Turbo Leadership Systems^™

Push the walls of your comfort zone

Ranae, merchandising manager for a major wholesale food distributor in Boise, Idaho, told Session 6 of the Leadership Development Lab:

“Our family is in the process of opening a restaurant in Boise. The used cash register my husband bought needed to be reprogrammed with all our menu items and prices. Our 17-year old daughter is a computer whiz, so he assigned her the job of programming the till. She had no problem with the first fifteen items, but quit after that because the programming then required a combination of keys that didn’t seem to work. She wanted me to take over and finish the job for her. This, unfortunately, is the usual sequence of events when Chelsie is given a big job. Chelsie refuses to challenge herself, push through the resistance put forth the extra effort needed to bring jobs to closure to fully complete the task. This, I realized, was my opportunity to practice empowering coaching.

“First, Chelsie and I had a talk about comfort zones. I explained to her that our personal comfort zone has this invisible wall around it. I asked her to get the feeling of victory, achievement and success, asked her to assume a sense of personal victory we all want that is ours when we keep pushing against those limiting walls and stretch them outward to new dimensions. This is how we grow and enjoy new experiences and greater self confidence. Besides, if you don’t push out those walls, they will shrink on you and force you to live in a little ever shrinking contracting world. That’s no fun!

“Then, when I felt I had her full attention, I turned the manual for the cash register over and showed her the ‘800’ number on the back. I suggested that she give the help desk a call and see if they could help her out and explain to her how to do the programming with the needed confirmation numbers.

“The next day when I arrived home from

work, she was skipping around and singing, ‘I did it, I did it, I did it!’ She had done just what I had suggested and managed to finish her job successfully. All the menu items were now successfully programmed into the register. She was thrilled with herself!

“The lesson I learned from this experience is that I can make people happier, more productive and less reliant on me by using empowering coaching. In addition, I free myself up from having to do routine tasks.

“The action I call you to take is to employ empowering coaching early and often. Do not let your team mates give up on a job or on them selves. The benefit you will gain is creating a more excited capable crew, a crew that will not give up or give in when the going gets tough. Your team will persist in spite of challenges and resistance and when they set new records you will jump for joy.”

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