Is All That Information Helping You?

When you have some issue, do you go looking for information? Go onto Google and look it up, read every single article about it? Buy books? Ask friends, experts? Listen to podcasts?

Then after collecting all that information, what do you do with it?

Anything? Any movement towards some kind of solution or resolution?

I bet you do feel better though. Maybe the information collection process made you feel like you did something about your issue. How long does this better feeling last? A few minutes? Hours? Does it go away after you realize the problem you had was still there, despite having collected all this information?

The truth is, information RARELY moves people to do anything by itself. If it did, then with the world’s information (and misinformation!) at our fingertips, you’d think that collectively the world would be in a better place. But it’s not. YOU are not, are you?

Here are the real truths behind information, from what I’ve seen in coaching sessions:

Information alone CAN move people, but only CERTAIN types of people.

These are self motivating, highly functional people who just need a bit of info and can run with it. These are definitely NOT anywhere near the majority of people I meet in session.

Information is often required, but motivation needs to be addressed before information can be applied.

Most people are here. You can give them all the information they ask for, but still they won’t do anything. Thus, in sessions we need to figure out what is stopping you from applying the information and address that before anything else.

Those with less experience require more information than those with more, given a context.

As coaches we do believe that people have the answer inside them somewhere. But for people new to a situation, or relatively young in life, a bit of information often can reduce their barriers to moving forward and can be the motivating factor itself. I am a big fan of Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership model which describes this aspect of leadership and have seen it work well with clients.

Which one fits you?

So if you still sit around doing nothing after googling for hours about some problem you have, what is stopping you from applying this information now that you have it?

What do you fear will happen to you?
What makes you want to stay in place?
What would increase comfort to trying what you learned?
What do you need that is missing right now?