COACHING Is Crucial To Your Business. Learn Why!

Coaching is an essential tool for achieving business goals

A coach will come into a business with a fresh set of eyes and an objective point of view. They will be able to spot key trends and problems that maybe hadn’t previously been identified and come up with solutions and strategies to help you rectify these areas.

They provide focus whilst remaining confidential. They actively listen and have sound judgment without judging. Asking open ended, clarifying or inviting questions to draw out the answers that may otherwise lie buried.

They identify and work with a businesses KPIs so that employees are meeting them and if not, they are providing strategies and goals for leaders to implement within a team so that KPIs will be met.

Coaching is important for employee professional development

Business coaching typically includes exercises around personality and leadership style, and empowers the individual to better understand themselves.

In the world of work, you’ll be introduced to many different personality types and leadership characteristics, so business coaching is a great way to better hone how to work with diverse types of people, too. This will benefit the retention of quality employees and cut down costs on recruitment and training.

Investing in people helps them perform better

A coach will help leaders to combat the unconscious incompetence that may be a blind spot in a business. A business coach asks poignant questions that challenge a leader to think critically about the business and objectives for the business. They can then apply this knowledge to their team to maximise their overall team output.

Investing in an employee’s professional development is proven to retain staff.

@Forbes mention in their brilliant article about making strategic investments in employee development that when you strategically invest in employees, you attract and keep all the best candidates, and you also build a strong work culture unafraid of innovation, change, failure and success.

In summary

• Coaching improves employee Wellbeing

• Increases staff engagement

• Accelerates productivity

• Boosts Morale

• Organizations with high employee engagement outperform those with low employee engagement by 202% (Business2Community)

• Employees who feel their voice is heard at work are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work (Salesforce)

'Tis the season...

It’s the season of goodwill, the season to be jolly, the season of parties and joy? But Christmas can sometimes leave you feeling like you have no time for yourself or your loved ones, not to mention the ever decreasing bank balance.

So what can you do to manage the festive period without losing your mind?!

Where do you start with Christmas presents?

You’ve been invited to your new boyfriend’s Grandma’s house for Christmas and you have to buy her dog a present?!

Well, to prevent seeing your shiny new presents in the charity shop in the New Year as well as having to re-mortgage your house to pay for it all…why not shop ethically this Christmas. There are many ways to do this as below…

1)      Do a family Secret Santa using an online tool such as @drawnames https://www.drawnames.co.uk/  this means you only have to buy one person a present. It also has a great function of a wish list so that you can choose what you’d like with the budget in mind as well.

2)      Instead of spending hours writing out Christmas cards and wasting money and paper – why not send an e-card?  @smilebox have some great online cards  https://www.smilebox.com/maker/card-maker/

3)      Simply ask your friends/family/co-workers what they would like or what they actually need this Christmas. It sounds silly but I’m sure most people would prefer to receive something they really need for Christmas instead of something that will go to waste.

4)      There’s always the option of a charity present – have a look at money saving options below https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/charity-gifts/

How do you manage your time over Christmas?

It may feel like you’re juggling parties, dinners, work and family commitments with very little time to breathe over the festive period. Are you putting the shower gel in the fridge and the milk in the shower?!  

Below are some handy performance coaching tips that will help you to prioritise and keep your cool over this festive period. Performance coaching is all about performing the best you can and to the best of your ability.

Coaching Top Tips

1.       Write down everything you need to achieve for that day or week. Number them in order of priority and work through the list starting with number one.

2.       Decide if there is anything on the list that actually isn’t that important and can actually wait with little or no impact on anything else and maybe pick that up another month.

3.       Think about your ROIs. What are you getting from all the time you are putting in to a certain task? Is it worth it? Is there something that you can spend less time doing? If something is taking more time than something more pressing, how urgent is it and what is your return on investment? Is it worth the amount of time you are committing and investing?

4.       Do some self-analysis. Realise your personality type. For example, in DISC training, we learn that certain personality types respond better to certain styles of getting things done. For example, I came out as an ‘I’ on the DISC test. That means I mainly learn by finding the fun in a task so I can get something done when I find it fun. The D characteristic responds well to bullet points and to the point agendas. It might be worth finding out what personality type you lean most towards, so when it comes to getting things done, you can find the most efficient and effective way that you will achieve what you need to do and not procrastinate or feel overwhelmed. The Coaching Academy offer an Introduction to DISC if you are interested in finding out more.

Hope you find at least one thing on here helps with the Christmas period! Have a fabulous festive time folks!

Continue in the fast lane

How do you maintain the motivation and enthusiasm needed to achieve your dreams?

So you’ve got this great idea! You take all the practical steps, you get it off the ground and then slowly, slowly your interest waivers slightly…other people’s opinions and reservations overwhelm you. Challenges may feel too difficult to find a solution to.

It can be more than difficult to continue to find the motivation that you need to succeed.

One of the key motivations for me is that I want to succeed. There is an unstoppable drive within me to make a success of the business I have created (https://www.bethinkcoaching.com/about/). For me, the WANT to help other people be the best that they can be is so powerful that it counteracts the almost daily negativity that seeps into your inner chatter if you allow it to.

What holds you back?

There will always be reasons for you NOT TO do what you want to do. Your mission is to focus only on the reasons for you TO DO what you want to be doing.

People often have their own negative opinions of your entity, whatever that may be. This is for many different reasons. As humans, we find it far easier to focus on the negative rather than the positive. When someone else is doing worse than us it can make us feel better, more important, more successful. It’s far easier to be the friend that offers a shoulder to cry on than be the friend that shares your successes whether that is through social media or just over a coffee. Often when someone’s friend/associate/colleague is doing better than them, it can make them feel insecure.

It can be hard not to focus on other people’s negativity or lack of support but you need to be your own biggest fan and not let the negativity suppress or overwhelm you. EVERYONE has an opinion…and it’s your job to listen, but to focus on your own goals and not let other people’s fear/negativity/lack of knowledge obscure your direction.

There is a famous saying that is “do what you love and the money will follow” and it’s so true. If you love what you do, others will feed off that positive energy and success will, in turn, follow pursuit.

So how do you keep going?

There are some practical steps that you can take in order to stay on track and I’ve listed these below:

1. Check in with yourself. Remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing and what you are looking to achieve – so your aim and the outcomes.

2. List your objectives for the next month in the form of a step by step process

3. Discover and acknowledge what inspires and motivates you and make sure that becomes a non-negotiable part of every day

4. Network with other people who are doing what you’re doing and have made a success of it

5. Acknowledge that going off track can be a part of the process but bringing yourself gently back on track is imperative.

Finally, I find it useful to find an inspirational leader who is already successful and aspire to them to help keep you motivated. For me, @WillSmith never fails to deliver. Check out his motivational speeches on @YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q__aQFmhig

Is it too late for a career change?

‘Is it too late?’ The most common question I hear from my clients who want to change their career direction but have the ‘fear’. A lot of my clients fear that they are too old for a career change. They feel like they are too old to change what they have known for 10 -15 or more years.

Some of them have dependants and worry that it will be too difficult to change direction at this point in their lives. Other people are perhaps single parents. Maybe they are worried that they have learned a particular skill set and it will be hard to learn a new one. Maybe it has been 10 years or more since they last trained for a particular direction. Perhaps financial implications are blocking their vision.

You are never too old to do ANYTHING

The truth is, you are never too old to re-train and do something different. As human beings we are always learning, evolving and developing. The average employee spends a total of 82,068 hours working over their lifetime. That is a phenomenally large percentage of your life so it is important that you are doing something that you enjoy doing. It’s even better if you can do something that you are truly passionate about, that aligns with your own core values and beliefs.

@VeraWangGang Vera Wang did not design her first dress until age 40.

@SamuelLJackson landed his first big Hollywood part at age 43

@jk_rowling rose from a suicidal single parent at 28 to an internationally acclaimed bestselling author at 46.

There are many ways to achieve a new direction; from part-time courses, to home-study courses as well as bursaries and funding that may also be available. The resources are plentiful.

So where do you even start?

As a personal performance and career coach, this is the most important part for me. The start. It is a person identifying and acknowledging that they aren’t happy doing what they are currently doing in the way that they are doing it in order to make money and seeking help in order to make a positive change in their lives. It is TOO easy to be complacent in life. Do you want to reflect in 10 years’ time on a life where you hated 5 days a week but lived for the weekends and 20 days holiday?

I work with my clients in various ways. This may begin with a vision board of what a client is passionate about, or if they are not sure what they are passionate about it might be brainstorming ideas to help them find their passion that lies within them using a variety of different coaching tools.

We can then work together as coach and client to discover which career those values, passions and beliefs are most suited to so that a client is being fulfilled. For example if your passion is being precise and working with data and spreadsheets, you may not be happiest working in a job that is mainly people orientated or customer facing.

It is NEVER too late to make a change for the better. You are never too old to change your direction in order to improve your life. I’m not going to say that it won’t be challenging, because it will be. I’m not going to say it will be without its struggles and hard work. But there is always a solution to every single problem and block that we face. Problems and solutions are like Yin and Yang. They come as a pair like positive and negative magnetism. As humans, we just always find it easier to identify the problems. But, change your mind set, start looking at the solutions first. What can you do in order to facilitate a career that will not only pay your rent or your mortgage but will fulfil your hopes and dreams in life?

Start with Step 1. It sounds silly, but Step 1 is the start.