What happens when you design a conversation with your parents?
Tiago Quintana was a participant in our “Leading Your Life” seminar at NOVA School of Business and Economics in Spring 2023 in Portugal. He has been working in Munich, Germany at Trinity Life Sciences, a strategy consulting firm, for over 2 years. In July 2022, he became the Global Co-Chair of the LGBTQIA+ Perspectives Group at Trinity. This leadership role may not have happened without his participation in our program at NOVA. You may recognize him from our Meet the People campaign on LinkedIn! As promised, in today’s newsletter he shares his story of coming out to his parents.
He designed this “Hard Conversation” with Human Better EDU Executive Life Coach & Regional Director Europe, Bettina Wertheim, allowing time and practice to reflect on the delivery and tone of the conversation and ultimately leading to the successful communication.
Q: What was it about your coaching that helped you feel comfortable to come out to your parents?
#1 Understanding why I needed these conversations: coaching helped me reflect about why there was urgency to speak to my family, what was the impact on my life of having these conversations, as well as, the potential impact of avoiding the conversations. I believe that it is very common to postpone hard conversations, therefore clearly reflecting about why this was important to me was crucial to be ready to come out to my parents.
#2 Deciding the best approach for the conversations: the sessions with Bettina helped me understand what were the most important messages / key takeaways I wanted to convey to my parents, what I wanted to avoid saying that could lead to misunderstandings, what would be the potential reactions from them, and how I would like to respond to those reactions.
It is impossible to completely forecast all reactions and questions in hard conversations but preparing for different scenarios helped me feel comfortable and ready to finally come out to my parents.
Q: What has been the positive impact on your life from this conversation with your parents?
Although my coming out to my parents was, to a degree, unexpected to my family, they reacted much better than I was expecting. I now have their support and feel free to be my true self!
In addition, I gathered strength to come out publicly including in my workplace and was invited to become the global Co-Chair of the LGBTQIA+ group at Trinity.
I could not be happier with the outcome of the hard conversations I had while coming out and can tell that coaching was a critical piece for its success!
Yours may not be a conversation on this subject but likely (if you look) there could be one that you’ve been avoiding. Tiago’s surprising “to him” results could inspire you with what is possible in your life if you go for it.
If you want help designing a Hard Conversation that you know you’ve been needing to have, reach out to us about individual coaching. We have low cost offerings for kids and adults. Click below to receive a FREE 30 minute consultation with one of our coaches to see if coaching could help uplevel your life.
Gaby Jordan
is the President and Founder of Human Better EDU. She has a deep passion for empowering parents, students, administrators and faculty across all levels of education that stems from her own commitment to education and students thriving. Email Gaby at gaby@humanbetteredu.org.