Career Coaching
Some challenges I have recently worked on with clients:
- I’m lost – I don’t know what to do with my life and career.
- This job doesn’t stimulate me or challenge me any more – what can I do?
- I need to make a plan to deal with office politics.
- I want to get a key promotion, I need to make a plan.
- I need to build my skills to move to the next level in my organisation – for more on this, see under Business Coaching below.
I provide time, space and questions to help you figure out problems like this. If you’d like to know more book a free 30 minute consultation here.
Starting A Business
You want to start a new business. It might be a side-hustle or you might be diving in right in. I’ve worked in a number of startup roles, started two of my own micro businesses and co-founded an innovation consultancy with a unique product offering. I have all the usual business concepts, from my coaching training and my MBA, but I also just know the fundamental personal challenge well. I provide a calm, private space for you to explore the challenges you face. Some of that is about being a sounding board for strategies and tactics. Some of it is about developing your own management skills. Most importantly, it’s about ways to deal with the fears we all experience when everything depends on us. You are the founder, but you don’t have to walk the path alone.
Want to know more? Reserve a time for a free 30 minute chat.
Business and Executive Coaching
Stress
Stress can have many sources, and it frequently comes with a feeling of being overwhelmed. The first stage of dealing with this is to get everything out on the table, all the different elements that are contributing to the stress. Once we can see everything, then we can start to think about how we tame it all. Sometimes this is easy, just bringing order to the whirl of demands on our attention has an immediate effect. Other times we need to make some harder choices about our priorities in order to get things under control. An extra element in the business context is the match between what our job asks of us and our current capabilities. Coaching to Improve Performance (see below) can often be the best way to fix stress at the root.
Confidence
Confidence is a multi-faceted and very individual thing. When our confidence is low, everything feels harder. It’s harder to ask and it’s harder to receive. We look enviously at some others who seem to just feel able to live and be visible without worries. Part of building confidence is understanding ourselves and looking at the beliefs that drive us. Then we can find the liberating assumptions that can help us live in a different way. Another part is developing a clear sense of our skills and abilities and understanding just how much we can do, but also when and how to ask for help. The third part of the picture is developing our thinking and learning skills which give us confidence to take on the new and the unexpected.
Communication
Useful communication depends on two key processes. The first is developing clarity. To articulate our thoughts to others we must be able to arrange them in our minds through rapid and skilful thinking. Unless we are clear about what we need to say, it cannot be communicated well. I will help you develop this through sessions of thinking together about important issues. This creates clarity on those matters, but also builds the muscle in the brain to help you respond quickly to unexpected moments.
The second is awareness of who you are communicating to. Communication is the transmission of clear thoughts from you to someone else – but what they hear and how they hear it will always depend on their starting point. Years of work in intercultural communication has helped me refine ways of thinking through how to step beyond your own thoughts and into the minds of the audience. As with clarity, this work not only prepares you for set piece communication, but builds the muscles in your mind to respond well in the moment.
Improving performance
The fundamental of improving performance is honest self-reflection. I create a calm space where you can think honestly about how much effort went in and where and what the results were. The first instinct of conscientious people is to “work harder” and do more. Sometimes that helps, but very often to improve performance means we need to think about whether what we are doing is working well. We need to step back from the whirl of activity and examine how we can improve our effectiveness. I bring a wide range of experiences from different kinds of businesses and sectors to help you assess what you are doing now and what your options to improve can be.
Building skills for the next level
I primarily work with two kinds of people who are making a step up. First, specialists who are moving into management. The big challenge for many is a change of mindset: from doing the work, to organising the work. From doing the work yourself to deciding what to do and what to delegate. From managing yourself to managing people are creating and looking after a team and budget. As well as a calm space to reflect on any difficulties, I also bring experience of making the change. Thus I have lots of approaches that can help and can relate to the uncertainty involved.
Second, I work with managers who are moving up into more leadership oriented roles or looking to improve their leadership skills. See the section about Leadership below.
Leadership
Leadership is often contrasted with management. Of course every leader still has things they need to manage but stepping up to leadership is a shift in focus, from the “what” to the “why.” The focus on “why” has two main branches, engagement and strategy.
Engagement
A leader takes responsibility not just for the short-term “get it done” motivation, but also the long-term engagement, empowerment and inspiration of the people in the organisation. Part of this is about communicating the strategic vision of the business, but part of it is about understanding the emotional territory of the organisation. What engages people? Will a particular decision amplify and inspire people’s efforts or will it undermine them? What is the long-term consequence of your actions? Taking time to think about these issues will pay real dividends for the organisation and for your career.
Being strategic
Developing your strategic instinct can be broken down into 3 main categories:
- Understanding the strategic context the organisation lives in. This means understanding the marketplace, the business environment and the key stakeholders you interact with.
- Looking to the future, stepping away from the tactical firefighting to make plans that can bring prosperity in the long term.
- Encouraging teamwork across the silos of the organisation. As a strategic leader you need a view that goes beyond your functional background and involves everyone in the vision and actions you create.
Between my coaching tools, my MBA and my work on thinking, I can help you achieve in any of these areas. Book a free 30 minute consultation to explore the possibilities.
