word “snow.” But these distinctions are critical to them since their lives may depend on knowing what kind of snow is falling as they set out on a hunting trip.

A critical thing about distinctions is this: distinctions enable us to take action. Without distinctions action is not possible. Whether it’s buying the right fruit or vegetable, organizing your closet or, like many of my clients, figuring out where to go next with your career, distinctions enable you to see your way and take action.

I remember one of my first jobs as a teenager: plumbers helper. I had almost no distinctions in the domain of tools. John, my boss, asked me to get the “PVC pipe cutters” from the truck. He even vaguely described them. Not having any tool distinctions, and being young and too proud to ask “What’s that?” I decided to fake it. When I returned with what I now know was a channel lock tongue and groove pliers, I immediately knew from the look on John’s face that I had not gotten the correct tool—I was missing an important distinction.

Without the distinction of “PVC pipe cutter” I was unable to perform the simplest of actions, namely just getting the tool, to say nothing of cutting pipe, or creating leak-proof connections of pipe. So a whole sequence of actions couldn’t be performed because I lacked the distinction”PVC pipe cutters.”

Another interesting thing is that you can create distinctions so create ones that are useful to the problem at hand.

So how did distinctions help my clients to take actions concerning their career issues? Let’s look at one of them, Fran.

Fran has a very successful landscaping business. She loves her work and with her excellent reputation, there’s never a shortage of work. The only problem is that as Fran ages she knows her body isn’t capable of what it once was. She has already begun to hire people to do many of the physically demanding tasks. But the more she does this, the more she has to “manage,” and the further it takes her from what she truly loves: creating beautiful spaces. So Fran is looking at where to go next. She’s done the assignments I’ve given her and has gotten very clear about her talents—and there are a lot of them. But being so talented she was becoming confused with all the choices.

I quickly realized that what was missing for Fran was the power of “distinctions.” Although she had done a fine job of identifying her talents, she was missing a way to organize and “distinguish” one set of talents from another. She just needed useful distinctions to organize her talents in such a way that she could then identify and take actions toward a new future. After we talked about it for awhile, she saw that she could distinguish three top talents:

• a talent for creating physical environments that people consider beautiful and that put them in a peaceful mood

• a talent for communicating a vision of what could be created so that people see it clearly in their mind’s eye

• a talent for quickly learning new things in many areas

It was like a light bulb turned on for Fran. All of a sudden she saw her talents in a new way that could enable her to consider possibilities that hadn’t previously occurred to her. Within days she had come up with an exciting possibility for her work: the design of living spaces that have a soothing, indeed therapeutic, effect on its occupants. Fran had gone from confusion to what I distinguish as “enthusiastic prudence.” The enthusiasm is enabling her to effortlessly do the necessary research for this new career direction. But doing the research is also demonstrating the prudence of “doing her homework” before she makes a commitment to switch career tracks to this new direction.

So I suggest you do a little experiment to experience the distinction of “distinctions”! Go to the tool department of a major retailer or to the produce section of your supermarket. Take a closer-than-usual look at the items—the ones you usually just skim over without really seeing. How many of the items are totally unfamiliar to you—maybe you’ve heard the name but never saw it in person. Or maybe you never even heard the name—like “starfruit” or “PVC pipe cutters.” I bet it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for you!

If you’re interested in learning more about the power of distinctions I can recommend an excellent book by a coach named Chalmers Brothers. The book is “Language and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching