Getting to know your inner coach

• Relax deeply, letting yourself focus on your breathing.
• Imagine a world in which it is impossible for you to fail
• Fantasise this perfect world, and see yourself in it, in the future
• Describe yourself in detail in this perfect world
• How do you move, look, act, speak, live?
• Describe your home, clothes, car, and work.
• Let yourself drift back to the present.

COACHING  MATTERS - COACH OR MENTOR?

You are facing a new challenge.   Perhaps it is taking on a new role, setting up a new business or you just want to become more effective, or whatever.   Someone suggests that you should get a mentor or a coach to help you over the hurdles.   Which to choose - mentor or coach?

Classically, a mentor is ‘a trusted adviser, guardian and teacher’; the roles that Odysseus asked his friend Mentor to perform for his son Telemachus while he was away fighting the Trojans.   The term ‘coaching’ first appeared in Thackeray’s book ‘The History of Pendennis’ in 1849.     

What’s the difference between a mentor and a coach?   Some research carried out earlier this year into executive coaching behaviours has helped to clarify the differences.

A mentor has expertise in what you want to do.   A mentor has skills and knowledge you would like to acquire, experiences to be shared and compared, and a justifying track-record of success.   And he or she can be a trusted adviser, guardian and teacher – perhaps also a role model.   A mentor’s behaviours will be those of telling, advising, instructing, guiding and explaining - what they did then or would do now.   Caveat - the choice is yours alone as to what you decide to do.  

And that can present problems.   How the mentor interpreted circumstances and decided actions were heavily influenced by his personality, preferences, habits and style of learning.   Not only are today’s circumstances likely to be different, but also your personalities are unlikely to be the same.   You may not feel entirely congruent with the mentor’s preferred approach.   At worst, you may feel obliged to do something which is ‘not you’ - and conclude that this challenge is not one for you to face.

Facing a new challenge successfully depends as much on who you are and want to become as on what you want to do.   Change in our outside world needs to be matched by change in our inside world.   This is where the coach comes in – to co-create inner change.   While you are the only expert on how you do being you and who you want to become, the coach is an expert in facilitating that voyage of learning and discovery – of increasing the self-awareness and self-management necessary for you to become the instrument of change that you desire to be.  

We are all creatures of habit and most of what we do is out of our awareness – think of how you drive a car.   Change can involve unlearning old habits as well as learning new ones.   Neither is easy, and the coach will provide whatever challenge, encouragement and support you may require.   The coach’s behaviours will be those of listening, questioning, reflecting, summarising, paraphrasing and giving feedback.   Caveat – the agenda is entirely yours.

In practice, all coaches mentor to some extent and all mentors do some coaching.   Where do your needs lie along the spectrum between pure coaching at one end and pure mentoring at the other?  What is the balance between what you want to do (mentoring) and who you need to become (coaching) in order to grow into your new challenge with success?

Paul S. Davies, BSc, MBA, ACC.

Executive and Business Coach

paul.davies@members.swis.net

Are you a Juggler or a Balancing Act?

Well, hopefully in order to live the life that you want to live, you have mastered both art forms, without feeling like a Circus Clown spinning plates. Ideally, as the advert used to say, you have found a way to “work, rest and play” but without the aid of a well known sweet and sickly brand of confectionary!

Time management is an art form - one that can revolutionise your life. If you are happy and healthy, then all the people around you will benefit. If you are out of balance, then your family, friends and colleagues will not receive all that you have to offer them.

So, how do you ensure that you manage to prioritise all your work, your family and social commitments whilst also finding some time for yourself? Well, my advice is to create a timetable that reflects the week that you would like to have. This may require you to undertake a “time audit”, monitoring how you spend each hour of your day from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep, to see where you possibly “leak” time. It may be that you find yourself running around doing lots of things, multi-tasking but with a sense of having done very little and not achieving what you set you to achieve during your day.

In order to feel calmer, balanced and have a sense of achievement at the end of each day, break your waking day up into hour slots and decide on what you are going to do in each slot – "work", "me time", "social time", "family time" and "partner time". Make sure that you spend no more than two slots at a time on any one area, but ensure that across the day and/or week you spend time on all five areas. To help this process some clients colour code their timetable so that they can instantly see that they have included time for each area in any given week.

Once you start using the timetable as your guide for the day, you will discover that you have more time than you think and at the end of the day, you will be aware of the fact that you have achieved many of the things that you wanted to, as you will have been focused and energised moving from one activity to another. Most of my clients when they use this tool also discover that they have more time available to them than they realised.

"When you create more SPACE for yourself, TIME stops feeling like a scarce commodity" - Thomas Leonard

When using the timetable, you are breaking an old habit and creating a new one and as it takes three months for something to become a habit, it is highly likely that you will “fall off the horse” and at this point, it is important to remember how good you felt when it worked for you and then you need to “get straight back on the horse”.

So, become your own Ringmaster, juggle, balance and ride the horse bareback, rather than feeling like the clown lurching from one trick to another, dropping lots of plates...

June Gamble

Life & Business Coach

www.junegamble.co.uk

june@junegamble.co.uk

01752 290527

 Conflict in the workplace costs money. Recent research has estimated that UK businesses spend nearly £40 billion a year on managing conflicts. Mediation is a cost effective and efficient way of dealing with potentially damaging disputes. It uses a number of coaching skills to achieve results.

ACAS, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, asked 500 small/medium sized enterprises about their experiences of using mediation. Of those who had used it 82% said it had resolved the issue completely or partly.

Having the confidence and ability to intervene in the early stages of conflict has the most impact and success.

In April this year a new Code of Practice for dealing with disciplinary and grievance procedures was created. Failure to follow this code by either the employer or the employee can result in an Employment Tribunal adjusting claims up or down by 25%.

It is therefore in an employer’s interest to look at every way of resolving conflict in the workplace. Coaching and mediation share some common ground. The skills that are needed to provide high quality coaching are also vital for successful mediation. These skills include:

• Maintaining an objective and impartial outlook
• The ability to build relationships and trust
• Being a skilled listener
• Asking questions that encourage and allow people to talk openly about the issues
• Encouraging people to come up with options and solutions.

There are no fixed rules for the use of mediation but a recent report published by the Chartered Institute of Personal & Development (CIPD) identified the following areas as most successful:

• Relationship breakdown (86%)
• Bullying and harassment complaints (74%)
• Sex/Race Discrimination (55%)

It is also useful for rebuilding relationships after formal action such as a disciplinary hearing.

The same report asked businesses what the main benefits of using mediation were for them. These included:

• Improving relationships between employees (83%)
• Reducing or eliminating stress (71%)
• Retaining valuable employees (63%)
• Reducing the number of formal grievances (57%)
• Avoiding the costs of defending an Employment Tribunal (49%).

Managing conflict in the workplace in the early stages can also help to maintain the reputation of the business.

Individuals benefit by having the opportunity to talk confidentially about their experiences and feelings.  Talking face-to-face can be challenging for some people, however where it works they do see much quicker results in the working relationships.

You can choose to employ an external mediator to work with your employees to resolve their workplace issues. Alternatively training managers is a cost-effective and efficient way of dealing with workplace conflict. Free no-obligation consultation is available to discuss your business needs.

Complaints about managers, their behaviours or management styles are often the causes of conflict at work. Managers today often have to bring about change either people or process change. Training managers in ways to tackle the challenges they face correctly can negate claims of bullying.  How do you rate your managers in managing conflict?

‘People are key to organisational success and productivity, negative conflict can severely hamper an organisations drive for competitive advantage and damage employee well-being’ (CIPD August 2008).

Be ready for the upturn, have a healthy conflict-free workplace.

Deborah Morris (Coaching Inc member)

Executive, Leadership & Career Coach

www.Deborahmorris.co.uk

Deborah@deborahmorris.co.uk

Life, Business and Executive coaching is becoming more widely known and accepted as a useful means of supporting people and businesses to take the actions needed to reach their goals.

Coaches establish a co-active working relationship with clients, where clarity of purpose, trust and professional ethics are essential, as the coach engages with the client in a range of techniques which support the client’s agenda.  Many of these techniques rely on the spoken word, such as the use of powerful questions, interactive role play and descriptive perceptions. These are used to help people become more self aware and see more clearly the actions they need to take to reach their chosen goal. For many, these techniques are sufficient and successful, but for some people the power of words is subordinate to the power of the pictures and ideas that words can create in the imagination.

During my training I developed skills in ‘listening’ which not only enabled me to reflect back to clients in conversation what I was ‘hearing’ and seeing, but to capture the essence of their thoughts and feelings in story, metaphor and verse. The impact of this on some clients was remarkable. The images I created in the writing, though somewhat fictional, were making far more impact as a catalyst for new behaviours and actions than any verbal exchanges could have achieved. Between each coaching session I would write another instalment on our coaching journey, so that after eight sessions the collective works had supported the client in moving from an initial ‘stuck’ place towards their goal with a new, self determining energy. The stories, metaphors and verses for some are held in the memory when the conversations are long forgotten.

The essence of this technique is to place the client at the centre of a short story, told in narrative or verse, no more than a page long, which at first, accurately represents the place the client is in and the emotions that surround being there. The story then unfolds to show new ways of looking at this place and then beyond it as the client engages their imagination in developing at each successive session a clearer view of the action they need to take to reach their goals.

A coach must of course work in the most useful way for the client and story, metaphor and verse may not be for everyone. A coach must also be very sure that in using this technique, it accurately captures the client’s situation and does not implant an agenda that belongs to them. At each session therefore, some time is spent talking about the ideas and visualisation built into the story or verse

I believe that everybody has the capacity to use imagination and visualisation to a greater degree than most everyday working lives either demand or allow. The skill in coaching is to work in partnership with the client to draw out through powerful questioning and discussion the core issues the client has and the solutions the client holds within themselves. This can be challenging for both, but in my experience also very useful in helping clients think differently about themselves and through this motivate them to take action to achieve the changes they want in life.

Les Williams

L K Solutions Ltd

Les is a Life, Business and Executive Coach; based in Plymouth and a member of the INC Group of Coaches.

Contact: lksolutions@hotmail.com

Why should we coach specifically for men?

Members of social groups who have traditionally been overlooked or even deliberately oppressed, such as carers, low-paid workers, women, children or members of racial minorities, have quite rightly had their cases championed.  Alongside this, there seems to have been an assumption that if men are not part of such groups that we need have no particular concern for them.

However, according to the Office of National Statistics, 75% of UK suicides are by men.  Suicide rates for men are higher than for women across all age groups, and men of 25-44 are almost four times more likely than women to kill themselves.  Older men have highest suicide rate, but young men have fastest rising rate.

Why do so many more men than women feel that life is simply not worth living?

A recent online survey asked what are the five greatest challenges for men in modern Britain.  The answers, intimate relationships, work and career, fatherhood, family relationships and self-esteem/self-confidence underlined what I have learned over many years of therapeutic and coaching work:  whatever the presenting theme or goal, many men have underlying relationship difficulties.

So how did we get here?

For hundreds of centuries, man and women raised their children in small tribal groups of hunter-gatherers.  Roles were simple and distinct and involved finding food, shelter and safety in order to have children and keep the tribe alive.  Once farming developed, there followed thousands more years where life followed the seasons, and was based around food, shelter, safety and village rather than tribal life.  A brief few hundred years ago the Industrial revolution led men to work away from families, and ordinary men ceased to be an integral part of the family in everyday affairs.

Now in the information age, men have multiple careers and lose their work identity.  Remote working breaks down the peer group at work and the lack of physical work mean that men are no longer identified with physical strength.  The need for higher education coupled with huge property values mean that many men live with their parents much longer than a generation ago.

The dramatic increase in marital breakdown has meant that many men lose their economic power as a “breadwinner” and also their family role, and they struggle to find another.

What is the answer?

We need to seek a pattern of manhood which suits us as an individual.  Answering these questions will get us started:

·         What are we really good at?

·         What is great in our family of origin?

·         What do we want to change in our lives or our personal history?

·         What are our goals?

·         Who do we admire?

·         What do we value the most?

·         What do we need to get better at?

Men also have to overcome the traditional idea that they have to be strong and to know all the answers.  The myth is that seeking help is a weakness.  We can explore these questions with a friend, a mentor or a Life Coach, but we have to be brave enough to admit if we feel a bit baffled about the way ahead!  So contact someone today to get started!

By now some of our New Year good intentions have fallen by the wayside.   With others we are making progress, perhaps not as much as we hoped but still worth pursuing.

One of the most common is the intention ‘to show more appreciation, to say thank you more often’.   You are doing it almost weekly for most of your people, although it sometimes seems that your good intention is not appreciated!

In business, investing in appreciation can be critical – especially now, when planning for the upturn.   Research shows the main reason people leave a business is not about pay or promotion; it’s because they don’t feel appreciated.   Investing in appreciation has a low cost and a potentially huge return.   Here’s the checklist to use at this stage:

1.       Are you rushing?   Be patient.   New habits take time to become embedded – in ourselves and among others.   Your sub-conscious is becoming rewired – in its own time.

2.       Is what you say true and recognisable as such?   If not, it can be heard as flattery or false.   Are you trying to catch people doing things right?   Cos’ what you seek is what you’ll find.

3.       Is what you say specific?   Is it clear, concrete and located?   If not, it can be heard as waffle, candyfloss.   Have you previously agreed what good achievement looks, sounds or feels like?  

4.       Have you also set a challenge?   Desist.   It implies that although they are good they could be better.   They’ll hear you saying ‘not good enough yet’.

5.       Have you also added a correction?   Desist.   They’ll hear the bad, what wasn’t right, and not the good.   Your appreciation becomes false, manipulative.

At this stage all the above five are being practiced, with a frequency of once a week (and finding the time for that is usually the hardest bit).   Yet something seems to be missing.

It’s time for the sixth.   Developing this habit can be even more challenging – yet it’s the source of the greatest impact.

6.       Have you entered their world?   We tend to give our appreciation, recognition and praise in the same way that we like to receive it ourselves.   For maximum impact, give it in the way they prefer to receive it.   Make it personal to them alone.   There is fun in finding out how.  

Use just four parameters - (1) spoken or written, (2) public or private, (3) expected or unexpected, and (4) professional or personal.   The last differentiates between what they do and who they are.   What are their preferences on each parameter?

A statement that is spoken, public, expected and professional can be exactly what your alpha extrovert sales manager wants to hear.   Yet such could cause your brilliant introverted market analyst to cringe with horror and panic – but would rather read, and forever keep and cherish, the note you sent – that was written, private, unexpected and personal.

Whether an employer or employee, giving appreciation that is true, specific and personal works upwards as well as down.   When was the last time you invested in appreciating your own boss?   How would she or he prefer to receive it?   You’ll be amazed.   Enjoy!

Paul S. Davies, BSc, MBA, ACC.

Executive and Business Coach, based in Plymouth.

paul.davies@members.swis.net

As a Life and Business Coach, one of the most common issues that my clients bring to their sessions is their need for a healthy work/life balance.

Often they feel trapped by professional and/or personal pressures such as managing an organisation, running their own business, developing their career, the day-to-day organisation of running a family or looking after dependents.

It is possible to achieve a healthy work/life balance, whatever your situation, but it will take a lot of hard work and you will have to work hard on everything but your professional or personal pressure.

It doesn’t actually take that much time and energy (anything between half an hour to an hour a day) to improve your life, however, it does require a change of attitude and behaviour. As the saying goes, “old habits die hard”.

So, how do you achieve a healthy work/life balance?   Clearly identify the areas of your life that you would like to develop, change or spend more time on.   One of the ways to do this is by completing a Life Chart.   On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being low and 10 being high, assess how you feel, at this point in time, about your health, spiritual/religious life, work/career, finances, personal relationships, family/extended family, friends/social life.

Once you have seen where you are out of balance, identify the area that you would like to change the most, followed by the next two areas that you would like to improve.   The first area is probably the area that you have been trying to change for some time without much success.

You may want to change your job, but you are ignoring the fact that you feel unwell and have money problems.   You may think that changing your job is the only way to feel healthier and wealthier and so you become trapped in a cul-de-sac, waiting for someone else to open up the road.

Shift focus and look at the other two areas that you wish to change.   Decide what changes you would like to achieve and by when.   Then think about what has stopped or prevented you from achieving these two goals in the past.   Recognise when you are using excuses to justify why you haven’t changed these areas of your life - the most common are 'time', 'money', 'other people' and 'fear'.

Put these reasons aside, think about all the ways that you could achieve these goals, with or without time and money.   List them all!   If it helps, imagine that you are advising your best friend as to how they could achieve these goals.   When you have completed your list, decide on which of these options suit you and the action that you are going to take and when.

It helps to share these goals and actions with a friend or colleague.   Ask them to check in with your progress, as a way of supporting you in making these changes.

Once you have started to make changes in the second and third areas of your life, you will discover that it becomes easier to make changes in your priority area.

June Gamble is a Life & Business Coach based in Plymouth, and a Member of the Coaching INC Group.

E-mail info@junegamble.co.uk

Phone 01752 290527

Communicating bad business news is a difficult task.   However the continuing economic situation may mean that bad business messages may still need to be given.   And that task may fall to you.   So am I going to tell you there is an easy way to do it?   No, but there are some techniques I can share with you.

First understand your audience.   Be clear about the impact your message has on them.   Match your message to the audience.   If you don’t get their attention in the first few sentences you are not likely to get it at all.

Next establish the outcome you want the message to achieve.   Begin with the end in mind.   The clearer you are on these two points the more successful you will be.

To deliver the message you must first set the scene.   Do this with a statement that is relevant to the audience.   Keep it simple and facts based.   For example: ‘The design side of the business has been impacted by web technology’.

Once you have set the scene immediately communicate the bad news.   You must do this with a simple, clear statement that leaves no doubt about your message.   Say it once and once only.   Be specific words like ‘sorry’ and ‘unfortunately’ are not suitable.   Now is the time to be honest: ‘Therefore we will be closing the design division in 6 months time’.

Your audience will immediately think, what does that mean for me?   So give any details regarding this now.   For example: ‘We will be able to offer approximately 30% of you positions in other divisions within the Company, 70% of you will be made redundant’.

You must then go on to explain what will happen now.   This should include the procedures and timescales.   An example of what could follow is: ‘We are currently assessing the skills each of you has; you will have the opportunity to be involved in this assessment.   When we have identified who is suitable for redeployment we will hold a meeting with each of you.   We should have completed this within the next four weeks’.

Wherever possible deliver the message face-to-face.   Ideally you should deliver bad news to employees as early in the week as possible.   Don’t do it on a Friday and send them home full of questions and uncertainty.   Let them know who they can talk to.

As you have read this you may be thinking this sounds a bit harsh.   Well yes, it is.   But if you are delivering bad news people want it.   They are likely to have worked out that something is going to happen.   They don’t want to hear about other things and certainly not success stories. 

Throughout this you need to be preparing yourself.   To look confident you need to be confident.   Practice delivering the message in front of a mirror.   Take notice of your body language and facial expressions.   You need to be neutral and relaxed.

In summary; be honest, be open, use simple language and don’t apologise.   You should acknowledge the audience emotion and manage your own emotion so that you don’t come across as insincere.

Finally don’t forget to support those who are not affected.   They are often the forgotten ones.

Deborah Morris - An Executive & Corporate Coach based in Cornwall and a member of the Coaching INC Group.

For information: www.Deborahmorris.co.uk.

So you have a clear idea of what result you want to achieve in your business life and have you are completely committed to their achievement and you know you will do them, you finish what you’re doing now, when the business is in a stronger position, when the kids are older, when you can get around to it, etc, etc.

Except, of course, you never do.   The motivational speaker Brian Tracy talks about the place called ‘Someday Isle’, a place where people go to find like minded people who sit around and tell each other “Some day I’ll”.   I like the concept of the very rare ‘round tuit’ - something we all promise to get and yet never quite find.   How many times have you heard, from yourself or others “I’ll do that when I get around to it”?   Of course, we never do.

In order then to achieve the outcome we want, we need to consider and express those desired goals as ‘well-formed outcomes’.   Research shows that outcomes that are ‘well-formed’ have a high probability of being achieved.   So what makes an outcome well formed?   

First of all the reason for achieving it, the goal beyond the goal, must be known.   For example, at a personal level the goal-setter may wish to feel better about themselves and have more self-esteem (the end goal).   In order to achieve that goal they want to be fitter and healthier (journey goal).   In order to do that they want to lose 12 pounds (journey goal) and in order to do that want to complete 20 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week (journey goal).   This nested or tiered approach is very effective because knowing why we are going to achieve something is 90% of achieving it.   If we know the 90% why, the 10% how will naturally follow.   This approach can also be reversed by asking yourself what each goal will give you.

The first journey goal is then stated in the format of the 4Ps:

Personal:          I, not he, she, they.

Positive:          Will.   Goal-setters never use should, could, might, etc.

Present:           Stated in the now.   Not “some day I’ll ... when I get around to it”!

Period:             A specific, measurable, time period – with a set date.

So the goal now becomes: I will start 20 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week on Monday 7 June 2010 – in order to lose 12 pounds by Sunday 29 August 2010.

This goal is set, owned and maintained by the goal-setter.   It will contain the degree of stretch with which the goal-setter is comfortable and the goal-setter believes that it can be achieved.    The very small number of people who set believable goals are the same very small number of people who become very successful.

In adopting outcome thinking you are leaving ‘Someday Isle’ behind and joining those people from all walks of life who consistently achieve what it is they want in a manner that is entirely congruent with who they are.   One thing is for sure though, if you stay as you are, you stay where you are and tomorrow is always the busiest day of the week.

Trevor Horne is a Plymouth-based Personal and Small Business Coach and a member of the Coaching INC Group.   www.kingsleyconsultancy.co.uk  

Are you aware of your current personal and professional values?

If you have an annoying niggle about a professional or personal situation and know that you are not happy about it but are not sure why, it is usually because either your values are being threatened by the situation or your values have changed and you haven’t noticed.

If you ignore what matters most to you, you are in danger of losing confidence, self-esteem and energy, which in turn can threaten personal and professional relationships and your health and happiness.

So, the easiest way to re-evaluate your values is to write a list of words that represent all the things that are important to you, such as family, friends, love, trust, honesty, creativity, integrity, health, independence, etc.   Once you have a full page, identify your top 5 and put them in order of priority (not quite as easy as it sounds, but an important exercise).   

These top 5 values can now be used to question any personal or professional situations.   So, for example, if you are offered a new contract/job or project and your values are family, health, honesty, creativity and independence, you can begin to ask yourself a range of 360-degree questions:

*      How will this offer affect my relationships with my family?

*      Will it directly affect any of the members of my family?

*      How will it affect my health?

*      Do I feel healthy enough to embark on this offer?

*      Am I being honest with myself about whether or not I really

want to accept this offer?

*      Do I think the organisation making the offer are being honest

about the nature of the offer?

*      Will it enable me to be creative?

*      Do I feel that the organisation making the offer are creative in

their thinking and operation?

*      Will I be able to maintain or develop my sense of independence?

*      Is the organisation making the offer operating independently?

If you are able to positively respond to the questions about 3 or more of your top 5 values, then it is a good offer for you.

However, if you respond negatively to the questions about 3 or more of your top 5 values and decide to accept the offer, it will threaten or jar with you and could potentially be a difficult job or project.   So, you can either choose not to accept the offer, or you can be aware of the values that will be threatened and look at ways of strengthening them, either within the new job or in your personal life, to ensure that all your values are met and that you do not ‘pay’ for ignoring what matters most to you.

It is useful to have copies of your 5 values in appropriate places to remind you to use them before responding to requests.   So, Post It notes on your telephone and computer is a good start and when somebody offers you an opportunity, thank them and tell them that you will get back to them.   Pause, breath, ask yourself questions around your values, then make a decision and act accordingly.

June Gamble is a Life & Business Coach based in Plymouth, and a Member of the Coaching INC Group.

E-mail info@junegamble.co.uk

Phone 01752 290527