Check Your Baggage

[Music] today I want to make a plea to everyone out there to check your baggage um here’s what I mean by that no matter who you are whether you’re a senior leader a manager a member of a team somebody on a interview team who’s looking to get hired for a project someone who’s already partic ipating in a team you’re interacting with other folks and perhaps there’s some version of pressure maybe it’s the pressure of an interview maybe it’s the pressure of being on the job maybe it’s the pressure of needing to produce results and the folks who are working for you are not producing what you promised they would produce there’s any number of things going on and you can feel your own baggage getting jostled now what I mean by that is you have experienced a lifetimes worth of interactions you have interacted with lots of different people you’ve been on the receiving end of discipline and you have been probably a person who has delivered discipline one way or another there are issues about power there are issues about who can say what to you and you can feel yourself getting upset my plea to you is to recognize your own baggage to understand what your buttons are to understand that things from your history are inspiring you to hear things a certain way and to create meaning out of it it and have that meaning translate into upset my encouragement to you is to be aware of that be aware of that whole process going on for you if you’re a leader you probably already undergone some sort of coaching or training that would help you understand what your own buttons are I want to encourage you whether you’ve gone through training or coaching like this already is to remember this to just bear in mind that you have this baggage and to bear in mind that whoever you’re interacting with has baggage as well and your baggage could be completely different from their baggage the important thing is to recognize that you all have baggage that you have your own baggage and you’re responsible for your baggage you need to check it and understand it so that you can keep your baggage in check you can keep it in place and the buttons that can often get pressed are not necessarily setting anything off in you and at the same time you can be careful about how you communicate with others you can note what you say and what the circumstances are where their buttons get triggered their baggage gets joggled and you can take responsibility for for that happening you can keep it from breaking down the communication from causing upset and reducing the team Effectiveness if you can bear this all in mind then the pressure of the situation doesn’t need to break anything it doesn’t need to hurt anything you can stay on top of the pressure you can pilot these interactions in a positive and constructive way [Music]