He had the exact trait that I look for when coaching someone.
Jeff (different name for obvious reasons) had some issues. He was having outbursts at his staff. Small mistakes were setting him off completely. He was constantly complaining about the young workers: “They don’t make them like they used to!”
To be honest, none of that mattered to me, I didn’t really care about the what. What I loved was that he walked into the leadership office proactively and admitted to all of it. Even better, he said that he wanted help, he didn’t want to be like this anymore.
If there is any one trait that makes someone better, it’s the genuine desire for change. And it’s the exact thing that I look for. So the CHR reached out to me, and I eagerly accepted.
I drove out to Gatton to meet him on site, blocking out 90 minutes. He was guarded at the start; I could tell he was anticipating me coming in to tell him how to be "better." So, for the first hour we just talked. I asked him about his work and he lit up. There's something genuinely magnetic about someone who loves what they do, and Jeff clearly did.
And along the way, he told me things I hadn't known going in. A family bereavement, a disastrous project six months prior that he was still carrying, constant travel, and a real uncertainty about whether the civil arm could hold onto good people after investing heavily in developing them.
Sitting across from him, I was seeing someone who hadn't had a ‘full-stop’ in twelve months. All of the above factors PLUS his regular working responsibilities had blurred into one long unbroken stretch.
The complaints about younger workers is something I've heard that one for as long as I can remember. Every generation says it about the next, so I was never going to fix that. And I wasn't there to help him process grief or solve a talent retention problem.
What I saw was someone who needed to learn how to reset.
In sport, resetting is one of the most critical habits there is. It's what allows you to move on from the last mistake, trust your ability, and play exactly what's in front of you. Jeff wasn't going to be asked to hit a three-pointer to win the game. But performing in the real world is no different: nobody plays well carrying their baggage onto the floor.
Processing everything that had accumulated wasn't the answer either, at least not for the results he needed at the speed he needed them. That's a separate conversation with separate methods. What he needed was the ability to get himself back to his optimal zone, fast, and to do it repeatedly throughout the day.
The goal was never to reach a point where he didn't need to reset. That point doesn't exist for anyone. The main goal was to reset as often as needed, as fast as possible. Eventually in a matter of seconds.
But going from zero awareness to the full strategy is a guaranteed way to make sure it never happens. So, over the next two months, we built one aspect of the reset process at a time. We worked on it until it was habitual before we even thought about adding anything else.
Within weeks he was starting his days calmer. The things that used to set him off became minor annoyances. And he developed something even more useful: an internal signal. When something started to feel catastrophic again, he recognised it as a sign that the baggage had accumulated, not a sign that something was actually wrong.
About a month after we wrapped up, the owner of the firm told me Jeff seemed like a brand-new person. Calmer with his staff, sharper on-the-fly decisions on a live bridge project, and was composed and inspiring when a major weather event hit the site.
In my mind, he hadn't become a new person. He'd just returned to being Jeff.
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