I want to introduce you to a tool I love that has saved my clients and me from endless struggle, offered remarkable clarity, and helped us break through situations that seemed impossible. I call it The Mirror Game. Though the principle is simple – you ask yourself, “What is this situation or person mirroring back to me?” – executing it to maximize impact requires important practices that I will outline below.
I recommend using The Mirror Game when:
- You are frustrated and confounded by a situation
- You are having a challenge that you want to break through (or)
- You are having a challenge that you never want to repeat (and)
- You can’t get all the insight you really need from colleagues, direct reports, or friends.
Honestly, you can use The Mirror Game anytime you want deeper clarity. If you’ve been on a growth path for a while, you understand the value of self-awareness and how it can transform and catapult your work and leadership to the next level. The Mirror Game is a valuable tool for self-awareness, often leading to surprising realizations that are hard to access any other way.
I will share some anecdotes about how this works, but first, let’s outline the process.
It Starts With a Simple Question
“What is this situation or person mirroring back to me?” You can modify the question or ask multiple questions to fit the situation. Examples: “What is this situation or person showing or teaching me? How can I better learn from this?” Etc.
I recommend starting with a simple question and adding more questions as you go. But the questions alone aren’t the magic.
It Requires Radical Openness and Honesty
The Mirror Game won’t work if you go into it with resistance to seeing the truth. It’s like having a giant blind spot in the middle of your field of vision. The Mirror Game relies on a simple truth:
You have to want to grow more than you want to avoid the discomfort of the truth.
Take a deep breath, commit yourself to seeing the truth, and trust that you will only get better and stronger as a result of anything you see.
It Helps To Listen to Inner Wisdom, aka Your Heart and Gut Brains
Your logic (aka Head Brain) only knows so much, and at the point that you’ve been trying to figure a situation out for a while, you’ve likely already exhausted its resources. Fortunately, we have three biological brains – head, heart (intrinsic cardiac nervous system), and gut (enteric nervous system). In over 18 years of coaching, I never cease to be amazed by my clients’ insights when I ask them to listen to the wisdom of their heart or gut brains.
Here’s the thing about wisdom – everyone has it; it’s the quiet voice that whispers the truth to you, but you frequently ignore it because thoughts and emotions are louder. Taking the time to tune into wisdom is part of the power of this exercise.
The process is simple, and if you are just starting, here’s what I recommend:
- Bow to the head brain, thank it, and let it know you will get back to it later. If you skip this step initially, it will try to intervene because we train the head brain to believe it has all the answers when it doesn’t.
- Put your hand on your heart or gut brain (or both)
- Ask, “What does the wisdom in my heart or gut know about this situation?”
- Keep asking Wisdom questions, like the ones above, “What is this situation teaching or mirroring back to me?”
Mirrors Can Be Direct or Indirect
This is where The Mirror Game gets interesting. Sometimes we realize something that’s a direct or obvious mirror, such as, “This angry employee is mirroring back my own frustration with the limitations of our industry.” But often the most powerful mirrors are indirect and less obvious, pointing out a truth or lesson that’s been hiding out in a blind spot. Here are a few of my favorite examples.
Example 1: I was coaching a CEO startup founder who was butting heads with his CTO/head engineer so badly, the situation seemed impossible. Firing the CTO was not an immediate option for various reasons. So we dug a little deeper and played The Mirror Game.
The CEO was quiet for a moment as he listened to wisdom; then he rolled his eyes. “Oh crap. I’m the problem.” He went on to describe how he was being too “pie in the sky” about the vision for the company, and he wasn’t bridging the gap well enough into tactical reality. “It’s not that I don’t see how to bridge the grand vision to reality; it’s that I’m not communicating it. I assume the CTO is going to get it on his own. That assumption is on me; that’s my problem, not his. It’s my job to bring my team along so they can buy into the vision.” He immediately changed his communication style and methods. This eased most of the conflict between them and allowed them to partner successfully on their first launch.
Example 2: A senior leader had to fire an underperforming employee who wouldn’t take feedback and violated several company rules. The leader handled it really well, but it was still a long and painful process. At the end of it, she said to me, “Can we look at every possible way I can learn from this situation? Because I never, ever want to have to go through this again.”
Initially, I couldn’t see what she could have done differently. But we played The Mirror Game, listened to Wisdom, and she realized two critical things: 1) In the hiring process, she listened to everyone else’s preferences and bypassed her own instinct that had warned her not to hire that employee. 2) She needed to create a culture of excellence on her team. She implemented the changes immediately, began trusting her gut instinct and wisdom, and steadily built a culture of excellence with her team. The result was that, over the next year, she cultivated one of the highest-performing teams I’ve ever worked with.
Example 3: In the last article, I mentioned my experience leading teams through change and being on the receiving end of backlash. My colleagues were supportive, agreeing with my perspective and judging the teams for being irrational. While I appreciated their validation, it wasn’t helping me grow and do things differently. So I played The Mirror Game. This was how I realized I had overestimated the team, and that my desire to think the best of people was holding me back. The Mirror Game helped me understand that I needed to accept them as they are so that I could communicate effectively and reach them. It was an important lesson that I have carried with me ever since.
Harvest All The Lessons You Can From Challenging Situations
Every challenging job, relationship, or situation hides gold in the form of valuable lessons we might not learn anywhere else. Some of the most transformative experiences start with difficulty and hard learning. When a client goes through tough stuff, I often say to them, “Let’s harvest every last little thing we can from this situation; might as well grow, become a better person, and get something out of this!”
Whether you use The Mirror Game or some other approaches, I hope you take every opportunity to walk through a gateway of growth. You may even surprise yourself by how far you can stretch and how much you are capable of.
Are you already using inquiry like The Mirror Game? Or is this a helpful tool for your toolbox? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
If you need more support and brainstorming, let’s meet: Schedule a time. New clients can schedule a free 30-minute intro session. I look forward to talking.