The Two Sentences I Loved Hearing
By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group
I was in a coaching conversation recently with someone I have been working with for a while, let’s call her Margaret. Margaret is pursuing a higher leadership role, and much of our work has focused on how she positions herself with decision makers and in the marketplace.
During the conversation she said two things that stayed with me. At one point she said, “I now have confidence in my future, whatever my future is.” A few minutes later she added, “I feel more aligned with who I am.” Both were said calmly, almost in passing. I paused and told her those might be the two best coaching sentences I have heard this year, although it’s only March.
What struck me was how many people would be well served by being able to say those sentences and mean them. They are the kind of thing you hear and recognize as worth aspiring to, in work and in life. I was proud, as her coach, to watch her eyes light up as she said them.
The Weight of a Predicted Outcome
Many professionals I coach spend energy trying to anticipate how the future will unfold. They think about the next role, the next opportunity, the next move. There is nothing wrong with that. Ambitious people naturally have goals and want things to work out well for themselves.
The pressure comes when people rely on one specific predicted outcome. When the mind starts telling the story that things must unfold in one exact way, the future becomes something that has to be managed and controlled. Think about the difference between saying, “I want to take up running, get fit, and complete at least one race of any distance this year,” and saying, “I want to run a sub-five-hour marathon in six months starting from nothing.” The first is achievable, adaptable, and can be built upon. The second creates enormous pressure, because there is only one, very narrow version of success.
When Margaret said she felt confident in her future, whatever it turned out to be, something important had shifted. She trusted she would create a good result for herself, whatever the outcome looked like.
A Direction Without the Death Grip
Having goals matters. Having a general sense of direction is helpful. Most people benefit from knowing roughly where they want to go, the way a new runner benefits from wanting to build toward a race without locking into a pace and a date before taking a step.
The happiest and most effective people I have worked with seem to share something. They know where they are headed, but they live in the present. Their attention stays on the conversation they are having today, the work they are doing today, the relationships they are building today. The North Star is there, but they are not constantly staring at it.
Listening to Margaret, I had the sense she had quietly arrived at that place. She was still ambitious, still cared deeply about her next role, but no longer sounded as if there was only one acceptable outcome. There is a lot of freedom in that.
When Leaders Sound Like Themselves Again
The second sentence, “I feel more aligned with who I am,” stayed with me for a different reason. Many times I have seen leaders drift from their authentic selves, especially as expectations increase. People feel pressure to behave the way they believe a leader is supposed to behave, softening opinions they would normally express, or adopting a style that feels unnatural. That pressure lands differently depending on someone’s culture, background, and experience. For many people I coach it runs deep, shaped by years of adjusting to rooms that were not built with them in mind. Sustaining that is exhausting, and it rarely produces someone’s best work.
The people I have seen thrive are usually the ones who find their way back to their authentic selves. They become comfortable bringing their real instincts and personality into the room. When Margaret said she felt aligned, I could hear it in the ease of her voice and the directness of her thinking.
What Stays With You After the Call
After we hung up I found myself thinking about those two sentences. Confidence in the future, whatever it may be. Alignment with who you are. Those ideas reinforce each other. When someone trusts themselves, the future feels less intimidating. When someone feels comfortable being who they actually are, their decisions get clearer and the people around them notice.
They were simple comments on a Tuesday afternoon. For a coach, they were very good sentences to hear. Most people, I suspect, would not just recognize those words but would want to be able to say them and know they were true.