Personal Development Archives - Page 14 of 16 - Smart Coaching and Training

11/04/2020 By Halina Jaroszewska

Becoming the leader you want to be

Expectations of leaders and aspiring leaders in business today have never been higher and the demands on them never been greater.

What are these expectations and demands and how can senior executives get the support they need?

First … there is the sheer volume of work: significant number of tasks to accomplish and vast swathes of information to filter. Emails, phone calls, meetings, travel, conferences, presentations, reports, 24-hour connectivity; it’s not surprising if senior executives become exhausted.

Second … the pace of change and the levels of uncertainty surrounding business decisions have never been higher. Executives who are used to striving for specific, measurable goals may not be so great at handling the ambiguity and fluidity that rapidly changing situations can bring.

Third … where companies used to run on a simple top-down command and control basis, it is now widely recognised that the best businesses are those that harness creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. The most effective leaders are those that participate in, encourage and manage collaborative teams.

Fourth … leaders and aspiring leaders play a crucial role in engagement. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) defines engagement as “feeling positive about your job, as well as being prepared to go the extra mile and do the best of your ability.”

Not surprisingly, engagement is linked to a wide range of positive outcomes. Two important drivers are for people to have opportunities to feed their views upwards and to feel well informed about what is happening in their organization. But a key driver of engagement is for people to think their leaders – especially their manager or line manager – is committed to the organization and cares about them.

Fifth … a major study by Watson Wyatt:Connecting Organisational Communication to Financial Performance found that “a significant improvement in communication effectiveness is associated with a 29.5 per cent increase in market value.” Once again, it’s the leader who needs to be communicating.

So, leaders face a greater work load; a more challenging, fluid and ambiguous business environment than ever before; are key drivers in employee engagement, and their effective communication skills and their ability to harness the creativity and entrepreneurship of their teams is essential if the business is to succeed. It’s not surprising that some leaders and aspiring leaders lose focus or wonder if they are doing a good job.

It’s not surprising that some leaders and aspiring leaders lose focus or wonder if they are doing a good job. In Development Dimensions International’s Global Leadership Forecast 2011 only 38% of the 12,423 senior executives participating in the study reported the level of leadership in their organization as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’

However, the positive news for leaders and aspiring leaders is that help is available and that companies want to invest in supporting their leaders and aspiring leaders.

The Value of Executive Coaching

A DMB study in connection with the Human Capital Institute on emerging practices in executive coaching suggests that organizations are planning to increase their investment in supporting leaders and aspiring leaders in several key areas. Specifically, by helping capable executives reach higher performance, and in supporting high potential executives. Similarly, coaching is seen as having the greatest impact when it is used to groom high potential executives and help high potential executives achieve higher performance, rather then for remedial purposes.

For those respondents who measured the financial impact of coaching, 77% estimated the ROI on coaching to be at least equal to the investment. Some respondents reported the ROI on coaching to be as high as 500%. An earlier study by the International Professional Management Association found that training plus coaching was four times more effective than training alone.

It will pay dividends for any leader or aspiring leader who wants to fulfill their potential and deliver real benefit to their business to make a solid case for the value of executive coaching. While you are making the case for your organization to invest in executive coaching to support you in challenging times, here are a few hints and tips to keep you on track

Think about what is most important to you. Not what you do but how you behave. In a tough business environment staying true to your values will give you a guiding star on which to base decisions and choose priorities.

Leadership is about values and behaviour – not about having all the solutions. Establish end goals and empower your team to come up with solutions – this will open up far more opportunities and motivate your team.

Keep communicating. Explain your thinking and keep up an ongoing narrative with your team about the progress towards your goals. Remember any good story has ups and downs, so don’t be afraid to admit to adversity.

Be consistent. If you set up new initiatives or new ways of doing things – especially if they relate to communication or team empowerment – then keep them going. Show real leadership qualities and stay steady regardless of set-backs.

Be decisive. Far more damage is done to businesses by delaying decisions than by taking wrong decisions. If you find yourself unable to take a decision ask what additional information you need to make the decision. If that information is not available then staying true to your values will help make a decision.

Remember 80% is good enough. Whatever the task, if its 80% good enough, sign it off and move on. Striving for perfection, or taking on too many tasks because only you can do them well enough is a recipe for bottlenecks, frustration, stress and lack of achievement.

Flip negative to positive. When facing a set-back, make a conscious effort to look at the opportunities that a challenging situation presents you with, rather than just the problems. The results may surprise you.

Focus on your team rather than yourself. If you focus on supporting your people and enabling them to improve their performance in tough times, you will find you are more likely to reach overall goals and less likely run into self- absorption and lack of focus.

Be open to learning. Setting out to learn something new, to expand your knowledge or skills is life-enhancing, confidence-boosting and can have a positive effect on other aspects of your performance. Don’t close down in reaction to adversity; open up.

And finally I have no hesitation in repeating point 1 because it is so important …

Think about what is most important to you. Not what you do but how you behave. In a tough business environment staying true to your values will give you a guiding star on which to base decisions and choose priorities.

Halina Jaroszewska is an Executive Coach, professionally certified by the International Coach Federation. Halina helps leaders and aspiring leaders to turn uncertainty into a powerful tool for change and growth. Her aim is to enable clients to take their success to the next level, switch surviving into thriving, and maximise their potential during challenging times

19/11/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

What is your Secret Weapon?

That is an interview question. What would you reply? How would you know what to reply? Not quite as bad as the ‘what kind of biscuit are you?’ but equally challenging.

To answer it requires another question to be answered first. What am I using my secret weapon for? What is the purpose? Is it to be at the top of my game, to be super productive, to win someone over, to overcome an obstacle, to get into the Aladdin’s cave, conquer another galaxy?

Once you have the answer to that question, you can start exploring what your secret weapon actually is. You might be lucky enough to have several of them. The thing(s) or people that you feel you need in order to achieve that purpose. How do you find out?

Here’s some food for thought:

Let’s say you want to want to win someone over. Interesting research from Dr John Gottman on marital stability indicated that what makes happy couples different from unhappy couples has to do with ‘repair attempts’ when things start getting sticky. Happy couples work on making stuff better. Not only do they make repair attempts but are also good at receiving them. What do you think the secret weapon is here? Could it be something to do with good communication?

Or suppose you want to nail that interview? What would you do if you got the biscuit question? Or the ‘tell me about yourself?’ The recruiting site Glassdoor suggests that storytelling would be a great secret weapon to answer this last question. Another recruiter thinks that the way to wow an interviewer is to be sure to have a good conversation.

Or perhaps you need to whip out your secret weapon to secure that crucial sale. Remembering that a sales pitch is a conversation with prospects, how about using a tip from Aston Business School’s research which indicated that creativity was key to landing a sale. Thinking about how to personalise pitch, find solutions to the client’s problems, weave a message that engages.

But perhaps you don’t think you are any good at making repair attempts / telling stories / creative thinking? That these are not secret weapons in your arsenal. Well, stop and think, what is the common theme in all of the above examples? It’s communication and relationship building! And we can all do that!

All we need to do is decide what type of relationship is involved and what type of communication we need in our secret weapons. Simple!

Have fun finding your secret weapons and if you want a very neat way to take you on that journey, discover more about your communication and relationship preferences using C-me Behavioural preference profiling.

Isla Baliszewska

01/08/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Do we need a Nudge?

Everyone has those moments when they really wish they had made a different decision…or actually just done something they perhaps should have.

Welcome Nudge Theory, which is about making it easier for people to make decisions which are in their best interest. Thank you Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein for the book ‘Nudge’, published in 2008. And well done Richard Thaler for winning the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2017.

Most of us think of a nudge as a little prompt needed to get something done. Which it is, and those nudges can be the difference between something happening and nothing happening. Coming from behavioural economics, Nudge Theory takes this further, considering important biases in human decision-making and positing ways to help people make decisions that would benefit them.

“By knowing how people think, we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for them, their families and society.” wrote Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of ‘Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness.

Simple example: on the assumption that most people want to be healthier but for many reasons (lack of willpower, lack of availability of healthy foods, sweets at the check-out), they stay unhealthy. The nudge here would be to fill the shops with only healthy products, improve food labelling to provide health information, replace the check out sweets with fruit and nuts. The objective – to encourage shoppers to make healthier choices.

Or, you want to go running every day but you can’t be bothered. Just put your trainers where your feet will hit the floor when you swing them out of bed. Your thought process is more likely to veer from procrastination to action.

Nudge Theory has become popular with politicians and policy makers as it touches on important biases in our decision-making processes. From a societal perspective, if you can encourage a whole bunch of people to engage in behaviours that improve society, that sounds like a good idea.

David Cameron’s Behavioural Insights team used the Nudge Theory concept when adding an invitation to join the organ donor register when people were renewing their car tax. This little nudge resulted in a massive increase in people joining the register. Barack Obama had Cass Sunstein as an adviser on his team with the goal of bringing the US Government “into the 21st century in a wide range of ways”. One of these was to try and increase the honesty of quarterly sales reports submitted by providers of goods and services to the Federal Government. By adding a brief prompt at the top of the online form, more accurate information was submitted leading to a reported $1.59 million increase in fees in one quarter, supposedly reflecting more honesty in sales figures. All good news for society as a whole.

But what about nudging to help us as individuals? Nudge Theory demonstrates that using quite simple prompts and techniques can bring a subtle change in our responses. It can push us into taking action rather than not doing anything. But, and here’s the interesting part, it won’t work if we think we are being told what to do. So those policy making examples needed to be suggestive and inviting rather than perjorative.

For our own personal nudges to work we need to feel ownership of them, and to find things that are easy to do. Here are our Nudging Tips:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Make it simple – so you don’t have to think before doing

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]When setting your nudge try thinking of the pain/negative that you will be moving away from

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Don’t expect it to last forever – renew your nudges by introducing different ones

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Use reminders – pop post-it notes in the places where you want the behaviour change to happen. Or send yourself a morning email reminder.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Give yourself a reward once you have ‘done’ the new nudged behaviour or task a set number of times.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Share the nudge – tap into the power of peer pressure to make the nudge work for you.

To explore how to set your own nudges and what changes you want these nudges to make in your life, how about your first simple step being to get in touch with us – you’d be surprised what you might be able to do!

Isla Baliszewska – [email protected]

06/07/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Creating Your Own Village – making the right connections

Spanish Translation Here

Recent research has revealed there are two major contributors to a longer life. These are:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Close relationships – having a few people you can rely on.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Social Integration – how much we interact with people during the day.

There is a village in Sardinia with one of the highest records for longevity. With its close knit streets, and everyone being near everyone else, people cannot help but interact. Old people tend to live with their families, where there are children of all ages, some even in their 70’s. Social interaction and integration are elemental parts of life in this village.

Saying hello to your neighbour, to the person who serves you coffee, smiling to the supermarket checkout assistant, playing card games with friends or strangers can all make a difference, and you can do this anywhere. You don’t have to be in a Sardinian village. Or, of course, you can choose not to do these things… and potentially die younger.

Statistics indicate that women generally live longer than men. Part of this is attributed to the fact that women tend to bond more easily and will talk about difficult intimacies, more so than men. Men tend to avoid ‘sensitive’ subjects and instead will bond on more generalised topics like football, or in places of mutual activity, the gym or the office meeting. In the competitive world of business, men give most of their attention to their work and career progression, and often tend to lack the skills required to meet non business colleagues or to know what to talk to them about other than those ‘comfortable’ subjects – sports, politics, cars. Of course this is a stereotype, however it is still very prevalent in our modern day society of equality. Women are the ones who tend to share, talk, have close collaborative relationships, long lasting, trusted friends with whom they have those deep conversations about all sorts of ‘stuff’. It’s all about connecting.

And then there is that other disassociative thing that we all do now. For the younger generations (and some of us older ones too), the evidence is that social media is no substitute for face to face encounters, that precious social interaction which releases oxytocin and cortisone and gives us a better chance of achieving that longer life.

Something to think about

Too many of us focus on short term work goals, and very of us few choose to decide what kind of life we want to live and to develop the personal goals to match until it’s far too late. How many times have you heard someone say, when asked why they do the job they do, something like “Well it just happened/ seemed like a good idea/ suited my skills / people said I should or would be good at it”? How difficult it is for us to pin point when we made actual choices in our lives? When do we think about the way our relationships and interactions impact on our choices and what we do?

What can we do?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Check who around you is really there for you, without their own personal agenda and connect deeply with those who are.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Be aware of how you are interacting – social media is all very well, as long as balanced with the healthier types of genuine face-to-face interaction.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Ditch the detractors – those who always seem to have a reason why you shouldn’t be who you are, do what you want, make your own choices.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Focus on your personal goals and your futures, not just on the immediate issues. This will help you prepare the skills and give you the confidence needed for developing the right networks and making the right connections.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Try some Developmental Coaching – an intentional process to increase awareness and perspective. By growing your awareness, focus, and perspective, you will become increasingly able to decide and meet your own goals and live the life you want to live. This amalgam of life coaching, mentoring, executive coaching might be the first small step to a brighter well-connected future with your own great village.

David Rigby – July 2018

David has worked and lived in 22 countries, and has built good long term relationships and social face to face interactions in many of them. Arrange a face to face or Skype Development Coaching session to help you find your way forward to creating your own village.

24/02/2017 By Isla Baliszewska

Stories within stories within stories: Roles within roles within roles

What are your stories and roles? It’s surprising what you

hear when you truly listen

see when you really look

know when you bravely open your intuitive memory

understand when you set free your mind.

How can you lean-in to take your place in the story? What boldness that has genius and magic in it might you use to take your place in the story? By employing gratitude as a valued member of the team how could that make a contribution? Unless you are actually in the story it is nigh impossible to influence the content and direction of the story.

“Tell a story. Make it true. Make it compelling. And make it relevant.” ― Rand Fishkin, Founder of Moz

Every individual, every team, every organisation is a story and tells a story. Every individual, every team, every organisation is a system and being a system every part of that system no matter how miniscule no matter how huge has impact, influence, inspiration on the whole system. What is the story to be told, the outcome to achieve? What would be the evidence and most importantly how would you recognise the evidence? There are stories and roles wrapped up in everyone and every organisation.

Time to stop underestimating the influence of random acts of kindness; time to introduce a cultural realignment to look for what works well and what could work even better; time to let go of blame, of guilt, of getting it wrong, of exclusion, of assumptions, of un-appreciation; time to celebrate experimenting, exploring and engaging. Time to appreciate the benefit of movement, of momentum … every system needs to be kept in good condition in order to operate effectively and efficiently. Time to be agile, adaptive, appreciative; time to learn and move on by building positively, proactively and perceptively. Healthy systems indulge in exercise in all senses – physically, emotionally, spiritually which currently is embodied in the practice of mindfulness.

What are the skills that really matter? Peter Cheese Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), delivered a lecture entitled “Future of work and organisations” as part of the UWE Distinguished Address Series February 2017 was clear that soft skills are the ones that really matter. He shared that with only 2 in 5 employees working at peak performance the UK has one of the worst skills mismatch in the world!

What is the place in the story of the 5 R’s – resilience, robustness, reflectiveness, resourcefulness, responsibility?

Find out about how our Signature Soft Skills Workshops can support your 5 R’s.

Halina Jaroszewska – 2017

Becoming the leader you want to be

What is your Secret Weapon?

Do we need a Nudge?

Creating Your Own Village – making the right connections

Stories within stories within stories: Roles within roles within roles

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