I was consulting with an agency just last week, and one of the therapists said this to me, “I want to get better. This is important… If I don’t know this about my outcomes, how am I going to improve?”
Photo by Shane Albuquerque
This doesn’t sound quite earth-shattering. But if you knew that everyone in this team overcame the stumbling block of systematically measuring their outcomes for more than a year, and as we looked at the team’s performance and deconstructed the story behind the numbers, it turned out that this therapist also had the lowest outcomes in the team.
Yet, he was the only one who was willing to embrace the vulnerability and talked about his performance from the get-go. He was the only one with a true “growth mindset.“
In a recent TED talk, Surgeon and writer Atul Gawande [1] points out something we need to remember:
“…It’s not just how good you are now…it’s how good you’re going to be that really matters.”
Watch this:
Sometimes, we need an extra pair of eyes to help us see what we don’t see. See some of the previous posts on the topic of coaching in our field of psychotherapy:
Everyone deserves a good coach to help them figure out where they are at, what to work on, and where to go next. “…It’s not just how good you are now…it’s how good you’re going to be that really matters.”
P/S: In the new year, I’d be launching an innovative online module-based course called Reigniting Clinical Supervision, designed specifically for supervisors and people seeking guidance. For folks in the Frontiers… list, you will be given a special insider’s rate during the pre-launch phase. 50% off the list price, plus several bonuses (one of which is a free 1hr coaching after completing the course)! Stay tuned.
See you in the new year!
Daryl
Footnotes:
[1] I highly recommend reading Atul Gawande’s books, especially Better, Checklist Manifesto, and his most recent, Being Mortal.
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