Why You Need An Unpleasant Friend!

Many of us would read this headline and say “why would I want a friend that is unpleasant?”

The statement in essence is not about seeking out an unpleasant friendship it is more a metaphor to explain why in life and business we need someone to help challenge our existing paradigm.

As humans we often become habitual in our ways and this causes us to miss the subtle nuances of change that surround us as we go about our daily lives. Subtle indicators that provide us with the clues that something is going on.

We miss these because we normalise our approach to work and life in such a way that we seldom recognise that any change is occurring. This is because we process information using internal filters, these help us cope with everyday life. These coping mechanisms cause us to generalise and delete information that we believe is not important to us.

These filters coupled with our belief systems, while helping us to cope with all of the information available to us, can sometimes make us insular to what is going on around us. We also have a tendency to normalise our own behaviours and how our behaviour affects others in life and in business.

The outcome is that we often only recognise that change is occurring when something significant occurs to shake us out of our personal reality. So have you ever asked the question “how did I get to this point?” We often get to that point as we never take the time to stand back and review what is occurring around us and the role we play in a business or even our own family environment.

The problem is if we do not become self aware of our biases and personal filters then when presented with facts that contradict our view, we will dismiss them. Our reliance on past experiences, belief systems and values sometimes need to be challenged because in business as in life, change is constantly taking place. Change can be incremental or instrumental, the latter often being missed until it is too late. We fail to take notice of incremental change because we are often too busy getting on with the business of doing business and the tasks of life. Enter the unpleasant friend!

Three Office WorkersAn unpleasant friend is not someone who is there to create anxiety by being disagreeable with you. They are a coach that works with you to not only develop yourself but to open your eyes and ears to who you are and how you work within the business and operate in life. In this rapidly evolving and changing world a coach needs to know you, and I mean the real you to affect you.

They need to understand the “how” of developing you and how can they do this without knowing you, earning your trust and ultimately your friendship. This trust helps them to work with you in building a pathway to self discovery.

If a coach cannot help you understand yourself, how then can you understand others and in turn how can a coach work with you to affect change in yourself.
Therein is the alignment to being a friend but not in the truest sense e.g. a social friend. The friendly coach works with you to help you understand yourself and in so doing gets to know you, your behaviours, your filters and the way you work with others. As they gain a greater understanding about you they can identify blind spots that you may or may not realise exists based on the filters you have developed.

This can at times be unpleasant and confronting, the thing is that being an unpleasant friend who helps you to identify your development pathways, will in effect help you make change in “you” to improve yourself and ultimately your business, possibly your life.

Good coaches do not impose their views of the world onto you, they seek to understand you, adapt to your behaviour, and develop an intimate knowledge of who you are, your role in the business and how you affect it. They will also seek to understand how you operate outside of business because that is the foundation for any change. They will work with you to identify the things that you should continue to do more of, less of or develop.

So do you have an unpleasant friend and do you know how to find one?

About Brad Collins

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