Annie:
Welcome to The Whole Assistant Podcast. I'm your host, Annie Croner. I'm a former assistant who's passionate about our profession, and I'm also a certified coach who's invested in your success. You've come to the right place if you want to know what it looks like to stand in your power and achieve success as an assistant who can overwhelm and burn out. Now on to today's episode. Hello. How are you doing today? I am loving today. I am so excited.
Annie:
I've got my window open. There are wind chimes ringing in the background. So if you hear wind chimes, it's just my neighbor's wind chimes ringing. And it is just finally warm enough to have the window wide open in my office. So I'm loving today. And today we are talking about how to separate the data from the drama. I'm going to break that down in a minute, but before I do, I just want to share one thing. So The Leveled-Up Assistant, which is my group coaching, collaboration and training program, is open for enrollment.
Annie:
This program lasts six months and there is one call every week that fall into either coaching, collaboration call or training. My favorite calls, I'm not going to lie, are the collaboration calls because we just get to tap into the group wisdom. So how often do we actually get to do that? I love our collaboration calls, so please join us. I'm going to link to the registration page in the show notes below. It's wholeassistant.com/levelup. Again wholeassistant.com/levelup and I'm going to link to it in the show notes below. So check out the show notes. Registration closes tomorrow, you guys.
Annie:
So if you're listening to this as it comes out in real time on Thursday, May 16, doors close for this round of the level up assistant on Friday, May 17. The next round of the leveled up assistant begins on May 24. So one week from tomorrow, one week from Friday, May 17. So in the event that you want to submit a request to have your company pay for TLUA, please feel free to email me. I'm happy to fudge the close date in case you want to want to have your company pay for the program. It's going to be a lot of fun. I really, really do love group because it's just so much fun to get together and hear what's working for everyone else. Okay guys, now on to today's topic.
Annie:
We're talking about how to separate data from drama. I'm going to start out this episode by explaining a little bit about me and my coach training, especially for those who of you who are new to me, there is an episode which I will hopefully find and link to in the show notes as well, where I go into the model, which is the methodology of coaching that I have been trained to coach in. So basically, it's kind of very loosely associated with cognitive behavioral therapy there. Again, very loosely, I'm not a cognitive behavioral therapist or anything like that. But basically, there's the circumstance, and then we have a thought about the circumstance, and then from that thought, a feeling is created, and then from that feeling, we take action, and then that's how we create our results. And so what I like to talk about more recently with my clients is really like parsing out the data or the circumstance from the drama. So basically, I'm going to take that circumstance line, which is, like, definable in a court of law. This is the hard, fat, and fast truth of what happened, and kind of pull that aside and then parse out the drama that we have about that circumstance.
Annie:
So the drama is our thoughts, it is our judgments about the person. It's our judgment about the situation. It's our past history coming into play. It's all of those things, right? And so whenever I'm coaching a client, we really do look at the data versus the drama and parsing those two things out. And this can be really hard, especially for a lot of us who are more passionate and not so laid back. And I would put myself in that category. Like, I tend to run a little red. I tend to know exactly what I think about anything at any given point in time.
Annie:
And I know exactly why I think what I think, and I know exactly what I believe, why I believe, and that has actually gotten me into trouble in the past. So probably earlier on in my career, if somebody would write me an email that didn't sit right, I would, like, instantly shoot back another email, and I'd instantly get this knot in the pit of my stomach. Cause I knew that I was responding from an emotional place, I was responding from a place of the drama and giving into that instead of responding to the data of the situation. And so it really is a good idea, before we respond to anything, to get really clear on what is data and what is drama, so that we can actually parse those two things out before we respond. And so even asking for what you need in the moment, like asking to take a bit of a break if you're meeting one on one with somebody, asking to think about it and get back to them giving yourself a beat. If somebody sends you a slack message or a teams message that rubs you the wrong way and kind of investigating what it is about the other person's response or how they're showing up, that may not be sitting well with you. I'm really a big fan of this for a couple reasons and really looking at, like, parsing out the difference between your, the data and then your thoughts about the data. And one of the reasons is that we can become totally entrenched into our perception or into our judgment of somebody or a situation, and we can use any situation or any thoughts that we have about that situation to either, like, entrench us more into our current way of thinking, or we can use that situation to help us grow and improve.
Annie:
So that's one kind of pitfall is like being totally entrenched and like, I'm right and you're wrong and therefore I'm going to judge you and I'm going to have my judgments of you. That's one pitfall that we can go into. Another one is like this aloofness or writing it off. I'm not even going to engage with this. I'm just going to write it off. I'm not going to address anything. So it's like in a more avoidance type way of viewing the situation. So those are the two pitfalls that I come across more often than not.
Annie:
Either the discomfort of writing something off because we don't want to think about it and we don't want to actually engage with the situation or what's going on or complete and total entrenchment where we are spinning out on all the reasons we're right and the other person's wrong. Okay, so then the question then becomes, how do you actually respond to the data then? If there are these pitfalls and if we definitely have our strong thoughts or strong judgments about a situation or a person, how do you actually just respond only to the data? So I actually just had a situation like this come up last week. I'm not going to go into the details here, but I have to tell you, it was somebody responded to an email that I had written, and they were very upset about something that I've written in my email. And they actually, it was actually an invite email to my free masterclass. And they're like, I'm not going to your masterclass anymore. You can give my seat to someone else. And da da da da da. I'm like, okay.
Annie:
Like, I had so many judgments about what was being said to me in the moment. I had so many judgments about this person, but then I chose to sit on it for a little while because I know that, like, probably, like you, whenever I respond in the moment to those things, it just never goes well. And I really wanted to be thoughtful about what this person had told me, and I really wanted to make sure that I was responding on purpose and not from, like, a knee jerk reaction. Okay, so in that case, I actually sat on it for a little while, and I had a conversation with my husband about this person and about what I thought this person was trying to say or do or what this person could have meant. And I had all my reasons for why I said what I said in my email, and I had all these judgments about this other person, for how they responded to my email. And at the end of the day, there was a part of that email, and there was a part of what this person said that was absolutely true. Okay, so then I'm like, okay, well, this piece is true. This is something that I did, and I do want to be really mindful, and I really want to be intentional.
Annie:
And so ultimately, I owned what I could own in that situation as a way to keep my mind from being entrenched. Like, I was so self righteous in my perception of this person, and I was so entrenched in my self righteousness and the reasons why I wrote my email the way I did that, I couldn't even see that this person had a point until I calmed myself down and actually looked at it from a different vantage point. Actually tried to put myself in this person's shoes to understand more what they were saying. Actually looked for the shred of truth. So that's my first strategy for parsing out the data from the drama and responding only to the data is to ask yourself where the nuggets of truth are, because generally there's at least one or two, there's at least a little shred of truth involved in what they're telling you. Right. And that's probably why it's rubbing you the wrong way to begin with, is because there's a little shred of truth involved in what they're in what they're telling you. And I also had to let the rest of what this person thought about me go.
Annie:
I also had to let this person be wrong about me. But I didn't want to pass on the opportunity to really examine myself and to really look inward and be like, okay, this is this person's. This is what this person is saying about me. I want to know if there's something that I can do to improve and really leverage this situation and leverage the discomfort of all the emotions this is bringing up for me to really grow. So that's my first strategy for you guys, is to ask yourself where the nuggets of truth are and then own what is yours to own? So there, again, I had to really examine, do I want to hold on to this belief that I have been holding on to for so long, which is the reason why I wrote this email the way that I did? Or would I rather look at this as a growing opportunity and grow and expand myself and actually own this as a blind spot, which I did. And it was lovely. I wrote this person back and I'm like, I'm so sorry that this happened. And you're absolutely right.
Annie:
I've taken measures to improve all future communications in this way. And actually, I did not expect to hear back from this person because this person was, like, really flippant and wrote me off immediately when this person got my email. So it's really funny cause I actually got a response back and they said, thank you so much for paying attention. Thank you so much. And I was really not in a good place when I wrote this email, when I received your email, and I will try to take emails in the future with a grain of salt. And thank you so much for your very thoughtful response, which is, like, the best case scenario, especially as a business owner who really wants to grow and really wants to, like, include as many people as I can, I really appreciated that response. Okay. So I had to say, I have to say that that was surprising to me.
Annie:
And the only way that I got there was to give myself a beat. That's another kind of strategy. Just give yourself a minute, don't respond in the minute. Although tempting, because we may end up saying something that we don't actually want to say. We may end up hurting someone in a way that we couldn't have foreseen. We may have a take on a situation where we don't have the full scope and we don't have the full picture. So really getting curious with yourself with regards to what's going on for you in the moment, really getting curious about the other person and what may be going on for them and giving them the benefit of the doubt and then responding only to the data can go a long, long way in having a successful outcome. And I find that it's also helpful to do a thought download, either with a friend, like, where you're just talking it out and you're like, and this and this, and this.
Annie:
I cannot believe a, b c d, e like to do that, to do it that way, or to even just get a computer, get in your computer, open up a Google Doc, and just go to town writing out all your thoughts, all your judgments, and getting it out on paper. And I think I responded, like, three days after I got this email, two or three days after I got the email, and that was enough time for me to calm down, decide how I wanted to show up and show up on purpose. And it had such a great outcome at the end. And also, I will say that there are some cool byproducts of responding only to the data. The first byproduct is in the case of this, like, email response. This response to this email that I received was that it usually shuts the drama down if you're responding only to the data, because then I could own what was mine to own and actually ended up kind of agreeing with this person in a way, even though I didn't really agree with the approach or whatever, like, I agreed with, like, the root of what this person was getting at. Um, and that just shuts it down whenever we agree with whatever we're being accused of or wherever, whenever we can see that shred of truth. And I'm not saying I'm gonna own the whole thing, because I, like, there's only so much that I can own of the situation.
Annie:
But I will say that actually owning your piece can shut the drama down. And actually responding only to the data generally shuts down the drama. And it also helps you act from a place of empowerment. So I think that we end up giving so much of our power away when we try to address the drama. This just tends to be how it goes. Like, we actually have to look at what is it that is going to be worth our time and energy responding to, even if there's nothing for you to own in the situation. When we give in to addressing the drama and like, the he shed, he said, she said, they said type of dynamic, we end up giving so much of our mental energy, we end up giving so much of our mental power, we end up giving so much of our inner strength away in the process. Just if you can really parse out the data from the drama and respond only to the data, I think that you'll find the outcomes are so much better.
Annie:
And if you try and respond to all of it, or you try and respond to the drama, it just never works out really well. So that is what I have for you guys today. I hope you found it helpful. I've really been very mindful of the data and the circumstance, like what is provable in a court of law and then addressing that thing instead of all the thoughts and all the drama that we have around it. Okay, guys, that is what I have for you guys today. Be intentional. Be whole. That is all for now.
Annie:
I help assistants apply the concepts I share on this podcast. If you're ready to take your growth deeper and you're curious whether working with me in a coaching capacity is right for you, please email me at [email protected] to schedule your complimentary discovery call.
