Spiny like a cactus

I recently went to visit a succulent plants garden, full of natural wonders.
What I find incredibly fascinating about succulent plants is their ability to adapt to very harsh climates… being able to survive for months and months without a single drop of water, but then flourishing and getting back to life in a matter of hours when the first rain comes again.

Looking at these plants and reading about their life gave me lots of food for thought.
I thought about a coachee I worked with a couple of years ago. Just like a cactus, he was full of spines… very distant, would barely share anything at all personal about himself, never showing emotions on his face, let alone smile.

I must admit it was quite a struggle for me to work with him at the beginning. I almost got to the point to think that coaching was just not for him, or that I was not the most suitable coach.

But one day I received an email from him, almost apologising for how he was showing up during our session, saying that he was feeling resistant to open up, but at the same time, he was starting to feel the urge and benefit of showing up more fully.
It wasn’t easy for him, nor it was for me, but during our next sessions, we started to unpack what was behind his need for self-protection.

Indeed his spines were coming from personal and professional stories from his past, and rewriting the narrative about these stories helped him to see that maybe these spines were not useful anymore.
He was living in a different climate now, but was still acting as if he were still in the desert, needing to save every single drop of water for the dry months to come.

Just like other living creatures, we humans have the wonderful gift of being able to adapt to our environment, deploying our energies in different ways, learning what we should protect ourselves from and where are our best allies.

Saving our energies and protecting ourselves from threats are indeed useful strategies, necessary at times.
Yet, I think sometimes we might go on auto-pilot in applying our old “survival strategies” that have helped us in the past, while it is important to stop and question them from time to time:

Are they still fit to the situation we are in now?

Could our old strategies get in our own way? Are we overplaying them?

What got us here will get us where we want to go next?

What can we do to influence the environment around us, so that there’s increasingly less need of covering ourselves with spines?

If you are interested to read more about protecting tendencies and specifically their impact on our leadership effectiveness, read my blog The side effects of (over) protecting yourself and get in touch!