One of the areas I have found that people struggle with a lot is confidence in knowing they are ready.
The questions they may be asking themself could be; ‘Am I capable?’ ‘Am I mature enough?’ ‘Am I trained enough?’ or even ‘Am I good enough for whatever their next big opportunity is?’
Not feeling you are ready for your next big step is common.
What that next big step could be varies from person to person. It may be, a job promotion, stepping into ministry that you haven’t before, buying a house, having a child, starting a relationship, retiring, or moving location or something else.
The truth is maybe you aren’t ready! But also, maybe you are. Working out which it is requires a little analysis. The Destiny Coaching Co-Creative toolkit contains a coaching tool which measures a person’s readiness.
Whether you want to measure yourself or others, here’s just a few hints (taken from this tool) to show you how you can get to a place of clarity and confidence. You can know where you stand right now with your readiness.
STEP 1 – Decide specifically what the goal is
Before you can measure your readiness, you need to decide precisely and accurately, what you are measuring your readiness for. For example, if you say, ‘I just don’t feel ready for a lot of all of this in general’. This is unhelpful as we don’t have specifics to work with.
The question is what is ‘this’ and what are the exact parts you don’t feel ready for? When coaching people through our readiness assessment tool, we recommend that people think of something that is a ‘role’. So, it could be ‘regional manager’, or ‘mum’, or ‘wife’, or ‘director of my own retreat centre’, or ‘managing director of my own company’. Think through the role you are measuring yourself against and all that it entails. Maybe write down some of the aspects of the job, kind of like an informal job description.
STEP 2 – Define Goal’s Requirements
So now with your role defined, start to imagine you are applying for that role. Think through how you would put together your resume. Think through how you would prepare to be interviewed and questioned about your suitability for that role. Put yourself in the shoes of someone recruiting you for the role, what would they be looking for most?
Write down a list of skills, characteristics, previous experience and whatever else you can think of that you would want if you were recruiting to fulfil this role. In our readiness assessment tool, we have eight categories that we measure, half are directly vocational and relate to the precise role and the other half relate more to character, lifestyle, personal and spiritual developmental areas.
STEP 3 – Separate Fact and Feeling
Whether you feel ready or not, is pretty much inconsequential to the truth. What you feel changes from day to day. It can also change in a heartbeat if you have a positive experience such as, getting affirmed or proving to yourself you are capable for this role.
But looking at the facts is more useful. So, once you have written your list start to analyse each item on the list. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the absolute ideal, how far are you towards the 10 in terms of being ready right now, in this moment?
Ask this question for each item. Remember it’s not how ready you feel, it’s how ready you are, (in terms of your resume, your experience, and the cold hard truth of how you would be measured in an interview situation). Look at your scores. Now you are getting an idea of your readiness.
What to do with your analysis…..
Firstly, compare your results to the way you feel. Do they match?
Are you feeling overly confident without being ready?
Or most likely, if you are reading this article, are you worrying unnecessarily over how ready you are, because you have discovered you are more ready than you think?
Either way, measuring your readiness is a way of bringing you clarity. It will show you what you can do to get more ready.
If it’s the way you feel that is holding you back, getting some coaching on shifting your mindsets and growing your confidence would be a great idea.
If you can see some gaps, think through with a coach or a friend, what actions you can take to be more ready in those areas. It could be for example that some training for that role, or some experience could dramatically move you forward.
Lastly, and most importantly, ask God to tell you about His thoughts on your readiness. Just because on paper you don’t seem ready, or qualified, doesn’t mean God doesn’t want to give you a promotion into that role sooner than you think. On the other hand, He may want you to mature in some specific areas. Asking Him and allowing Him to lead you in your next steps is key.
Christian Coaching
If you would like to be coached through assessing your readiness please do contact us to get a coach or join one of our forthcoming Destiny Activator Coaching programs on which you will be coached through this tool.
If you are interested in learning how to coach someone into clarity of readiness check out our Coach Training Certificates