Greatest choice: The 3rd Way

*This article was first published in Romanian leadership magazine Cariere, here.

What do you do when nobody seems to be LISTENING to you? And what if YOUR WAY doesn’t match mine?

Last week I had this great talk with one of my students from the online classes I’m holding for the International Coach Academy (ICA), about consciously changing her attitude towards life and choosing the third way.

Helen is a manager within an international pharmaceutical company and at some point in the past months she reached a level where she COULDN’T BEAR anymore the feeling that she was IGNORED.

Although she was considered a VALUABLE MANAGER in her company for five years in a raw, apparently the branch she was leading wasn’t considered to be important. So she felt that her opinion didn’t matter and she wasn’t respected.

She would often hear things like: „Your explanation is very good, but it only applies in your branch”.

Six months ago she decided to do something DIFFERENT. Something for HERSELF.

Her challenge was to understand that, before anything, she had to deal with HER OWN THOUGHTS and FEELINGS. She wanted respect and validation and what she really needed in the first place was to love and respect herself.

We often talk about respect as being something directed OUTWARDLY, towards someone else. Since I was just a child, I was told to respect my parents, my grandparents, teachers, neighbors. This is yet another reason we find it difficult to integrate this feeling.

After a while, Helen started to avoid expressing her thoughts. So before she had been respected by other people around her, Helen needed to respect herself. She was the one who needed to understand that her opinion really mattered.

When you feel you are not valued and believe that everyone has something against you, you’re slowly adopting the victim role. This is the moment when you choose either to continue to believe that YOU DEPEND on the other people to be understood and accepted, or you can admit that it’s also your responsibility and start searching for a new perspective.

Helen succeeded by choosing the third way: she wouldn’t despise everyone and she wouldn’t back up. Instead, she chose to drive the process herself and not take it personal anymore. She managed to change her position in the company in such a way that she would be WORTH LISTENING TO.

This is, I believe, the single healthiest way in a long and wealthy career: to search for the third way. And that is THE RELATIONSHIP. It is not my way or your way. Both ways are important, but while we work together, it is THE WAY OF OUR RELATIONSHIP that matters. It is that road that we can both look at and walk on.

*I’m dedicating this article to my team: me, my wife Raluca, Paul, my daughter Ana, and my dog Argos.