Training & Coaching News from Smart Coaching Training

14/05/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Punishment vs Positive Reinforcement: Can punishment help deliver a better way forward?

A few observations offered by David Rigby on the merits of different ways to get things right….

There appears to be a rise in the use of the word and deed of ‘punishment’ throughout the media and also in everyday life.

In the UK, the British Government together with France and the USA have ‘punished’ Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons. Ignoring history, when Saddam Hussein from Iraq, was waged war on for having chemical weapons for which no evidence was ever found, punishment is all around us. Children get punished for minor misdemeanours. A friend punished his dog by locking him up. Mobs punish anyone who isn’t like them. A well known President threatens punishment in every utterance and his fans love it while the rest of the world despairs. Fortunately he doesn’t deliver.

In the old days, when administering the cane, the school teacher might say “this is hurting me more that it’s hurting you”. Better that neither the teacher nor the student is hurt by not punishing at all. Instead, positive reinforcement – praising the good – is, or at least used to be, the way forward.

How does this affect each of us in our everyday lives?

All our behavioural profiles from C-me Behavioural Colour Profiling contain a section on “blind spots”. These are facets about ourselves that we perhaps know, but always chose to ignore, rather than acknowledge or fix. With politicians no amount of facts will sway the opinion they want to peddle. But with ourselves – do we really want to believe our own hype? Or do we want to improve ourselves? Punishing ourselves for eating the extra piece of cake with a two hour spinning class? What does that achieve? Eat more cake!

Positive reinforcement is a technique where we, or a coach, will identify things we have done well or achieved. And will express praise in positive language. A bad coach may use negative language to try to say the same things – “Do not give up now” etc, putting the idea of ‘giving up’ into the coachee’s head, when the goal should be to keep the positive uppermost. Recently in a young offenders institution in London ‘tough love’ was replaced by the reward of chocolate and cakes leading to a fall of 80% in assaults on staff in a year. The all round improvement in morale meant the inmates became more social with each other and much less destructive.

So here are some great options:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””] Face up to your blind spots

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””] Praise yourself for fixing them rather than punish yourself for having them

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””] And perhaps influence others to do the same.

David Rigby

29/03/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Transform your Mindset to Transform your Results

The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you commit to and accomplish the things you value.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you?

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them”

Epictetus

We are creatures of habit, driven by impulses to self-protect, to run away from woolly mammoths. Over the years, our learned behaviours become ingrained and our mindset becomes set in patterns. Renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck illustrates this with a simple idea that makes all the difference – Fixed and Growth Mindsets.

A Fixed Mindset

With a Fixed Mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. If they have a lot, they’re all set, but if they don’t… If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character, well then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. People with this mindset also believe that talent alone creates success – without effort. Effort is seen as fruitless if they don’t ‘get it’ then it suggests that they lack the intelligence. Challenges are avoided, as to fail suggests that they ‘lack the intelligence’ required. Getting things wrong and receiving feedback is also seen as negative if it reveals limitations.

A Growth Mindset

With a Growth Mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work – brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience essential for great accomplishment. People with this mindset understand that no one has ever accomplished great things – not Mozart, Darwin, or Michael Jordan – without years of passionate practice and learning. Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknowable.

Virtually all great people have these qualities. Intelligence can be developed. We can embrace challenges and believe that we can improve at a task. We can see effort as a worthwhile path to mastery. We can see that getting things wrong and receiving feedback is positive and guides further improvement.

A ‘Teacher’s Mindset’

When we are learning, the mindset of our ‘teacher’ (or trainer or tutor or whoever is giving us new knowledge) can influence how that teacher perceives our performance. Fixed Mindset teachers might see those that struggle or fail to understand an aspect of the learning process as not being sufficiently bright or talented or motivated. Growth Mindset teachers see struggling students as a challenge, learners in need of guidance and feedback on how to improve. And of course once the Fixed Mindset teacher has labelled you, the learner, that label sticks and you are reluctant to challenge it.

How to get the Growth Mindset

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the Growth Mindset. Scientists tell us that people have more capacity for life-long learning and brain development than they ever thought. Personally, the older I get the more new things I learn, the more new things I try!

To paraphrase French psychologist Alfred Binet “You may not have started out the smartest but you could end up the smartest”.

Have a go……………

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Be curious, keep learning

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Keep trying – you get the results you want through effort and repetition

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Know that you own your mindset – if you want to change it, you can

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Do things differently – surprisingly you’ll likely get a different result

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Recognise that the process is as important as the result

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Practice always speaking in the positive – add ‘at the moment’ or ‘yet’ – you’ll get the mastery in time.

David Rigby

05/02/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

5 Hot Tips for Overcoming Obstacles & your Inner Critic

It’s all about mindset

What you say when you talk to yourself [Shad Helmsetter’s best-selling book]

Why you give the imposter syndrome permission control your life

Whether you are prepared to act ‘as it’ – even ‘fake it till you make it’

How much you indulge your gremlins, those inner critics.

Susan Jeffers wrote a whole book on ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’.

FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.

It is essentially about the choices we make. What if you choose to replace fear with another, stronger emotional driver; that of core confidence? Choosing to be controlled by your inner critic is very exhausting and destructive, as is the Imposter Syndrome. Experiment using Appreciative Inquiry’s approach, which is so simple and might need practice: appreciate what is working well and what could work even better – which circumvents anything negative.

Consider carefully when you say yes to your inner critic what it is that you are saying no to. And consider when you say no to your inner critic what is is that you are saying yes to. Ask yourself what is the pay off?

“I’d wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot and think, I can’t do this; I’m a fraud.” – Kate Winslet, Academy Award-winning actress

“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.” – Maya Angelou, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet and author

“I am always looking over my shoulder, wondering if I measure up.” – Sonia Sotomayor, first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court Justice

What if, whenever an obstacle appears or arrives in your life, instead of getting despondent, being stopped, letting it get bigger and bigger, feeling it’s not fair or giving up you made different choices?

What if Google Translate interpreted ‘obstacle’ as a challenge to be solved? How might that approach influence your mindset? What inspired solutions might emerge?

5 Hot Tips (with thanks to Abraham)

1. Tell a better-feeling story about the things that are important to you.

2. Don’t write your story like a factual documentary, weighing all the pros and cons of your experience

3. Instead tell the uplifting, fanciful, magical story of the wonder of your own life

4. Watch what happens as you make different choices

It’ll feel like magic as your life begins to transform right before your eyes!

“Whatever you think you can you can and whatever you think you can’t you make that happen.” Henry Ford shone this spotlight on the power of your thinking to create your reality.

What will you choose?

Halina Jaroszewska Jan 2018

05/02/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Careering from Career to Career

Recently, I met one of my clients, whom, two years ago, I encouraged to ‘swim in a different pool’ (according to her testimonial). She is very happy in her new role. She says, as a career coach I gave her the courage to change. But first she needed to decide what she wanted to do

How did she do it?
How would you do it?

For many people they get their first job by chance, by who they knew, by their qualifications or education subjects.

So career decisions are fixed when you start specialising at school. Some of us have the courage to change over the years. Or maybe every job move is based on doing the same thing, just getting more money or in a different place. This is how promotions shift people from doing to managing – many don’t like it but put up with it.

Read the full article

05/01/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Time Management that works for you

Make this New Year of 2018 the year when you manage time rather than assuming it manages you;

make this New Year of 2018 the year during which you design and create new or different ways

of doing things better or differently.

Everyone has 24 hours x 365 days per year x number of years in one’s lifetime.

Exactly the same amount paid into each individual’s time ‘bank’ account at one nano second past midnight on January 1^st each year. How do we view that deposit? Do we even give it a thought? Does it warrant a cursory glance? Do we give a nano second’s consideration as to how we will use the time deposited? Does it even cross our minds to make one New Year’s resolution to use every nano second to the absolute max in whatever way we choose? Do we make any plans at all?

Or do we, without a scrap of consciousness, allow ourselves to be swept away on the tidal wave of time with a wild ‘wheee’ of gay abandon making it OK by thinking it’s just another year like any other. And then when 31^st December arrives as it inevitably does each year wonder in genuine puzzlement as to where that year has gone and why everything we had wanted to do is still on the list [if there was ever one in existence].

Fact is if we fail to plan we plan to fail.

Maybe we labour under the misapprehension that we have no control over time. In some ways that is correct as we humans have invented time pieces of all shapes, sizes, dimensions and mechanisms and they register the regular passing of each second so that we can keep on track throughout the world.

However the control that all of us have is how we use each of those seconds. Whether we use them consciously or let them slip away without regard. What would you prefer to be in charge of your time or let it vanish unused. Even if for example you have a boss who orders how you use your time at work; a family who absorb your time at home you still can be in control of how you approach each second you spend in either situation.

How about experimenting with a different perspective?

How about valuing each second, savouring each moment, getting total pleasure in each time slot as if it might be your last? How might that change your approach to time and enable you to discover different ways of doing the same old thin g that will make the difference?

You may be started to read this article thinking ‘Yippee! I am going to get a whole list of ways to manage my time … all the hard work will be done for me’. Nice try! How I might organise / use / appreciate my time will be radically different from yours. It is for you to take a slice of time to consider all the excuses, reasons why, reasons why not that are your favourites as to why you run out of time / don’t have enough time / can’t find time etc. And to call yourself to account to ditch the old, out dated, routine ways you have used to date and surprise yourself with how inventive you can be especially regarding procrastination.

In a Youtube clip re mobile phones Simon Sinek talks about ‘in between time’ as the time when relationships are built. He advocates using time to connect rather than being distracted by those incessant pings demanding attention. Maybe that is where you could start with managing time differently, more effectively by relegating your mobile phone to the position of a useful tool rather than a demanding toddler!

For some help with ways to manage your time bank and keep control, get in touch.

Halina Jaroszewska 2018

Punishment vs Positive Reinforcement: Can punishment help deliver a better way forward?

Transform your Mindset to Transform your Results

5 Hot Tips for Overcoming Obstacles & your Inner Critic

It’s all about mindset

Careering from Career to Career

Time Management that works for you

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