[CLIENT INTERVIEW] Sarah Eadie: How to Reduce Self-Doubt at Work and Send That Tough Email

At the end of every coaching journey, I walk my clients through a list of questions in a completion conversation.

The intention behind the completion conversation is to help the client anchor her growth and to celebrate the changes she’s achieved so far, so she can continue to make headway beyond the coaching journey.

Sarah Eadie, a product marketing consultant, completed her coaching journey with me recently, after working with me for about three years.

She graciously agreed to have the completion conversation recorded, so that she can reflect on how far she’s come AND be able to share what she’s learned in the process with a wider audience.

Below is the transcript of the video segment.

Start of transcript

Jamie Lee:
Let's go back to last year when you reached back out to reengage me as your one-on-one executive coach. Would you share with us what you wanted to achieve in our time together?

Sarah Eadie:
Absolutely. Yeah. I was doing what we call thought work, which is basically this kind of process of getting more in touch with what I'm feeling and how my feelings, my thoughts, and the reality that I'm creating for myself are all tied together and just making sure that I'm being really deliberate about the things that I choose to think so that I can be better at creating the results that I want in my life. When we first started working together, you initially introduced me to this kind of modality in coaching, I don't know quite what the language that I would put around it is.

Jamie Lee:
We call it the model.

Sarah Eadie:
The model, exactly. Yes. So things like models, the model and went off and kind of did it on my own for a while and then was just in a position where I really wanted to put the pedal to the metal on my professional growth and wanted some help, just kind of holding a mirror to the practice that I was doing on my own and helping me go deeper with it and achieve bigger and more interesting things.

Jamie Lee:
Yeah. So for those of you who are watching this, the model is a simple framework that explains everything in the universe, there are 5 components, circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results, and Sarah is referred to how our thoughts create our emotions, which drive our actions, which create our results. So Sarah wanted to get promoted. She wanted to get better paid in her career. Right?

Sarah Eadie:
Yeah, absolutely. We, I think in just like our most recent period of coaching in February talked about continuing our coaching journey together and I had just recently taken some vacation after a lot of big things happening, had pioneered this product marketing launch process at the company that I was working for and was like, "Yeah, okay. I need to take advantage of this unlimited PTO," and then came back and had received a big spot bonus. So one of the things that we had talked about was the idea that taking rest can actually be very helpful for your career. And it just felt like a really magical time to talk about continuing the work that we're doing together.

Jamie Lee:
Yeah. There you go. You took time off and you got a bonus.

Sarah Eadie:
Exactly. Yeah. Wanted to continue on that path to get promoted, make more money and have a good time doing it.

Jamie Lee:
Yes. So let's review your goals and some of the key accomplishments as well as anything else that you want to celebrate that happened in the last six months together.

Sarah Eadie:
Yeah. So in the last six months so much has happened, positive, exciting things more than I could have imagined. So it's hard to catalog and say like, "Okay, this is what happened in the last six months." But sticking to that timeframe, I received an exceptional marketing award from the company that I used to work for. That was very exciting. That's peer nominated. So I was really thrilled to receive that sort of vote of confidence. I did get promoted and got a raise, I've developed a very... Yes, thank you, circle claps for that. Developed really strong relationships with the people that I worked with at my former employer and just felt like I became a professional over the last 3-3.5 years there where it was a lot about the work and helping people and having an impact and a lot less about the mental drama that I think I was bringing to my work in the past.

Jamie Lee:
What was the drama?

Sarah Eadie:
It was a lot of just not thinking that I'm measured up. I was doing all of these things and getting a lot of positive feedback and just continuously fell into old thought patterns of like, "I'm fucking this up. I'm doing something wrong. I need to do something." And I think that through our coaching, that's always a thought that starts to kind of bubble up, but now I have better things to think about myself that just helped me not wallow and that helped me get past it.

Jamie Lee:
Okay. So we'll talk about the new beliefs, but for those who are watching this, would you connect the dots how unwinding the drama or having less of it or having a better handle on it led to those tangible results in your career?

Sarah Eadie:
Totally. I think that one of the things that people will probably find most relatable is just this like sending an email, sending a tough email. When I would sit down and the project that I was working on had been delayed, or I needed to deliver bad news, or I wanted to share a perspective that may be different than what other people, including what your boss might be thinking, it always came with a lot of self doubt, a lot of questioning myself, a lot of fear of what people might say or might think about me.

Sarah Eadie:
So these emails that now might take me 15 or 20 minutes to craft very thoughtfully would take hours all told, where you write it and then you think about it and then you go back to it and you hold on sending it. So using that just as one very specific example, I feel like of how I was wasting everyone's time with all of this drama-

Jamie Lee:
That was a thought error, "I am wasting people's time," when in fact reality is you've ended up wasting your time with this drama.

Sarah Eadie:
Right, right. And when I could be doing a lot of other better, higher impact things, now it's like, "Okay, this might not be perfect, this is where I'm at. I'm up to change my mind. I don't have to do it perfectly." And I just am able to move through that more quickly and just be a more effective communicator. So that's just one example that's really tangible of how, again, I was wasting a lot of my own time by just being freaked out about how I might be getting it wrong.

Jamie Lee:
Yeah. And something that you and I worked and it's something that I work on with all of my clients, we redirect our brain to how, "How could this be of value? What is the value that I'm offering in this email?"

Sarah Eadie:
Absolutely. And a lot of times when I would get over it and go ahead and send those emails, sure, occasionally things would come back that would be additional scary things to deal with or things that caused me to push myself out of my comfort zone, but there were also more often than not positive feedback and reinforcement for being brave enough to step out or that people would say, "Oh yeah, actually I've kind of also been thinking this." So a little bit of the opportunity to lead by example there too.

Jamie Lee:
Love it. Love it. So for everyone, if you ever have the thought, "I'm wasting people's time," consider you could actually be adding value, your email could be adding value.

End of Transcript