Lead With Confidence

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“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom” so Socrates was famously thought to have said.

So, who do I have the pleasure of meeting on this page?

How would you describe yourself?

Introduce yourself to me….

Thank you! I can hear some great responses, some very articulate, confident responses.  I can also hear some hesitancy, some responses lacking confidence and some very humble responses.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of senior managers and leaders.  Some leaders I support do have a strong self-knowledge and understanding and yet others, and sometimes surprisingly, struggle to articulate who they are and what they bring to their role.  This in itself brings the self-doubt and lack of confidence whose corrosive pattern needs to be broken.

The Role Of A Coach – Support AND Challenge

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Adventure and daring – evocative words, aren’t they? These are the words which stayed with me following a recent talk on “International Coaching” as part of International Coaching Week. The workshop was led by the highly experienced coach and facilitator, Marie O’Hara, who works in Lausanne, Switzerland. One of the discussions which arose was around how far we, as coaches, support managers in terms of being “supportive but daring”.  Should not the coaching journey enable the coachee to “welcome exploration and adventure”?

This reminded me to consider again some of the key responsibilities of a coach.

Making Goals Work For You – “We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On”

When meeting recently a good Norwegian friend of mine, she shared her work and life goals for the year with me and blew me away with her commitment and ambition. A real inspiration to write about this very theme….

How important is it to have a goal? Whether in your personal life, working life, what you want out of life, have you set goals for yourself? And is there a difference between a goal and a dream?

The tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy of life lies in having no goal to reach.  Benjamin Mays

A goal provides an individual with direction and purpose. It’s a target, something to work towards, an opportunity for personal growth. Setting goals provides long-term vision and short-term motivation. Without goals, we may feel lost, adrift, and uncertain of the future. Setting goals helps prioritise time and helps individuals navigate through the vagaries of distractions.  Goals provide life with meaning and value.

You may also have dreams, dreams of being, being a certain you and living a certain life. Dreams can provide a place for our busy minds to retreat to, a place to dwell, to smile and feel good, to become revitalised again. This is your happy place, a secret place in your mind which only you have the key to.

It’s OK for dreams to stay as dreams. Sometimes we need that special place to go to.

But are we clear with our wish list? What dreams do we wish to stay as dreams and which do we wish to shift up a gear? What choices will you make? Will you allow your dream to become your goal?

How can we shift from dreaming into achieving?

Developing Trust – Lessons From A Robin

I held a robin this week.  In the palm of my hand! It’s true!  Unbelievable, I know, but it happened.  Feel free to spend time with me over a “strategic latte” and I’ll fill you in on the story!

What was so amazing though, was this special little creature trusted me. And it felt great!

Which led me to consider the huge topic of trust….

Interestingly, the origins of the word trust, come from the Nordic word traust which means confidence.

So what is the level of trust like where you work, in your team, your organisation?  Could it be better?

From my experiences over the last 20 years of working with teams and leaders, the presence of trust as one of the key factors to their success, is mentioned time and time again.  High performance rarely happens if the team doesn’t trust its members.

But what if trust isn’t strong, how can it be developed?

Here’s a few thoughts:

The Same River?

After having attended a recent coaching workshop and been reminded of the power of the Nancy Kline techniques and the thinking environment, my mind kept returning to one particular quote used by the facilitator on the day:

 “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Our minds change their perspective and direction so rapidly.  Our thoughts, our ideas, our being are never quite the same.  We are constantly evolving, just as the river water is eternally changing as it passes by.

For me, this is an amazingly liberating thought.  Today is a new day, there is the possibility to look at our lives, our challenges in a new light.

Whilst on this particular coaching workshop, we were encouraged, as coaches, to use the Nancy Kline techniques to give full attention to those we were listening to.  Asking the simple, but so empowering question, “What do you want to think about….?” enabled the thinker to consider and think in a very liberated, refreshing way, free from prompts, further questions and distractions.  Silence was a luxury, from it flowing rich waves of thought.  A later prompt, “What more do you think…or feel……or want to say?” again often resulted in fresh thinking, fresh clarity and insight.

For some people I meet though it does feel like the same river.

Crossroads: Exploring Options

I wonder how many choices we make each day?

Breakfast and dress? Dress and then breakfast? No breakfast? Smart dress or casual? Car or walk? Coffee – large, medium, small, take-in, take-out?

Perhaps trivial choices, but what about those that warrant a little more consideration? We make choices at all stages of our lives and careers, in the positive times when we consider if we will remain on the same path or veer towards something new. And also when things have not worked out as planned.

How do we see crossroads and options in our lives? I seem to have spent a lot of time in airport lounges recently which has given me the luxury to consider how I view crossroads. There has been a lot of change in my life this year, professionally and personally, and I can reflect now on how I have dealt with this change. How did I choose to deal with the change?  How did I respond to new possibilities, new choices, new pathways?

Your Choices

So, what about you? How do you consider the future? Perhaps a beautiful vista on the horizon, perhaps the next step, or perhaps an uncertain place best not to be explored?  Do you see future possibilities as an amazing freedom or would you share, “I just want to know.”

Change: Beginning, options and outcomes

When I recently launched my new business, Imaginate Development, my young son said, “Mummy, Imaginate is not a word!  My reply: “Exactly!”

But could “imaginate” be a word? And if it was a regular word, found in the dictionary, what would be its definition? For me the definition would be around assisting in bringing to life something which exists in the imagination.

And why do our words, the way we operate need to conform to set rules anyway? We have only to look at words themselves and see they are more than happy to evolve, to progress, to change. In the 14th century, the word “naughty” used to mean having naught or nothing. Similarly, in the 13th century, were you to call something “nice” you would not have intended a positive compliment!

Can we as individuals also change, be encouraged to look at things differently, challenge and grow in perhaps more surprising, unexpected ways? Can we initiate change?

So my first blog post is therefore about this very subject, change.