The Secret Ingredient To Fixing Disharmony That No-One Talks About

Six Things You Should Know About Leadership Coaching

I am enamoured by the process of coaching. It is a powerful process that can unlock hidden self-truths, let authentic passion rise up and create the stepping stones to make dreams come alive. Sounds pretty amazing, doesn’t it? If you are thinking of engaging a coach, but not sure if coaching is for you, I would like to offer these six things to consider so you can find the right person, coach or not, that can support you in the positive shifts that you are looking for. 

Megaphone free zone

Sports coaching is where for most of us we first heard the word ‘coaching’. My rowing coach at uni was an excellent example of a sports coach. He would call out to us through a megaphone as we rowed down the Yarra, pointing out all the things each of us was doing wrong and giving us tips to improve. 

But what we are talking about here is the psychology of coaching, and it is a very different approach. It is still about support growth, but it is based on the idea of having a conversation that promotes positive change. It is connected, and it is a judgement free space. 

Help you find your own answers

One of the premises of coaching psychology is that a coach will help you to find your own answers. This is a very different approach to advisors and mentor that give advice and tell you what to do. If you want someone to tell you what to do, then an advisor or a mentor is probably a better fit for you. If you would like to work with someone who can help you to shine the light on the answers within you, then a coach will be more your speed. 

Now you may be thinking, ‘If I have the answers in me, why do I need a coach?’ And I would say, “great question’.

What I find is that we all do have the answers in us, but they are often a bit like that odd sock, or your keys when you are late. They are there, and a bit hidden. Usually under a pile of other thoughts and concerns. Or in a dark corner or pushed to the back. A coach is like having a finding flashlight at your disposal that will help you to access these answers. 

And why not just get advice? If we are constantly following the advice of others, then we are not only dependant on others for our answers, but we are also not letting our truth and direction come out. I know that for me, when I follow others advice and not listen to my own answers, then I can get utterly off-course from my own vision. 

Respect your readiness to change

Change is a funny old thing. Sometimes it is the most natural thing in the world. You just think ‘I want to make that change’, and Shazam… you do it. At other times you think about it for a while and then work up to it. Some changes you aren’t even thinking about yet. Now a thing that I think is cool about coaching is that it works with where someone is at regarding their readiness to change and see that where they are at right now is just perfect. And working through the layers of readiness is so crucial in bringing about change that will last the distance beyond the pure drive of willpower. 

Think about times in your life where you have tried to make changes, but your heart wasn’t really in it. Quite often, they are shoulds, and usually, they are a need to give something up. 

And how did it go? Did you find that you made a change for a little while but couldn’t sustain it? 

If this is your experience, working with a coach to turn your should into an affirmative action that you are excited about could make all the difference. 

Collaborate on solution

Coaches come with a wealth of knowledge and don’t give advice. It sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it? In fact, I think it is pretty brilliant. Skilled coaches can share this know-how without messing up your self-efficacy by telling you what to do. And this is done through collaborating.

One way that I love seeing this playing out in a good brainstorm. Your brilliance, your idea and answers can bounce off your coach’s ideas and suggestions. At the end of the brainstorm, you have a list of co-created ideas that you can see what ones ring true to you. I am always blown away by the creative and aligned ideas that come out of these conversations. 

Believe in you

One thing that coaches to really well is to believe in you. They will listen to you, not judge you, see that you are exactly where you need to be right now and believe in you and the change that you want for yourself. Having someone on your ‘team’ who is always there and will see you with unwavering positive regard is invaluable. There are times when your internal frenemies (doubt, worry, negative self-talk, etc..) will try to rock your own self-belief. Having a coach in your corner whose belief in you is unwavering can get your own self-believe back on track quicker.

Personalised approach

We are all different and have different ways that we interact with goals, change growth and well life in general. The beauty of a coach is that it is not a one size fits all approach. It is highly personalised, and what you come out with at the end of each session is built for you. 

Skilled coaches will also help to highlight your own personal styles for how you interact with the world. Whether it is how you learn, make decisions, interact with others, like to work, plan and make things happen and so on. Knowing more about your style will help you to move smarter, and in a way that is more aligned with your personality. 

As you can see, I am all gushy about leadership coaching. I believe in the power of these conversations to help you move out of any stuckness that is happening in your professional life. 

What do you think? Which ideas light you up about having a coaching conversation? What doesn’t light you up? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Looking for a coach? Check out our Inner Leadership Coaching Packages and see if we are a coaching match made in the stars.

Workplace Culture Matters & Here’s The Reasons Why

Your business is full of people. People who have their things to do, things to think about and task to complete. But there is more going on than that. They all have their internal worlds happening, their patterns and ways of working with others as well as their dreams, goals and motivations at play. It is kind of mind-blowing. Imagine your workplace with that in mind of a moment. What a melting pot of possibilities.

As you well know, your organisation’s success is tied to many things. From business strategy to finance, from products to marketing, from customer service to your systems. The list goes on. And what underpins all of them is your team. How well your team can make all this happen has a lot to do with your success.

Let’s zoom out and look at your workplace culture

I would like you to imagine something for me. Imagine all the people in your organisation as vases, empty vases of all different shapes and sizes. Now imagine that they come into the workplace each day with a store of creative and productive energy in their vase. As they go through their day, are their interactions with their peers filling their vase or depleting it? How about when they are dealing with their managers? And when managers are working with their teams? What is happening to the levels of productive and creative energy?

Is the quality of your workplace culture eroding your team’s capabilities?

Next, I would like you to think about what depletes your vase. How does the pace of your day, stress, dealing with conflicts, making decisions and working with others affect your productive energy levels? And what are the things that give it a boost? What gives you boundless energy for creating and getting things done?

Now I will ask just one more mind expansion thought. Imagine the difference it would make if your workplace culture was continually filling up your team’s vases as the day went on? What would it be like if your whole team left work with more creative and productive energy than when they came in in the morning? Just imagine. And please, share what you come up with in the comments. I would love to read them. 

Workplace culture matters.

Workplace culture matters. I believe that it matters more than we even fully understand. And it can start with you, right now, allowing yourself to imagine how it could be better and let your actions follow that vision. 

I would love to share with you a gift. The 7 Workplace Culture Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. You can either go to this link to download your gift for free (no email or anything needed).

Three Surprising Ways To Work With A Bullying Boss

Dealing with bullying bosses, narcissists or bosses who pick on their team members can be really rough. If you are dealing with this you may feel disempowered, like there is no way forward. At the same time as experiencing high levels of stress from keeping afloat in a workplace that is like being in an emotional war zone. The default position here is to blame the boss for their behaviour and look to change them so that this doesn’t continue to happen. While there are steps that you can take to help them to see how their actions affect others, we are going to look at it from a different approach.

I would like to offer you three other ways to work with this kind of situation. 

Empowered ownership

You and your boss have created this situation together. I know that those words may be already sparking resistance, I ask you to bear with me. Each interaction that you have with your boss sparks an emotional response in you. And it is often a heavier one, sadness, anger, fear-based emotions, all rise up from your dealings with them. By putting empowered ownership into play here, you take full responsibility for that feeling. You boss hasn’t caused that emotion, they have simply been the stimulus for it. Let’s put it this way, your emotional reaction to your boss is your internal road map letting you know how, what they have done, sits with you. 

Look at your emotional reaction like you look at a road map.

At the point that you have an emotional reaction to something your boss (or anyone in your life for that matter) does, you have a couple of ways that you could go. The first option is to blame your boss for your reaction. If you go this way, you will find yourself saying things like, ‘he makes me so angry’ or ‘she is so annoying’ or you may find that you start using victim language like ‘he belittles me’ or ‘she attacks me’. While these may seem like very normal things to say, they are giving you a hint that you are in fact putting yourself in a powerless position.

The other option is to own your emotion response fully. Going down this track, you will look at your emotional reaction like you look at a road map. You will use your emotions to figure out how their behaviour sits with you and then use that information to move forward. For example, if your reaction is anger, that may mean that you need better boundaries, or that you have a need to protect something or someone. Owning that you have these requirements and acting from that place is a more powerful approach. 

Powerful and powerless

So what do I mean by each of these approaches being powerless and powerful? In the first approach, the one of blaming them for how you feel. The moment that you believe that someone else is responsible for how you feel, the moment you do that, you have given away the power to change it. You then walk into the murky water of needing to change them. It is giving them the power of dictate how you are going to feel. That is not an empowered place. 

On the other hand. If you take full responsibility for how you feel, then you have full power to make changes. So instead just needing your boss to change, you look at how your emotions are guiding you. Then you start to ask more questions like what would make this ok with me, what do I need to do to improve this situation. It may mean looking for changes with your boss, but they come into a big picture and blame-free approach. 

Everyone is a Leader

Leadership isn’t a position; it is a mindset and a way of being. If your manager isn’t displaying the leadership qualities that you would hope for, then a powerful approach not to let that stop you from showing and modelling them. So, if you want acknowledgement and appreciation, then show those same qualities to your boss and your peers, if you want communication to improve, make an effort to listen to others and also speak up when you have something to say. And if you don’t want to be criticised, don’t criticise others.  You know the expression, kill them with kindness. Well filling your actions and thoughts with positivity and good deeds have enormous power. 

Leadership isn’t a position; it is a mindset and a way of being.

Now if that just sounds like sugar coating mouldy behaviours, let’s look a little deeper. If your boss is throwing around blame, that means that they are not coming from an empowered place. If they see fault in you, they probably see fault in themselves. The cycle of blame and blah needs to stop somewhere. And why not with you. And whether things change with your boss your not, if you can make your thoughts and actions more empowered, more positive and more aligned with who you want to be, well that sounds better than any change you could make happen in someone else. 

The best thing that you can do for yourself, your team and your future is not to frame yourself in the mindset of the victim. No one can make you feel like a victim except you, and on the other side of that coin, no-one can empower you except you. 

This article was originally publish on Smallville

How to Create a Workplace of Belonging