Being Assertive

This month we move from the topic of Change to the topic of Assertiveness and explore ideas to help you be Assertive, more of the time.

Before we do that, I want to thank you once again for your comments on March’s newsetter. Change is certainly a key topic for many of you at the moment. Several of you made comments about the challenge of motivating different personality types through periods of change. This is a major topic in itself and something we will come back to as a featured topic later in the year (so watch this space)!

We do a lot of work particularly with Myers-Briggs preferences and Change so if this is something you might be interested in discussing further please contact us.

Featured Topic: Being Assertive

Assertiveness comes from believing that you are equal to others (not better or worse, just equal) and you can communicate assertively from this position of equality. Clear communication and body language can help but it is difficult to change the message you give out without first changing how you feel about yourself.

The tips below will help you to find your own sense of equality, confidence and assertiveness. They build on the tips we first published in June last year.

10 Tips

1. Be clear on your boundaries

Think about what is important to you and where your boundaries are. What is really important and what are you prepared to compromise on?  If you focus at this level you will maintain your sense of self and be able to negotiate on the details. You will know when to dig your heels in and when it’s OK to let go.

2. Focus on win-win solutions

It is important to understand the other person and what their values are. In an equal interaction both views are equally valid. What is most important to the other person and where are their boundaries?

3. Demonstrate empathy

Always acknowledge the other person’s point of view and/or emotional state BEFORE stating your own views and frustrations. Phrases like “I know it is important to you to……..” or “I can see you are frustrated by……..” demonstrate how you value the other person and see them as equal to yourself.

 

4. Be clear about your own needs

 

Let the other person know what is important to you and the outcome you would suggest.

Be as clear and direct as possible. It is always worth saying what you want, you never know the other person might agree!

 

5. Stay centred

 

Stay connected to yourself and your feelings. A great way to do this is to take deep diaphragmatic breaths and be very aware of your feet planted firmly on the ground.

As you do this you will notice that you feel calmer, talk more slowly and have more time to think.

 

6. Stay calm

 

From a position of balance it is much easier to choose how you react to things. If you find yourself getting upset or frustrated take more deep breaths and think before you say anything. What is making you emotional? Remember it is very important for the other person to be honest in order to move the situation forward, to do this they may say things that make you uncomfortable.

 

7. Mind your (body) language

 

Stay aware of your body. Remember that what we say with our body is far more important than anything we say with our worlds.  Assertive people tend to be on the same physical level as the other person (sitting if they are sitting, standing if they are standing etc.), have open body language and use slow deliberate gestures with their hands to support what they are saying.

 

8. Slow down

 

Assertive people tend to speak in a slow considered manner which also gives them more time to think.  If you slow down you will not only come across more assertively but you will also be able to choose the right words for the situation. Try and avoid sentences like “You always…..” or “I understand that, but…..” opt instead for “I feel that….” or “I appreciate that……”.

 

9. Ask for time

 

While you are practising assertiveness take the time you need to make the right decision or say the right thing. If you cannot think of an answer or feel uncomfortable then ask for the time you need. Expressions like “Let me think that through….” or “Can I take some time to reflect on what you’ve said…”.

 

10. Be your own Coach

 

As you start to notice yourself becoming more assertive, give yourself encouraging feedback. It’s amazing how saying “Well done you….” or “You are doing well…” to ourselves makes a difference. If you struggle try telling yourself “It’s OK, you are doing the best you can”. Try giving yourself permission to just try something new and notice what happens.

 

 

Talking with a coach is also a great way to explore what assertiveness means for you. Please contact us if you’d like to explore further.

Highlights from last month

Coaching programmes

We’ve just started several Leadership Coaching programmes. Each programme is tailored specifically to the leader’s needs usually involving an intake (or goal setting session), Myers-Briggs assessment, 360 review, six coaching sessions and set-up and review meetings with their sponsor.

“Helen was a great coach and really helped me move forward with my personal development objectives. 100% reliable and flexible in terms of arranging meetings, thoughtful and intuitive, upbeat, positive and supportive whilst at the same time challenging me in areas where I was ‘stuck’ or suffering from tunnel vision! Would happily recommend her to others.”

Coaching takes place face-to-face or over the phone/Skype. For more information contact us.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

We’ve just completed a Coaching programme helping a leader to improve their leadership, influencing and resilience skills through a greater understanding and application of Emotional Intelligence. We used Myers-Briggs to explore the intrapersonal and interpersonal components of emotional intelligence.

“Helen is a enthusiastic yet empathetic coach who quickly puts you at ease. She has great insight & judgement and is able to get to the heart of the issue and gently encourages you to reach a practical outcome (not always the outcome you expected!). I have gained a lot from working with her and have recommended her to several of my colleagues”

If you’d like to know more about EQ Coaching please contact us.

Next month

Conflict Management Coaching

We are developing a workshop looking at ways to work through conflict using an understanding of personality preference. More on this next month.

‘What is Coaching’ workshop

We are delivering another two hour ‘What is Coaching’ workshop via Video Conference. During the workshop we explore the role of coaching in developing empowerment and practise using coaching models with non-business scenarios.

If you think this might be useful in your organisation or would just like to know more, please contact us.

Dealing with Change Coaching

We are running one-to-one Change Management sessions exploring creative ways to deals with personal and business change. For more information contact us.

Coming next month

Next month’s topic will be Managing Conflict. I hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, if you have please forward on to friends or colleagues.

 

Warm wishes

Helen.

 

Leadership and Team Coach

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

 

Leading through Change

Thank you again for taking time to feedback on last month’s topic and for your wonderful support for my new book. It is always lovely to get a response to these newsletters and to know they are appreciated.

This month’s topic is Leading through Change which will give you ideas for leading yourself and others through periods of organisational change and uncertainty. If you have experience on this topic I’d love to hear from you – what are you doing that works? Do you agree or disagree with my suggestions below?

Leading through Change

Change is the way of life in most business environments these days but it continues to be one of the biggest leadership challenges. Leaders often under estimate the impact that even a rumour of a change can have on moral and performance.

Change is such a personal thing and people need time to understand what is happening and process what this means for them so that they can begin to let go of how things have been and embrace a new way of working.

During times of significant change people want visible, empathic leaders who regularly share information, openly discuss issues and are powerful role models.

The tips below will hopefully act as a useful check list for leading your team or department during a period of major business or system change.

Ten Tips

1. Look after yourself

If you are going to lead and support others through a period of change it important for you to remain resilient, effective and balanced.

Why not ask for support from your boss, peers or from a coach?

2. Help people to understand the emotions of change

If people understand the stages and the emotions associated with change they will be more able to manage themselves and others through the process. They will also be less likely to blame you for everything!

Why not get your team or department together to discuss the process of change and to explore ways they can navigate the process, support each other and be resilient?

3. Be accountable – own the change yourself.

Be a visible and proactive role model.

Everything that you do and say must demonstrate that you have bought into and are committed to the change that is taking place.

If the change is being driven from elsewhere in your organisation why not find a way to get personally engaged in the process. You cannot lead your department effectively through a period of change if you haven’t understood and processed the change yourself.

4. Explain the reason for the change

Spend time talking to your staff about the rationale for the change. Why are you or the organisation making this change? What are the long term benefits of the change? How will things be different when the change beds in?

Make the change personal to you. Why do you think it is a good idea? Give some personal examples of how you think things will be better following the change.

5. Keep people informed

During periods of major change it is impossible to over communicate! People crave information and if they don’t get it then they make it up!

Keep communicating that nothing has changed if that is the case.

Do not assume that people read information or hear your messages.

Get your staff together regularly for group meetings. Be honest about what you do and don’t know and encourage discussion.

6. Listen to questions, concerns and issues

Resistance is part of the process of making sense and coming to terms with a change, so if people are raising lots of questions and issues this is a good thing.  Silence does not mean agreement it mean people are in denial!

Ask people what their questions and issues are and demonstrate that you have listened.

Answer as honestly as you can and if you don’t know the answer say so.

7. Provide clear direction

During periods of change and uncertainty morale drops and productivity decreases.

Make sure everyone in the team understand the short term priorities and what is important to you.

Focus on doing a few things well.

8. Make time for your team

Get the team together regularly to discuss what is happening and how people are feeling.

Encourage people get involved in change activities, share information and support each other.

9. Catch people doing things right

During periods of change it is important to reward the behaviours that you want to encourage.

Make a positive example of people who are working to move things forward and celebrate successes no matter how small.

10. Be a Coach

The people in your team will all process the change at different rate. Empathise, encourage and empower your people to work through this process themselves.

Why not help each member of your team to think about what the change might mean for them and what their priorities and opportunities are.

Highlights from last month

Telephone Coaching

We have been asked to provide a telephone coaching service for a medium sized organisation, to increase the productivity of their sales force.  We will be offering confidential coaching slots of 30-40 minutes enabling individuals to move forward on topics such as personal effectiveness, work/life balance, influencing and building strong relationships.

If you’d like to know more contact us.

Leadership Coaching

We have just successfully completed two leadership coaching programmes.

One programme was designed for a new leader who wanted to develop greater gravitas at senior levels in the organsation. He has since received very positive feedback about his value to the organisation.

The other programme was designed for a new leader who wanted to change her style to reflect her new position and build an effective team. Her confidence has increased and we are now supporting her in designing a team development event.

If you’d like to know more contact us.

Dealing with Change workshop

We facilitated a Dealing with Change workshop, covering the themes in my ‘Letting Go’ book and the ideas in this month’s tips. If you’d like to know more contact us.

Coming next month

Next month’s topic will be Being Assertive. I hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, if you have please forward on to friends or colleagues.

 

Warm wishes

Helen.

 

Leadership and Team Coach

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

 

Dealing with Change

Thank you so much for your feedback on last month’s topic. Your feedback suggests that there are mixed views on whether or not it makes sense to share resolutions of any kind. On one hand, sharing can add an additional incentive and provide some much needed support and on the other, it can demotivate and cause you to question your judgement. You will know what approach tends to work best for you so go with your instinct. Please continue to let me know your thoughts it is wonderful to know my tips they are provoking discussion.

This month’s topic is Dealing with Change which is also the subject of my new book called ‘Letting Go’.  For more information on the book see further on in this newsletter.

Dealing with Change

Change is part of life, but sudden imposed changes can leave us feeling lost and uncertain. To deal effectively with the change that is happening we must acknowledge and accept what we are experiencing. This will help us to cope, learn and grow. Pretending that nothing affects us tends to be a fool hardy strategy and usually prolongs our discomfort and uncertainty, preventing us from functioning at our best. If you are experiencing any sort of imposed change right now, the tips below might help.

Ten Tips

1. It is OK to feel this way

Change happens and things will never be the same. The biggest step you can take on your change journey is to accept how you feel and be gentle on yourself. All feelings are valid and completely normal. Tell yourself quietly ‘it is OK for me to feel this way’.

2. Express your feelings

Bottling up your feelings is likely to make you feel worse, for longer, as your body has a habit of speaking it’s mind!

Try writing down what you are feeling right now – scribble if you want to – you can be as honest as you wish as these are your own private thoughts.

3. Reconnect with yourself

The emotions of change can make us feel lost and detached. The best way to alleviate these feelings is to find ways of reconnecting with yourself.

Find a special place where you feel comfortable to take time out. Notice the colours, the sounds , the tastes, the smells and the feel of your surroundings.

Try sitting still in this place and feel your feet on the floor and your bottom on the seat. Take deep, slow breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth and say to yourself ‘I am here’.

4. Take care of yourself

Recovering from change is like recovering from an illness , you need to take care of yourself to get better.

The journey can be long and can take it’s toll. Regular exercise, even just walking, will relieve stress, tension and improve your overall mood. Eat a balanced, healthy diet , drink plenty of water and allow yourself to get enough sleep.

5. Accept the help of others

Spend time with people who energise you and avoid those who do not. You are the most important person right now.

6. Lighten your load

During periods of change and uncertainty we often carry a sense of pride or duty that makes us feel we have to behave in a particular way. We feel that if we don’t keep this up, we will somehow be letting ourselves or others down.

Give yourself permission to let go regularly and notice how much better you feel. Crying, shouting and even screaming will allow your body to release tension.

7. Say what you need to say

When imposed changes hit there are often things that we wished we had said and done differently. It is never too late to put this right. Write a letter saying all the things you wanted to say and do. Imagine the person listening and understanding as you read the letter out loud to them.

8. Find opportunities to laugh

Laughter has an amazing ability to heal us. The process of laughter releases our stress and produces endorphins that make us feel good. It is important to make time for guilt-free laughter and smiles.

9. Take one step at a time

Give yourself the time to progress slowly. Taking even a tiny step forward will make you feel so much better. Keep noticing the progress you are making. Don’t judge it, just notice it.

10. Know that you will find new strength

Try to look back on the good things and know that your journey through these changes is helping you to grow stronger and wiser.

Let me know what you try and how it works. I’d also love to know other tips that have worked for you on the subject of change.

Highlights from this month

Personal Effectiveness workshop

Andy Watkin and I ran a three hour Personal Effectiveness workshop as part of a departmental offsite meeting for 130 people. The workshop was very interactive and extremely well received. The team exercises were based on the themes in my ‘Being Effective’ book.  If you would like more information on running such an event in your organisation please contact us.

Resilience workshops

I ran several successful and enjoyable Resilience workshops for groups of 12 people in a multinational organisation. The workshops were an hour long and explored the themes in my ‘Being Resilient’ Book. If you would like more information on any of our Resilience workshops please contact us.

New Leader Coaching

We are Coaching several new leaders helping them to develop confidence in their own leadership style. The coaching is available both face-to-face and via telephone or skype.
If you would like to discuss Coaching for yourself or a member of your organisation please contact us.

Coach Assessment

The Association for Coaching has introduced a new assessment programme for Coaches and I’m delighted to be part of the Assessment Team. I attended a training event in London to review the programme and to practice assessing applications through the new scheme. I’m very keen to do all I can to keep improving the standards in Coaching and meetings with the Association are always a great opportunity to learn from other talented Coaches.

New Book

My new book is ready – hurray    The book is called ‘Letting Go’ and explores the journey of change,  how far you are along on your journey and gives ideas for things you can do to help you to begin to ‘letting go’ of the past and begin to focus on the future (some of which I’ve shared with you in this month’s featured topic). The book is picture based (like the others) but features a slightly different character and a slightly different picture style. I hope you like it. If you’d like a copy of the book at a reduce price of £4.00 please let me know, the promotional price will be available for a limited period.

Highlights next month

Next month we’ll be running a Team Diagnostic for a Finance Team and designing a Team Intervention. We’ll also be facilitating a workshop of Dealing with Change based on themes from my new book ‘Letting Go’.

The featured topic next month will contine the change theme and will be Leading through Change.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, if you have please forward on to friends or colleagues.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Leadership and Team Coach

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

 

Reflection and Learning

I can’t believe 2010 has nearly finished – where did it go? It seems only yesterday that I was writing the first newsletter of the year but at the same time so much has happened in 2010.

Given how quickly time flies, the end of the year is always a great time to reflect on the year gone by and to take the time to notice your many acheivements and learnings. It is amazing how much you have done and how much you have grown this year -  you deserve to give yourself a pat on the back

This is also a time to make a note of the things you wish you’d made more time for this year. Next year you can make sure you make time for the really important things.

So here is a reflection technique that you can use to capture thoughts from 2010 and aspirations for 2011.

Reflections and Learnings from 2010

Find yourself a quiet spot at home or at work where you will not be disturbed and flick (or click!) through your diary for 2010.

As you remember the key events of the year make a note of things you achieved, things you are proud of, key experiences you’ve had and other things that occur to you as you reflect.

You will probably find that your ideas flow more easily if you just scribble, tring to be too formal may constrain your thinking.

Now have a go at answering some or all of the following questions.

Ten Questions for Reflection

1. What was your proudest moment in 2010?
2. How have you grown or changed this year?
3. What has been your greatest learning?
4. What would your ‘strap line’ or slogan be for 2010?
5. What picture or image represents 2010?
6. What song best sums up the year you?
7. What would you most like to be doing differently in 2011?
8. What will your mantra for 2011 be?
9. What picture will best illustrate you in 2011?

10.  What will your 2011 song be?

You may find it useful to put the answers to one or more of these 2011 question on a small card or post-it note and keep it close to you.

Highlights from last month

Communication Coaching

I’ve just completed an end of coaching programme review for a US based leader. The six coaching sessions took place by phone, monthly for 1.5 hours and focused on communication goals identified through a 360 feedback process. I’m delighted to say that the coaching process was deemed a great success with the client discovering and implementing new influencing and relationship building techniques.

To quote her boss ” I think you have enabled X to make a fantastic in road into addressing those few areas that were really holding her back from progression …   …the outcomes from the coaching are very evident in X’s new behaviours and in her language”

If you’d like to know more about whether a focused coaching programme might be a solution for yourself or someone in your organisation please contact us or take a look at the coaching page of our website.

Change Coaching & Mentoring

I’ve also just completed a programme for a UK based manager helping him to deal with stress and change in a healthy and proactive manner. He had three face-to-face coaching sessions lasting 2 hours each during which he learnt to enhance his coping mechanisms. Many of the techniques he learnt were very simple but hugely impactful. The feedback from his peers is that he now appears much more calm and in control.

If you’d like to know more about a short coaching programme on change or resilience  please contact us.

‘Letting Go’ book

My new book is nearly there and I’m very excited about it. More in the new year.

Next month

The featured topic next month will be Goals and Resolutions.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, if you have please let me know. I always love your feedback, and please do forward (or retweet) this onto anyone who may enjoy it too.

A very happy holiday season to you and your families and friends and a wonderful New Year.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Leadership and Team Coach

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

Effective Meetings

Welcome to the November issue of the Pelican Coaching newsletter.

Thank you so much for all the positive comments, tweets and retweets on last month’s topic ‘Effective Use of Time’. This is obviously a very hot topic for many of you at the moment. If you do want to explore how you can get better with time, either through some focused coaching sessions or a team workshop, please get in touch and we can discuss.

This month the Featured Topic is ‘Effective Meetings’, hopefully this will prove just as interesting.

Meetings, often back-to-back meetings, are a way of life in organisations today, so how do you ensure that the meetings you are involved in are effective?

The Top 10 Tips below will give you some ideas and hopefully challenge some of your thoughts about meetings.

Featured Topic: Effective Meetings

Why not take half an hour of your time right now and think about the tip or tips below that might just make the most difference for you. You might find it helpful to print this article out and read it away from your desk.

Top 10 Tips

1. Decide if you really need a meeting!

I truely believe that many meetings in organisations today are completely unnecessary and a huge waste of people’s time.

Meeting are not very good vehicles for getting people on board with a topic or even for making decisions. If you want to get people on board or make a decision, talk to them one-to-one first, then you can decide whether or not you need a meeting.

Meetings are also not good vehicles for information sharing, particularly when the communication is one way. Think of how many meetings you’ve attended where you’ve switched off after just 5 minutes of a 20 minute ‘update’ presentation. Just because people are present at a meeting it does not mean they are prepared to listen or take on lots of new information. If you want to share information, think about who needs to know what, and then go and talk to them, send an email or organise an interactive session with lots of dialogue.

Meetings are also not vehicles for embarrassing people who have not followed up on a particular commitment. Keeping people on track with actions and tasks or inpiring motivation is something that is best done on a one to one basis.

So before you organise your next meeting ask yourself ‘is a meeting really necessary to acheive the outcome I want?’ and before you attend your next meeting ask yourself ‘what is the purpose for me attending this meeting?’

2. Keep it short

Meetings have a tendency to expand to fill the time available and organisational culture often drives meeting length. I think electronic diaries have a lot to answer for!

The most effective meetings are the short meetings. Short, punchy meetings tend to have greater engagement, a clear focus and by their very nature move quickly from topic to topic.

Why not see if your next meeting can be planned to fit into 20 minutes, go on – I challenge you to try and notice the difference.

3. Begin with the end in mind

Decide the purpose of the meeting and the key outcomes.

How will you know know that the meeting has been successful? How will others know? (Are you sure that each outcome is best acheived by a meeting?).

Circulate your purpose, key outcomes and agenda topics well in advance of the meeting to give people a chance to prepare.

What do you need to happen in advance of the meeting to make it a success?

4. Let the agenda drive attendance

It is difficult to break the pattern of attending meetings, but as your time is very precious you owe it to yourself and others to make the right decisions to maximise effectiveness.

Why not begin to drive a cultural change in your organisation if you find yourself attending too many meetings or suggest others drop out of your meetings if the agenda doesnt warrant their presence.

What meeting can you remove from your diary this week if you just go and have a quick conversation with the meeting leader?

5. Get others involved

A number of roles are needed for a successful meeting and it is very difficult to play all of them yourself.

Some of the key roles are: meeting leader, facilitator, time keeper, topic leader and note taker.

I believe that the meeting leader should focus on the role of facilitator (and perhaps also take on the role of time keeper) and that the other roles should be taken by other meeting attendees.

Facilitation is all about maintaining energy, momentum and engagement and it is very tricky to do this if you are taking notes or leading the discussion on a topic.

Why not separate out these roles for your next meeting.

6. Keep time!

If attendees know that a meeting leader is in control they are more likely to contribute.

Think of the meetings you have attended where the facilitator kept to time and kept things moving at the right pace. You were probably engaged and didn’t spend the whole time looking at your watch as you had confidence that things were under control and that this was a good use of your time.

What can you do to demonstrate your time control at your next meeting?

7. Keep people on their toes

If meeting attendance is driven by agenda topics then everyone present should have a contribution to make – before, during and after the meeting. So make sure you ask for those contributions.

Talk to the attendees before the meeting to set the context, solicit their input, understand their questions or issues and then call on them during the meeting.

Who do you need to talk to before your next meeting?

8. Remember the music and the dance!

As I’m sure you know, only a small percentage of communication is about what is said. How it is said (the music or tone) and your body language (the dance) is what most people will pick up on. As the meeting leader lead you can set the ‘music’ for the meeting and encourage others to ‘dance’ to your tune.

What tone are you going to set at your next meeting?

9. Take action

Effective meetings generate a clear plan of action and these actions are clearly communicated to those at the meeting, and all those with an interest. A meeting shouldn’t happen in isolation.

As the meeting leader you do not have to take forward many (if any!) actions but it is important to ensure ownership for all actions generated. If an action doesnt have an owner and a target date it is unlikely to progress.

How are you going to handle actions at your next meeting?

10. Keep the momentum going

As you know the real work for the meeting leader always happens outside of the meeting, making sure actions are progressed, issues are raised and everyone is on board.

Try and have regular check-ins with all the attendees to build or further develop the relationships.

Who would it be a good idea to talk to today?

Highlights from last month

New Leader Coaching

I am working with a number of new leaders helping them to ‘step up’ to their next leadership level. Each leader has a coaching programme tailored specifically to their needs usually involving an intake (or goal setting) session, six coaching sessions and review meetings with their sponsor.

This is what a recent client said about the experience

“I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity of leadership coaching with Helen. In the past, I have attended various management courses, which were quite helpful, but nothing like as effective as the coaching sessions. The coaching changed the way I think about leading a team and about how to manage my work-life balance. The changes seem very obvious and logical now, but I just could not see this before. Overall I feel much more positive, confident and enthusiastic about leading my new team.”

New leader Coaching takes place face to face or over the phone or skype.

Empowerment Coaching

We have been working with a number of clients offering short, focused telephone coaching sessions to help develop greater sense of staff empowerment. Through the sessions, individuals learn to solve their own challenges and develop techniques for self coaching and supporting their peers.

‘Letting Go’ *NEW BOOK*

I’m hoping to complete my new picture book by the end of the year. The new book has ideas and tips for dealing with major changes in life and work. The book is called ‘Letting Go’ and will feature a slightly different character and the pictures will have a slightly different look and feel (from my last books).

Coming next month

Next month’s newsletter will be the last of the year so the featured topic will be your Acheivements, Reflections and Learnings from 2010.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, if you have please let me know. I always love your feedback, and please do forward (or retweet) this  onto anyone who may enjoy it too.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Leadership and Team Coach

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

Effective Use of Time

Welcome to the October issue of the Pelican Coaching newsletter.

This month the Featured Topic is ‘Effective Use of Time’.

Time is a great leveler, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do there are still only 24 hours in a day, however, some people manage to pack a lot of good stuff into their days while others who seem to be really, really busy have nothing to show for it.

Time is also a little spooky, sometimes it seems to pass really quickly or really slowly but when we are really enjoying ourselves we don’t really notice time passing at all.

So if we all have the same amount of time to play with what is the secret to using that time effectively and having more fun in the process? 

Featured Topic: Effective Use of Time

Below are ten simple ideas written by Elisabeth Goodman and myself for getting to grips with the time you have.

Why not take half an hour of your time right now and think about the tip or tips that might just make the most difference for you. You might find it helpful to print this article out and read it away from your desk.

Top 10 Tips

1. Stop using the word ‘busy’

Busy is a funny word it doesn’t describe what you are doing just the way you are doing it. If we believe we are always busy we will always feel rushed and our heads will be buzzy! 

Try finding a different word to describe your day instead of busy and notice how different you feel. Perhaps ‘I am going to have an effective day today’ or ‘I am having a focused day’ or ‘I’m going to be very productive this morning’. Notice how much calmer those words sound and make you feel.

2. Achieve more by doing less

The 80:20 rule is a great principle but do you apply it? There has been a lot of research behind this rule (also called the Pareto Principle) and it reminds us to focus on the 20 percent that matters. Of the things you do during your day, only 20 percent of your effort really makes a difference. 20 percent of your effort produces 80 percent of your results.

Is it really worth spending that extra hour on something that is almost perfect, or that isn’t really necessary?

3. Make time for the things that matter

Make sure you also spend enough of your energy on things that are important to you in your life and your business as these will make you feel energised and focused. There will never be enough hours in the day to achieve everything on your ‘to do’ list so make sure it’s the less important stuff that drops off the end.

Taking a little time out at the start of the week to plan for your important tasks saves you a lot of time later. It will also give you a true sense of your capacity which will help you with tip 4!

4. Learn to say ‘no’, or ‘not at the moment’

If you are going to spend your time on the more important things in life and work something is going to have to give. Learning to say ‘no’ to ourselves is almost as hard as learning to say ‘no’ to other people.

Try giving yourself permission to not do a few of the less important things and notice what happens.

5. Make a start

Procrastination can creep up on all of us and before we know it a couple of hours have passed and we’ve achieved little of real value. Often once we start something it is not as hard or tricky as we thought it was going to be. We can also make a start in a simple or rough way: it doesn’t have to be perfect straight-off.

What can you start that you’ve been putting off for ages? How can you make it less challenging?

6. Finish things and notice how good it feels

Completing important things make us feel good giving us a wonderful mixture of relief and pride. Sometimes to get to the end we need to push through our ‘distraction barrier’ and focus on how good we’ll feel at the end.

Have you ever noticed how fantastic you feel when you finally completed that thing that has been playing on your mind for ages?

7. Make the most of your energy

We all have energy cycles during the day. Some of us are morning people whilst others start to really get going after lunch. If you know this, you can save the difficult stuff for when you have the energy.

What is your most productive time of day?

8. Take a break and re-fuel

Just like a high performance car we are only as good as the fuel that we are filled with, but sometimes we expect ourselves to make the most of our time when we are running on empty.

If we treat our brains and bodies with care our concentration levels  improve and we are move creative.  Drinking water and eating sensibly and regularly is really important as is taking regular breaks. Just a five minute stand and stretch can provide your brain with the oxygen it needs to re-energise.

How can you remind yourself to take a break and re-fuel?

9. Give yourself permission to make a mistake

If we are going to achieve more in the time we have then we are going to have to work differently and we may make a mistake and miss something that’s important to someone else.  I believe that getting something wrong or missing something is a key part of learning to prioritise more effectively.

What will you say to yourself next time you get something wrong?

10. Ask for help

The final tip for more effectively using your time is to ask for help! I know it sounds so easy but when we are at our most frantic it seems to be the hardest thing to do.

There might be friends or colleagues who would not only be keen to help you, but might benefit by doing so.

Who can help you with your most difficult task at the moment?

We provide coaching and workshops on the area of Personal Effectiveness so if you’d like to explore any of the tips in more detail please contact us.

Highlights last month

Coaching Supervision

I am now a Coaching Supervisor and Assessor for the Association for Coaching and offer supervision for new and experienced Coaches. Contact me to learn more. 

New associate

I’m delighted to announce that we have a new associate working with Pelican Coaching & Development. Andy Watkin has a wealth of experience in training and development and has particular expertise in the area of Emotional Intelligence. He has developed some innovative Leadership Development approaches that incorporate emotional intelligence.

Personal Effectiveness workshop

Andy and I delivered our first workshop together focused on Personal Effectiveness. The workshop pulled together themes from Resilience and Emotional Intelligence techniques to explore how individuals can become more energised, focused and effective.

Coaching forum

I delivered our two hour ‘What is Coaching?’ workshop to 40 people across 4 sites via Video Conference (with the help of four wonderful facilitators from the organisation). During the workshop we explored the role of coaching in developing empowerment and practised using coaching models with non-business scenarios. If you think this might be useful in your organisation or would just like to know more, please contact us. 

What is coming next month?

I’ve started work on my next ‘picture book’ more on this next month when

the Featured Topic will be ‘Running Effective Meetings’.

If you enjoy this newsletter do please feel free to forward it onto a friend or colleague. If you’ve just received this newsletter from a friend or colleague and would like to subscribe please click here to be taken to our website home page.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Executive Coach and Consultant

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

Making an Impact on the Phone

Welcome to the September issue of the Pelican Coaching newsletter.

Thanks again if you took the time to feedback on my ‘Effectiveness at Work’ article last month. It seemed to ‘hit the spot’ and make a few of you smile in the process.

This month the Featured Topic is ‘Making an Impact over the Phone’. In today’s global business environment many of us have to do a great deal of our business over the phone.

How much business do you conduct over the phone? It might be that you regularly have to meet one-to-one with a boss (or key stakeholder) or take part in a team or group meeting. 

Have a think about the various telephone interactions you’ve been involved in. How did you behave? How did the others involved behave? Who made an impact on you and why? 

You’ve probably already had some really positive experiences and some situations that really didn’t work for you. 

The article below explores how you can be more effective and impactful in these interactions by paying closer attention to some simple points. As usual, please let me know how useful the article is for you and which points make the most difference. 

Featured Topic: Making an Impact over the Phone.

Having a positive impact on someone is less about what you say and more about how you say it. 

In his communication study Mehrabian found that people pay attention to only 7% of what is said. The main thing that people notice is the tone of voice (38%) and body language (55%). So when we come to the medium of the telephone things can get challenging if we only focus on what we say and what is being said. 

Below are ten simple ideas for making more of an impact over the phone in the meetings where you play a key role.

Why not take half an hour ‘out’ right now and think about the tip or tips that might just make the most difference for you.

You might find it helpful to print this article out and read it away from your desk. 

Top 10 Tips

1. Plan to impress

Think about the impression you want to make during the call. What do you want to be remembered for? Is it for being calm and in control, being engaging, making a good point, being confident or something else? If you don’t know what you want you are leaving everything to chance. 

Pick one thing and be as clear and specific as you possibly can. How will you know that you have succeeded? How will you feel? What will others be saying or doing? 

2. Be prepared

Get yourself into the best possible ‘state’ before the call. It may sound obvious but do whatever you need to do to feel good. 

Check your energy levels. Stretch your legs, go to the loo, have a drink of water or get something to eat. Arrange your work station appropriately so you have everything to hand. Are there any notes or bits of information that you want at your finger tips?

Taking time before the call to prepare mentally and physically is important. You don’t want anything to interfere with your performance. 

Note: If you have any influence over the timing of the call then pick the time of day when you know you are at your best.

3. Engage and stay engaged

Think about all the telephone interactions you have been involved in where you tuned out or were easily distracted when an email or instant message came in. 

How many times have you put the phone on mute and started doing something else? 

If you are going to make an impact you need to be engaged and know what is going on. You have to be present to have presence! 

Remove all distractions and commit to really being part of the interaction for as long as it takes. Engagement means active listening; listening intently and asking questions for clarification. Asking questions will also engage others and have a positive impact on them. 

4.Take a winning stance

Your body language is very important on the telephone, though the temptation is to forget it. An upright assertive posture will make you feel more confident and engaged and this will come across in your voice. 

Sit up straight, ideally with both feet flat on the floor. If you are alone in your location you might even want to stand up. Keep paying attention to your posture as the call progresses, as it will change with your mood.

5. Set the tone

You can influence the tone of any interaction by the way you approach it. 

Do you want an upbeat, productive interaction? – if so, be upbeat and facilitative. Do you want others to be relaxed and feel they can speak their mind? – if so, relax and speak your mind.

Moods are infectious so start an outbreak of what you would like.

6. Empathise

Imagine the participant or various participants in their environment(s).
What is going on in their world? What is important to them at the moment? How busy are they? 

Take time to acknowledge the other participants and let them know that you understand their perspective.

7. Use your emotions as a guide

As the interaction begins notice how you are feeling. Your feelings can act as a barometer for how the meeting is going and how engaged you are. 

If you feel uncomfortable you are not engaged and cannot make the best impression. 

If you feel uncomfortable the chances are that someone else feels uncomfortable too. If you feel relaxed and open, the meeting mood is probably relaxed and open. 

If you do feel uncomfortable, try mentioning it and see what happens. Try saying something like ‘I don’t feel like this is working for everyone, can I just check everyone is on board’ or ‘I feel like I’ve lost you’. There might be a huge virtual sigh of relief, others will may well agree with you and the interaction will get back on track. 

This is a powerful way of making a positive impact without doing very much at all! 

8. Tune into the body language

It is amazing how much body language you can tune into over the phone, but you will need to be calm and engaged to do this. Once you are calm and engaged listen to the body language. 

Is the other person smiling or serious? Are they sitting up straight or slumped? Are they fully engaged or slightly tuned out? 

This information can guide you as to the best course of action. If you read negative body language what can you do to reengage that person? If you have strong engagement with someone you are already making a positive impact. 

9. Be clear and succinct

I believe that if you talk for more than about 3 or 4 minutes on the phone then people will begin to tune out. There are no statistics to support this yet (if there are I haven’t found them!) but my experience suggests that this is true. 

People have shorter attention spans on the phone and it is harder to stay interested if you are listening to a monologue. 

So when you make your point, be clear and succinct and then ask for input. This will also ensure you do not ‘hum’ or ‘ehhh’ or ‘you know’ which can happen if you talk for too long and tune out slightly yourself. If you have a lot to say break your points down so you can keep asking for input. 

10. Notice what works

As you start to do things differently notice what works for you. Make some time for reflection after each important interaction. Run through the nine points above and ask yourself – Did I get the result I wanted? What did I do well? What did I learn? What will I do differently next time? 

I hope these Tips help in your next key interaction. We also provide a lot of coaching support in this area so if you’d like to explore any of the tips in more detail please contact us. If you would like ideas on how to run effective meetings take a look at the Top Ten Tips on the website. 

Highlights last month

We ran a half day workshop exploring ‘Healthy Change’. Looking at how to deal with change in a way that is constructive to you, your team and your health. We looked at techniques for acknowledging and moving through each stage of the change curve. 

What is coming next month?

Next month the Featured Topic will be Effective use of Time.

If you enjoy this newsletter do please feel free to forward it onto a friend or colleague. If you’ve just received this newsletter from a friend or colleague and would like to subscribe please click here to be taken to our website home page.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Executive Coach and Consultant

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

Being More Effective at Work

Welcome to the August issue of the Pelican Coaching newsletter.

I hope you have some time off planned in the not too distance future or have already taken a well earned break.

Thanks again for the feedback on last month’s newsletter, Coaching for Leaders and Managers is obviously a hot topic at the moment.

As I mentioned a couple of month’s ago, we have developed a two hour ‘What is Coaching’ workshop that can be run over Video Conference or Face-to-face. During the workshop we explore the role of coaching in developing empowerment and practise using coaching models with non-business scenarios. If you think this might be useful in your organisation or would just like to know more, please contact us.

This month’s topic is Effectiveness at Work. The Top Ten Tips are based on my booklet ‘Being Effective’. As always, do let me know if you enjoy the tips and which one makes the biggest impact on you.

Featured Topic: Effectiveness at Work

I believe that Effectiveness is the ability to get the right things done with the minimum effort and maximum fun! 

When we are performing at our peak and being our most effective we often use words like ‘in the zone’ or ‘in flow’, as things seem effortless and we magically achieve things that we never thought possible.

Most of us know the principles of effectiveness and how we can perform when we are at our best. However, in our hectic business lives it is very easy to mistake ‘busy-ness’ for ‘effectiveness’ and if we are not careful we can work really, really hard achieving nothing of any real value.

Below are ten simple ideas for becoming more effective at work. If things are hard for you at work at the moment, why not take half an hour ‘out’ right now and explore how you might overcome some of your current issues and challenges and get your ideas and actions to flow.

You might find it helpful to print this article out and read it away from your desk.

Top 10 Effectiveness Tips

1. Be clear about what you want

If we know what we want to do or what we want to make happen we can stay focused on this when other things come along to distract us. If we can describe our endpoint clearly to both ourselves and others we are much more likely to achieve it. So, what is it important for you to achieve today?

Why not jot down exactly what you will have achieved by the end of today and how you will feel about your success.

2. Choose your attitude

How we feel about ourselves and our abilities has a huge bearing on our chances of success. As Henry Ford said ‘If you believe you can or you can’t – you are right!’You’ll have read a lot about positive thinking in newspapers and magazines and may find it all a little nauseating, but basically if you choose to believe that ‘I will never be able to find time to do the things I really want to do’ or that ‘it always will be this hard’ then these things will be true for you.

Why not try a little experiment for a couple of weeks; choose a slightly different attitude during this time and just notice what becomes easier for you.

3. Make things easy for yourself

If you have something that you really want to do, but you cannot seem to get started, how can you make things easy for yourself? What is the smallest thing you can do to get started?For example if you have a difficult report to write, can you give yourself permission to just write the title? If you need to prepare for a difficult meeting can you allow yourself to just jot down the first ideas that occur to you? It is amazing how things have a tendency to begin to flow when we take the pressure off ourselves.

Try it and notice the difference.

4. Learn to trust your instincts

I believe that if something is taking too much effort to do then it is either the wrong thing or the wrong time. If you are busy getting nowhere with something try checking in with yourself to see if you should refocus your efforts or whether you can choose a better time. We all have an inbuilt ‘sixth sense’ that we ignore at our peril!

If something doesn’t feel right, hold off for a while, trust your intuition and notice what happens.

5. Go where the energy is

You will find that you have more energy for certain things at certain times. Try and tap into this. If you are an energetic ‘morning’ person use this energy wisely – if you have a slump in energy in the afternoon, why not use the time to do less important tasks until your energy levels pick up again.

If you find you are really flowing with something then ‘go with the flow’ for as long as you can.

6. Be brave

When things are challenging it is easy to focus on all the issues we have, on things that might go wrong and on finding reasons for not doing things.

Focusing on the problems can block our creative processes and keep us stuck. Why not ask yourself ‘What might work?’

Sometimes we get stuck because we prefer to stay in our comfort zone, we could try something else but we are scared in case it doesn’t work.

Pushing ourselves a little outside our comfort zones will get our adrenaline flowing and take us to new places.

What would you do today if you knew you couldn’t fail?.

7. Look at things from a different perspective

We see things not as they really are but as we choose to see them. We have our own fixed way of looking at the world and making sense of it, which works for most of us most of the time. However, our way is not the only way of looking at things. You will know this all too well if you have children or you have friends who do not work in our industry. So when you get stuck on something try and explore another perspective.

How would your boss approach this? What would your friend suggest to you? What would your son or daughter say?

8. Ask for help

High performers always surround themselves with a strong support team who they trust to provide them with ideas, mentoring and coaching. 

How can you strengthen the team around you? Who can you ask to help you today?

9. Learn from your mistakes

We learn so much more from our mistakes and failures than we ever do from our successes. So when something doesn’t go as you’d like it to, take the opportunity to learn by asking yourself ‘what will I do differently next time?’ As a Medical Director once said to me ‘I think the secret to learning is to only make NEW mistakes!’

10. Find opportunities to make things fun

With the right attitude and the right focus even the most tedious tasks can have elements of fun. If you are having fun you, and the people around you are having fun, you will be even more effective and creative.

So how important is fun going to be to you today?

I hope you find these tips useful, as always I’d be delighted to hear how you use them.

Highlights last month

Team Effectiveness

Elisabeth Goodman and I ran a two day tailored Team Effectiveness workshop for a recently merged leadership team. We used traditional team building approaches (including Myers-Briggs) along side Lean Sigma and NLP techniques to agree and bring alive the team’s vision, values and new operating model.  The workshop was really well received with the team using words such as excited, clear, motivated and focused to describe how they felt at the end of the two days.

If you’d like to know more about how this sort of approach could be used in your team or teams please contact us.

Telephone Coaching

Executive Coaching over the telephone (or Skype) seems to be increasing in popularity. We are running coaching programmes with senior clients who we’ve never met face-to-face and several who we’ve met only once (face-to-face or via VTC). The telephone environment enables busy executives the flexibility to fit their coaching around other commitments. To see feedback from our coaching clients see our testimonials page or if you’d like to know more please contact us.

What is coming next month?

Next month the Featured Topic will be Making an Impact over the phone.

If you enjoy this newsletter do please feel free to forward it onto a friend or colleague. If you’ve just received this newsletter from a friend or colleague and would like to subscribe please click here to be taken to our website home page.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Executive Coach and Consultant

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

Coaching for Leaders and Managers

Thanks to you all for letting me know how much you enjoy these newsletters, I’m glad they hit the spot. Each month I learn something by writing these newsletters, either something completely new strikes me or I remind myself of something I’ve forgotten!

It’s amazing how, as a coach, most of what you find yourself saying or writing for others applies just as much to yourself

This month’s topic is Coaching Tips for Leaders and Managers. This is a popular theme at the moment, as many organisations are wanting to grow the Coaching Skills of their Leaders and Managers as they strive to encourage their employees to be more accountable and empowered.

Featured Topic: Coaching Tips for Leaders and Managers

Most leaders in the corporate world today struggle to adjust to the role of Coach – or ‘Leader Coach’ (a great term coined by Wright, S. and MacKinnon).

Leadership is seen to be all about having a vision, developing a strategic plan to support that vision and inspiring staff to deliver against that set plan.  Coaching is felt to be something that is ‘soft and fluffy’ and best done by HR!

In fact, in today’s world where priorities and organisations are constantly changing, this old picture of leadership is becoming less and less viable.

In times of high change and uncertainty, leaders can’t expect to know everything or influence everything that goes on. Strategies and plans need to constantly evolve. So, individuals and teams need to be encouraged to understand the organisation’s general direction and feel empowered to work toward it to the best of their ability.

The fastest way to achieve this is through Coaching. As a Coach you can helping individuals and teams to build on their strengths, confront their blind-spots and make their own decisions, based on increased individual and organisational awareness.

The following tips will hopefully help you to challenge yourself to think more like a Coach, more of the time.

Top 10 Coaching Tips

1. Coach yourself first

Coaching starts from the inside out. In order to begin to be a ‘Leader Coach’ you’ll need to discover your own strengths and weaknesses. From this position of honest awareness you’ll be able to empathise and support others better. Ask yourself honestly how good you are at each of the following areas (points 2-10). Who are you as a Leader? What do you stand for? Create a development plan for yourself for your weakest areas – once you have a development plan for yourself it will be much easier to help others to do the same.

2. Experience being a Client

It is very difficult to coach effectively without first having been coached. We learn so much from our experience as a client – what enables us to trust the Coach, what makes us feel uncomfortable and shut down, what works for us and what doesn’t. Book a session with a Coach for yourself to work through your development plan.

3. Develop a plan for each individual

You can think of development planning like strategic planning. You are helping each individual to think about their personal vision and set goals for how they are going to get there. Once the plan is created the coaching supports, challenges and motivates reaching each of these specified goals.

4. Make coaching your priority

Coaching itself is not that tricky but making time for it can be. However, if you make time for it, most people will get huge value from just having the space and time to think.

If you don’t value (and make time for) coaching it will become another thing on your never ending ‘to do’ list. If you don’t commit to it your staff will distrust your motives and the coaching will be an uncomfortable process.

Once you make time for it, and begin seeing the results, you will find this easier and easier to do and coaching will become part of who you are as a Leader.

5. Listen

In your next one-to-one, try to really listen to what is being said. Listen to the words being used, what is not being said or what is implied. Try and mirror the words and body language.  Try and really understand where the other person is coming from. Don’t try and solve the problem just listen and check for understanding.

6. Ask questions and explore

When you are acting as a Coach you do not need to come up with the answers yourself, your role is to guide and facilitate. If you think you have the answer you are likely to ask leading questions which may not get the best results.

Trust the resources of your client and ask questions to help them make discoveries them-self - which may surprise you!

There are a lot of coaching models that can help in this process. I’ll be happy to share my favourites if you contact me.

7. Appreciate the other person

We often make up our minds about a person or an issue before any conversation

starts.

Try letting go of any assumptions and just appreciate the other person. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything they say, but that you value them as a human being and value their opinions even though they differ from yours. Try it and notice how the rapport between you increases.

8. Admit your vulnerabilityWe are all vulnerable, flawed human beings which is what makes us so inspiring and brilliant! If you can begin to admit your failings  you will encourage them to open up to you. Your strengths come from your vulnerabilities so doing this will also make you a more inspirational Leader

9. Silence is golden!

Don’t be afraid of silence. In this crazy world of ours we often need to quieten down before we can begin to think clearly. Silence during a coaching session can be a time of inspiration and noticing.

10. Trust yourself, trust your ‘client’ and trust the process

You don’t have to work too hard to get great results from a coaching session. If you can relax, trust that you are doing the best you can and trust that your ‘client’ will have have the answers if you create the right environment, a little bit of magic will happen

I hope you find these tips useful, as always I’d be delighted to hear how you use them.

Activities last month

Health Coaching

If you’ve looked at our website recently you will have noticed that we’ve added a new ‘tab’ on the front page for Health.  This is a growing area for us and a topic that I’m particularly passionate about.

Fortunately, leaders are becoming cognisant that they need to care for themselves in order to be effective and this is probably due to more and more leaders experiencing health issues that can be directly attributed to stress and overwork.

If you’d like to explore this topic from an individual, team or organisational perspective please contact us.

Resilience Workshops

We are continuing to evolve and deliver our Resilience Workshops based on the ‘Being Resilient’ booklet. We have one hour, two hour, half-day, full-day and two-day formats which we modify to suit individual client needs. I love doing these and each one is different. If you’d like to know more please contact us.

What is coming next month?

Next month the Featured Topic will be Effectiveness at Work.

If you enjoy this newsletter do please feel free to forward it onto a friend or colleague. If you’ve just received this newsletter from a friend or colleague and would like to subscribe please click here.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Executive Coach and Consultant

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

First news posting

Welcome to the Pelican Coaching & Development Blog.

Each month we will give you our thoughts on a particularly topic, update you on our news and on new initiatives we are getting involved in, you can also sign-up to this as an email newsletter by going to the Pelican Coaching & Development website .

Featured Topic: Success

We thought we’d start with the topic of Success. As we are a Coaching organisation, we will be exploring each featured topic through the use of questions, challenging you to think a little differently.

Here are 20 questions to ask yourself about Success (thanks to David Kelly for his thoughts in putting these together).

If you find these questions useful do forward them onto a friend or colleague.

20 questions for Success in Life and Business

1.  Do I have a vision for the future?

2.  Can I imagine myself in that vision & know what will I be doing, saying, feeling?

3.  Do I know what is important to me, now and in my future?

4.  What experiences have I gained from the past that I can draw on now ?

5.  Have I written down some key goals that will help move me towards this vision?

6.  Have I shared my goals with someone and talked through why I’ve chosen them?

7.  Do I trust that these goals will happen and maybe in a way I cannot imagine?

8.  Am I focusing my efforts on what’s important – not what’s urgent?

9.  Do I pat myself on the back for each small step I make?

10.Do I adopt a ‘Can Do’ attitude; challenging myself to find solutions not problems?

11. Do I stick with my vision and goal – and keep at it?

12.Do I keep reviewing my progress towards my goals?

13.Can I see beyond the routine of my job, to the opportunities it presents?

14.Am I keeping myself fit?

15.Am I watching what I eat?

16.Am I getting enough sleep?

17.Do I take calculated risks and learn from my mistakes?

18.Do I notice and make a list of my successes?

19.Do I spend enough time on the things that energise and rebalance me?

20.Do I believe that I deserve success?

Activities last month

In this current climate of change and uncertainty, in addition to our usual coaching and team development activities we’ve been running a number of Resilience Workshops giving people techniques for managing their response to the environment they find themselves in. We have been running these workshops as lunchtime and half day workshops.

If you would like to know more about running one of these short, focused workshops in your organisation contact us, in the meantime you may enjoy my Top Ten Tips for Developing Resilience, take a look at the website.

What is coming next month?

Clare Gallagher and I will be running more in depth 2 day Resilience Workshops geared at equiping leaders, managers and senior executives with the skills needed to lead themselves and others through turbulent times.

The course will be extremely innovative and participative, exploiting and expanding the latest thinking on this topic.

For more information see our website .

We are also offering this course in Yorkshire and Humberside as part of a Train to Gain funding scheme so if you are based in this area see our website for more information. For more information on our other workshops contact us or take a look at our website.

More next month, when the Featured Topic will be Making an Impact.

Warm wishes

HelentheCoach

New eBook on Being Resilient

I hope you  enjoy my eBook on ‘Being Resilient’  (click here)  please let me know.

July news

Thank you so much for all the great feedback on the Top 20 questions for Success, it seems they were very timely for many of you. Do continue to let me know when you find a topic helpful and also if someone you forward it to particularly enjoys it.

Thank you also for the great feedback on the Being Resilient eBook, you seem to really like it. It is always a little scary putting a piece of yourself up to be judged, but in this instance the feedback has been wonderful. If you would like a hard copy version of the booklet please contact us we are selling them at £5.75 (inc. VAT).

I hope you enjoy this update and let me know how much of an impact the making an impact questions make to you

Featured Topic: Making an Impact

 Here are 20 questions for making a greater impact in presentations, face-to-face interactions or over the phone.

 If you find these questions useful do forward them onto a friend or colleague.

 

1. When was the last time I made an impact?
2. What did I do that worked so well? – what was I doing, saying, thinking, feeling?
3. What will remind me of this time? Any key learnings for this time?
4. Am I clear on the needs and desired outcome of the other(s) involved?
5. Who do I know that regularly makes an impact? What can I learn from them?
6. How will I get into the best possible frame of mind for this event?
7. What preparatory exercises/rituals work for me?
8. How will I position myself to have the most impact? If I’m going to be on the phone will I stand up?
9. What do I know about the preferred style(s) of the other(s) involved?
10. Am I prepared to vary my language/approach to match this style?
11. Have I planned a clear and concise opening sentence acknowledging their needs or their perspective?
12. Have I remembered how much of an impact I can make without words?
13. How can I engage the other(s) involved?
14. What can I say to encourage myself?
15. Can I visualise myself making an impact?
16. What will it be like when I’ve achieved my outcome?
17. How will I know that what I’m doing is working?
18. Am I prepared to change my approach if I need to?
19. How will I remain centred, grounded and present?
20. Do I believe that I will make the biggest impact by just being myself?

We regularly run lunchtime, half day or full day workshops on ‘Making an Impact’ contact us for more information. We also regularly work with executive coaching clients in this area, usually with great results (more on coaching in the next paragraph).

Highlights from last month

A lot of the emphasis last month was on
coaching, taking the form of executive coaching, coaching surgeries and group coaching.

Here are some of the key themes we worked with in our coaching sessions;

• dealing with change
• developing gravitas/making an impact
• copy with increasing workloads
• dealing with difficult business relationships

If you would like to know more about coaching, group coaching or running a coaching surgery in your organisation contact us or take a look at the coaching page of the website.

We’ve also been running different types of Resilience Workshops mentioned in last month’s newsletter, these continue to be very popular.

What is new next month?

Elisabeth Goodman and I will be developing some Team Effectiveness workshops using ideas from Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Knowledge Working and Lean Sigma. More on this next month, but in the meantime take a look at our Top Ten Tips for Running Effective Meetings.
For more information on our other current workshop themes take a look at our website.

More next month, when the Featured Topic will be Dealing with Change.

Warm wishes
Helen

August News

It seems that the ‘Making an Impact’ questions featured last month really did help you to make an impact. They were particularly useful for one Pelican newletter subscriber who had to present a particularly difficult proposal at a senior meeting. The question about ‘visualising the outcome you want’ was the trigger to succuss for her. She imagined that there would be a difficult discussion followed by agreement to her proposal and that she would stay calm and centred throughout it all. She told us it happened just as she imagined – maybe this sort of thinking does work after all  

Please do let us know if you experience something different (positive or negative) as a result of any of our featured questions.

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and perhaps we can all visualise some warm sunny weather for August :)

Featured Topic: Dealing with Change

This month we are exploring questions around change, whether it is a change in your personal life or a business change brought about by a reorganisation, a new project, operational excellence or something else. Here are 20 questions to ask yourself about how you deal with this change. If you can begin to answer these questions you will be able to better lead yourself and others through periods of change and uncertainty.

 

If you find these questions useful do forward them onto a friend or colleague.

20 questions for Dealing with Change in Life and Business

 

1. When was the last time I went through a period of change like this?
2. What is my typical reaction to change? 
3. Am I most like Hem, Haw, Sniff or Scurry? (…if these names mean nothing it maybe time to read or re-read ‘Who moved my cheese?’ by Dr. Spencer Johnson)
4. How long does it usually take me to ‘settle down’ after a change? – how long will I give myself this time?
5. What emotions am I familiar with in myself when I think about change ?
6. What emotions have I seen in others?
7. What exactly is changing for me at the moment?
8. What will be different as a result of this change/these changes?
9. What do I need to let go of?
10. What are the opportunities for me in this change?
11. What am I feeling about the changes I’m experiencing right now?
12. What do I most need, now? – Who can I turn to for support?
13. How can I support myself ? What do I do that I know keeps me strong in situations like this?
14. How can I keep telling myself that it is normal to feel this way?
15. How can I make this change fit with my values or sense of purpose?
16. What is my ideal outcome from this change?
17. What actions can I take now and later?
18. What new skills or expertise can I develop?
19. How will I begin to know that I’m moving through the change process?
20. Can I visualise myself in 3 years time when this change has happened? – looking back, what one thing most helped me through the process?

Activities last month

Elisabeth Goodman and I have been working on our Team Effectiveness Workout.

We are going to offer a one or two day ‘workout’ for teams covering the following; a ‘warm-up’, looking at success for your team, focusing on what is important, building your team ‘fitness’, sharpening your performance and ‘cooling down’. We are quite excited about these workouts/workshops which pull together ideas from NLP, Knowledge Working and Lean Sigma. For more information on the workout click here. If you would like to be one of the first to run one of these workouts in your organisation please contact us.

What is coming next month?

I will be working on my next booklet in our ‘Being……………’ series, this one is called ‘Being Effective’ and dovetails very nicely with our new workout (mentioned above). The booklet will look at Personal Effectiveness in a creative way in a style similar to the ‘Being Resilient’ booklet. More on this next month.

For more information on any of the topics mentioned in this newsletter please contact us or take a look at our website

More next month, when the Featured Topic will be Leadership.

Warm wishes

Helen

September News

Last month we featured questions to ask yourself while going through a period of change or uncertainty and these were very timely for many of you. August is often a time for reflecting and refocusing as we enjoy going on holiday, relaxing at home or simply the fact that our working environments are slightly less hectic.

This month we are exploring questions about leadership and how we can become somebody that more people want to follow. I think the quote below summarises it nicely.

“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others but far enough ahead to motivate them” John Maxwell

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and that it leads your thinking as we begin to enter Autumn (though as I write this it could be the middle of summer, wonderful weather!).

Featured Topic: Effective Leadership

At Pelican we are passionate about helping you to develop as authentic and inspiring leaders, leading others from the ‘inside out’.

If you find these questions useful do forward them onto a friend or colleague.

20 questions to ask yourself about your leadership style. Thanks to David Kelly for helping to compile these.

1. Do I have a good understanding of my values and beliefs and how these impact my leadership style? How can I become more self aware?
2. Am I aware of the shadow that I cast as a leader? What would I like my shadow to be?
3. Do I have a vision for my team/organisation that I really believe in myself and is it inspiring and motivational for others?
4. Do I have an effective strategy to communicate this vision and gain real buy-in from my people?
5. Have I a clear understanding of the business we are in and am I up to date with developments in our market place? How can I make more time for this?
6. Has my team an agreed set of values that drive our behaviour within and outside of the team? How is it clear to everyone that our values are more than just words?
7. How do I demonstrate that my own actions have been driven by these team values?
8. How can I show more of a genuine interest in my people?
9. What motivates each one of my team?
10. Has each individual had a chance to discuss and agree their short, medium and long term objectives?
11. What are our agreed and transparent methods of measuring objectives?
12. Have we agreed time scales for review and assessment of progress?
13. How can I provide each individual with more support?
14. How am I demonstrating that I value, support and endorse this plan?
15. Do I readily deal with conflict within the team and between myself and other team members ?
16. Do I regularly ask for feedback about my strengths and development needs from my team?
17. Do I care deeply about the business and the people I lead?
18. How I am making a difference?
19. How am I coaching and challenging myself to think about things from many perspectives?
20. How much more of my ‘true self’ can I bring into the work environment?

If you’d like to explore how you can lead yourself, your team or your organisation more effectively please contact us.

Activities last month

Coaching Surgeries

We had a lot of activity last month launching and re-lauching Coaching Surgeries. A Coaching Surgery enables people in an organisation or department to sign up for 30 minute short, sharp, focused coaching sessions. The feedback from these ‘speed coaching’ sessions has always been very positive.

‘Being Resilient’ booklet

I’m delighted to say that there has been continued interest in the hard copy version of my booklet.  We are selling the ‘Being Resilient’ booklet for £5.75 and will offer a discount for bulk purchases. Please contact us if you’d like buy the booklet to support a team event, as a present for your team members or as a tool to encourage people in your organisation to think more resiliently.

I’m still working on my next booklet ‘Being Effective’, I hope to be able to tell you more next month.

Website

We have also been busy making some additions to our website this month.  Take a look when you get a moment, you’ll find new information about our associates and the types of workshops we offer.

What is coming next month?

Next month we have a lot of workshop activities, exploring issues such as empowerment, trust and effective communication. We have developed some exciting new tools for tackling these challenging issues a creative way.

More next month, when the Featured Topic will be Effectiveness.

Warm wishes

Helen

Helen featured in Yorkshire Press

I’ve been featured in a few local Yorkshire papers taking about coaching, resilience workshops and my ‘Being Resilient’ book.

Here is one of the articles.

http://www.advertiserseries.co.uk/jobs/jobs_news/4516658.Meet_the_coach_/

October News

Thanks for the feedback on last month’s questions on Leadership, I hope these will continue to act as a check list for you. I’ve actually expanded a few of the Leadership questions from the newsletter on the website, to promote further thinking. Many thanks to Terry who alerted me to the fact that many of the questions were more ‘closed’ than usual.

This month’s topic is Effectiveness reminding me of the great phrase often used in NLP circles “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” or as Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results“.  This month we’ll explore personal and team effectiveness – of course, if everything is working really well already then don’t change anything!

Featured Topic: Team Effectiveness

Effectiveness is not the same as busyness. In fact unfocused busyness is not good for business!

An effective team is one that is focused on the things that really matter, using individual and team strengths, learning from its mistakes and having a bit of fun in the process.

The following questions are designed to enable you to explore how you can be more effective in your team roles and how you can take shared accountability for the success of the teams you are part of.

1. What are you like when you are at your most effective?
2. How effective is the team at the moment?
3. Do you understand the role that you play on the team?  If not, how can you get clarity?
4. What are the team priorities for the next few months?
5. What are your stakeholders’ or customers’ priorities?
6. Can you describe what success will be like for the team?
7. Are you fully committed to the team? If not, what is stopping your commitment?
8. Are you able to make the time for your team commitments? If not, who can help you do this?
9. Do you liaise with your team members outside of the formal meetings?
10. How well do you know each team member and their particular strengths?
11. How well do your colleagues know you, your background and strengths?
12. Who do you know least in the team? Can you make time to get to know them better?
13. How would you rate your listening skills? What can you do to be even more engaged at meetings?
14. Do your colleagues listen to your point of view? What can you do to vary your communication style to suit your audience?
15. Are you prepared to admit your mistakes, encouraging others to do the same?
16. How can you encourage the team to adopt a continuous improvement approach?
17. How can you inject a little fun into team interactions?
18. What would make the team even more effective?
19. What is within your control to influence?
20. What one thing can you commit to doing for the good of the team?

We are passionate about improving personal and team effectiveness through 1:1 coaching, team development and tailored workshops so if you’d like to explore this topic further please let us know. We are particularly excited about our new Team Effectiveness workshop approach that is run over one or two days. For more information on the two day workshop themes click here.

Activities last month

Team Events
We ran a successful team event last month focused on empowerment, trust and communication. Unfortunately, the weather prevented us from going outside for the team games but we managed to improvise with ropes and blind folds inside!  We also developed a great new Facebook exercise which is super for developing trust and learning about each other.

Please contact us if you’d like to know more.

‘Being Effective’ booklet

I’m very excited to announce that my next booklet, ‘Being Effective’, ISBN: 978-0-9563907-1-4, is in the final stage of preparation for publishing. I absolutely love the process of creating these books and working with Ian who creates the pictures I imagine.
I’ll be able to give you a picture of the cover next month – I haven’t seen the final version yet.  I hope you enjoy it as much as my ‘Being Resilient’ booklet which I’m delighted to say has now sold 340 copies. Do let us know if you’d like a copy of either booklet at £5.75 each or £5 for more than 50 copies.


What is coming next month?

Next month more on my new booklet and more on a more detailed book on Resilience that I’m co-authoring with Clare Gallagher.

The Featured Topic next month will be Confidence.

Warm wishes

Helen

November News

This month’s topic is Confidence. I’m confident that you will enjoy exploring the questions below and do let me know which question makes the biggest difference to the way you think  about your confidence levels.

I’d particularly love to hear about your metaphors for confidence, if you are confident enough to share them

Featured Topic: Confidence

Take a few moments somewhere quiet to think and reflect on the following questions.

1.     What does confidence mean for you? -what words, actions or feelings would you use to describe confidence?

2.     What is your confidence level at the moment? (on a scale of 1 to 10)

3.     Where and when are you at your most confident?

4.     Can you think of a specific instance when you felt really good and trusted in your own ability? – what was your confidence level at this time? (on a scale of 1 to 10)

5.     Can you describe what this was like for you? – what did you look like? what were you doing? what were you saying? what were you feeling?

6.     If you used a metaphor to describe the confident you – what would it be?

7.     How can you remind yourself of this feeling in times when you are feeling less confident? (it maybe a word, a picture, a feeling or something else)

8.     Who do you know that is confident?

9.     How do you know they have confidence?

10.  What makes you think you are not as confident as them?

11.  What are the advantages for you of being more confident?

12.  What are the advantages of not be more confident?

13.  How do you feel about making a mistake? – does your fear of failure limit your confidence?

14.  Can you think of a situation in the future when it will be helpful to you to have more confidence?- how can you approach this situation differently as a confident person?

15.  How will you sit or stand when you are confident?

16.  How will you speak and sound?

17.  What will you say to yourself when you are confident?

18.  If you had a magic wand what superpower would you give yourself?

19.  How would this superpower help your confidence?

20.  Are you prepared to experiment a little and notice how your confidence increases?

We do a lot of coaching with senior leaders in the area of confidence and gravitas, if you would like to explore this topic further please contact us.

Activities last month

Release of ‘Being Effective’ Book

The most exciting activity this month (from my perspective!) was receiving my latest book from the printers.

‘Being Effective’  ISBN 978-0-09563907-1-4
is in a similar style to my previous book ‘Being Resilient’ with more wonderful paintings from Ian White and simple (but hopefully powerful) things for you to try to get your ideas and actions to flow.

The image above (I can do anything) is taken from this book. Please see the website if you’d like to know more.

Effectiveness workshops

We’ve been running lunchtime ‘Effectiveness’ workshops looking at ways that you can perform at your best, more of the time and exploring the impacts of stress on your performance. If you would like to know more please contact us. 

Resilience book

As I mentioned last month, Clare Gallagher and I are co-authoring a book on Resilience which will capture all our current ideas and themes from our Resilience workshops and from our coaching experience. We have now sketched out the flow of the book and all the chapter contents so ‘all’ we need to do now is to start some serious writing. More on this as we progress.

What is coming next month?

Next month will be a month for a little reflection, as things slow down a little as the Christmas holidays approach and we gear up for a another new year.

The Featured Topic next month will be reflections and wishes which will hopefully give you an opportunity to learn from your successes and challenges this year and plan for a confident new year.

Warm wishes

Helen

December News

Happy Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones.

Can you believe it is December already? Are the years actually shorter or do they just seem that way as one gets older?! Perhaps your year has passed at exactly the right pace or seems to have taken ages in which case you will wonder what I’m talking about

For me, it seems incredible that 2010 is looming when it feels only yesterday that we were all looking forward to the millennium. The passing of time can certainly provide a powerful incentive for making the most of now, both in life and work and so December is often a great time for reflection, learning and new resolutions.

As this is the last newsletter of 2009 we thought we’d take a slightly different approach and encourage you to take some time to stop and reflect on all the things you are proud of this year, the things you would have done a little differently if you had to do them again and the things you would really like to make more time for.

As you prepare for the holiday time take a quiet moment, just for you for reflection.

Featured Topic: Reflections and Wishes

This short exercise will give you an opportunity to have a little bit of fun while reflecting, learning and planning. If you would like to share any of your thoughts with me that will be wonderful.

Find yourself a quiet spot at home or at work where you will not be disturbed for a little while and flick through your diary for 2009. Make a note of key meetings you attended, presentations you made, things you achieved, things you are proud of, key experiences you remember and other things that occur to you as you reflect. You will probably find that your ideas flow more easily if you just scribble, writing in a word document or something too formal may constrain your thinking.

Now  you have taken the time to remind yourself of your year, have a play with the following questions;

For 2009…

1. What would your strap line be for 2009?
2. What picture or image represents 2009 for you? – what is the first thing that came into your head?
3. What song best sums up the year you?
4. If you had a magic wand, what would you have changed in 2009? How?

For 2010…

1. What would you most like to be doing differently in 2010?
2. What will your mantra be for 2010?
3. What picture will best illustrate you in 2010?
4. What will your anthem be?

You may find it useful to put the answers to one or more of these 2010 question on a small card or post-it note and keep it close to you.

‘Peak Performance’ workshops.

We’ve been running workshops looking at what it takes to achieve Peak Performance, how stress can inhibit performance, how to identify your own early indicators for stress and therefore how to return more quickly to a state where you can perform at your best. These workshops also feature a guided relaxation. Our lunchtime workshops on this topic are proving very popular. If you’d like to know more please contact us.

Pelican adoption.

We’ve adopted a pelican through the World Animal Foundation. The certificate arrived a couple of weeks ago along with a picture. I’m not sure the picture is of our actual pelican, but who knows! I love Pelicans they fill me with a sense of freedom and fun and just thinking about them reminds me of my favourite stretches of beach.

Resilience article.

I’ve written an article on Resilience for the Institute of Clinical Research (ICR) for their magazine CR focus. If you’d like to read the article click here.

What is coming next month

Next month will be a great opportunity to take some downtime and just relax and enjoy life with family and friends. In January our topic will be ‘Setting Powerful Goals’, to help you with your New Year’s Resolutions, if you plan to make any.  In the meantime it just remains for me to wish you a very Happy Christmas-time and a balanced, effective and exciting 2010.

Warm wishes
Helen

January News

Happy New Year.

Welcome to the New Year issue of the Pelican Coaching & Development newsletter. I hope you enjoyed the holiday time and maybe took sometime to unwind and reflect.

Personally, I had a lovely time with friends and family and the snow made it all quite special (though I think we have had enough of it in Great Britain now!).

As you gear up for 2010 you may have made, or are thinking of making, some resolutions. So this months topic will hopefully help you to do this in a truly effective way. Take a little time to explore the questions below and notice the difference in your motivation levels. As usual, do let me know the results.

Featured Topic: Setting Powerful Goals

This short exercise will help you to really think through your goals or resolutions in 2010.

I use these sorts of questions with my coaching clients. Exploring our wishes or objectives at a more detailed level enables us to experience what it will be like when we’ve achieved them. I find that if a client can really articulate their goals and describe success they are usually half way there.

Take a few minutes to right down your goal or resolution. Now, answer these questions.

1. Is your goal or objective a positive statement of moving to something new? It is important that our goals are written this way as ourbrain tends not to process negatives – so for example if our goal is ‘to NOT eat chocolate’ our brain tends to ignore the NOT and we find ourselves focusing on chocolate even more than we did before! Instead perhaps your positive goal is ‘to eat  more healthy foods’ or ‘to notice the foods that make you feel good’.
2. Can you truly ‘own’ your goal? It is within your control to make the goal happen? If not, can you rewrite the goal to focus on the bits you can do something about?
3. How committed to achievement are you on a scale of 1-10?
4. What needs to change for your commitment level to be 10?
5. Why is it important to you to achieve this?
6. What will achievement give you that you do not already have?
7. What else might achievement give you?
8. Does it feel completely right to ‘go after’ this goal? Is there any part of you that is questioning it?
9. How will you know when you’ve achieved your goal?
10. What resources or skills do you have that will help you?
11. What new skills or resources will you develop?
12. What do you know from past experience that will help you now?
13. Imagine now that you’ve achieved your goal; what will you be doing differently?
14. What will you be seeing or noticing about yourself or others?
15. What will you be saying?
16. What will others be saying about you?
17. How will you feel to have succeeded?
18. As others look at you, what are they noticing that is different?
19. How proud are you feeling at your success?
20. What was the key step that you took towards your success?

Activities last month

Leadership Coaching

The end of the year and the beginning of the next is usually a time when we take on new coaching clients, and this year is no exception. Performance reviews are a great time for assessing development needs and thinking about the benefits of working with a coach. If you’d like to explore how a tailored coaching programme might support your needs or the needs of someone in your organisation please contact us.

What is coming next month?

Next month our featured topic will be Effective Communication.

Until then,

Warm wishes

Helen.

February News

Welcome to the Pelican Coaching & Development February newsletter.

I’m delighted you found the questions on setting powerful goals so useful, it is curious how a little bit of magic happens if we take the time to explore what success really looks, feels and sounds like.

This month’s featured topic is Effective Communication. At  Pelican, we are regularly asked to run tailored workshops on different aspects of Communication and it is a topic I really enjoy exploring, particularly the non-verbal communication area. It really is amazing how much we communicate by saying absolutely nothing. We cannot not communicate! One of my most inspiring communication experiences was communicating effectively non-verbally with a senior Vice President who had his back to me in a board meeting! Email me directly if you’d like to know more and I’ll tell you the story

I hope you enjoy this newsletter and as always please let me know your experiences positive or otherwise from trying out the questions.

Featured Topic: Effective Communication

Think of a particular interactive communication situation that is coming up for you in the future, and then ask yourself these questions to test the clarity and timeliness of your intent.

1. Is the timing right for the interaction? – for you? – for the other(s)?
2. What are the current priorities for the other person(s)?
3. What else do you know that is important to them? – what learnings can you apply from previous interactions?
4. What will the other person(s) want to know from you?
5. What are their communication preferences? – are they big-picture or detail orientated? – do they like time to think before giving an answer? – do they like to consider different option?
6. What are the three key points you want to get across?
7. Why are these points important? – to you? to them?
8. How will you know that these points have been received and understood?
9. What actions would you like taken as a result of your communication?
10. How will you know that these actions have happened?
11. What will people be thinking, feeling or saying differently as a result of your communication?
12. How confident are you that the interaction will go well?
13. What will make you feel more confident?
14. What body language will you use during the interaction?
15. What body language will you look for?
16. What will be your pace and tone?
17. What clues will tell you that things are going well?
18. How much time are you going to spend talking versus listening or asking questions?
19. How will you feel at the end of the interaction?
20. What impression will you have left behind?

Activities last month

New Personal Resilience Workshops

We have developed a new Resilience Workshop approach exploring personal resilience though creative self discovery, group coaching and role play.

We tailor the themes covered in these workshops specifically to your needs and the approach works really well when used as part of a broader team event or as a standalone lunchtime session.

If you would like to know more, please contact us.

New Personal Effectiveness Workshops

We are running new 1 hour Personal Effectiveness coaching workshops, exploring the themes from my Being Effective book. These explore how to get the right things done with the minimum effort and maximum fun!

‘Being Resilient’ and ‘Being Effective’ Posters.

We have produced 24 poster based on the themes from the books. We will be putting these on the website soon.

What is coming next month?

Next month our featured topic will be Creativity.

Until then,

Warm wishes

Helen

Creativity

Welcome to the Pelican Coaching & Development March newsletter.

How did you get on with the Effective Communication questions last month? I’ve not had as much feedback as usual, which surprises me. Do let me know if the questions were useful and whether you got your desired outcome.

This month’s featured topic is Creativity. Some of my Creativity ideas have been inspired by Susan Kennedy’s fabulously creative books and her Planet SARK website and by the work of Michael Bungay Stanier and his Box of Crayons website. I’m delighted to be connected to these inspiring individuals though the wonders of social networking, they help to push my ‘creativity buttons’ and I hope my questions will encourage you to think in new and different ways.

I hope you enjoy this newsletter and as always please let me know your experiences positive or otherwise from trying out the questions and ideas.

Featured Topic: Creativity

This month’s featured topic has a slightly different format from usual, but as it’s about creativity I thought that would be OK

To be creative we need to be able to tap into a state within us where  ideas come easily and we ‘go with the flow’. Rational thinking is the enemy of creativity as it tends to make us quickly judge whether something is possible, feasible or safe and closes down our thinking. If we are to be truly creative we need to be able to suspend disbelief as long as possible.

Getting into a creative state

To explore your creative state, why not print off this newsletter, move away from your desk and ask yourself the following questions.

1. When did you last feel creative?
2. What were you doing? Where were you?
3. How did it feel? What name would you give to this creative you?
4. If you were going to create a creative space for yourself, where would it be? What would be in it?
5. Who is the most creative person you know? What do they do to ‘get creative’?
6. Are you more creative when you are moving or sitting still?
7. Do you feel more creative outside or inside?
8. Do you need other people to spark your creativity or do you prefer to sit quietly and see what comes to you??
9. Can you think of anything that might trigger your creative juices? Walking? Listening to music? Jumping up and down!?
10. If you were going to turn up the volume on your creativity, what would you do?

Stimulating your creative thinking

Now that you’ve thought a little more about how to get yourself into a creative state why not try one or two of the following things to flex your creative juices around a particular topic/problem area.

1. Start writing on a piece of paper. Write whatever occurs to you. You may start with something like ‘I don’t know what to write…   …I still don’t know what to write…’ but stick with it for ten minutes. You might be surprised where you end up.
2. Be as Childish as you can, what would a five year old say about the situation you find yourself in?
3. What is the most ridiculous thing you can think of? How can you make it even more ridiculous?
4. Explore different perspectives. How would Bill Gates, Superman, Doris Day and Peter Pan approach your topic or problem?
5. Write down as many words as possible related to your problem or topic, don’t critique them, then come up with one word that summarises them?
6. If your topic/problem was a colour what would the colour be? What colour is the solution or idea you want?
7. Can you think of a song title or piece of music that summarises your thinking?
8. Can you draw a picture to illustrate your thinking?
9. Stand up and walk away from where you are, look at the problem/situation from a distance – what else occurs to you?
10. Who else is involved? – what would they say if you asked them?

Tips for Being More Creative more of the time

Creativity is a part of ourselves that needs to be nurtured and exercised – try doing a few more of these things each day and notice the difference.

1. Keep a creative note pad – draw in it or write in it when anything (no matter how silly) occurs to you.
2. Get enough sleep.
3. Surround yourself with creative colours and things that make you feel good.
4. Listen to music.
5. Notice new things each day – look around you and see what is new or different – particularly notice things that require you to look up. Make a note of what you are noticing.
6. Drink enough water
7. Practice thinking differently – ask yourself ‘What If?’ about anything and everything – write your thoughts in your creative note pad.
8. Exercise – it’s amazing how much more creative we are when we move about – if you want to think differently walk, jog, run or swim.
9. Try recording yourself talking and thinking out loud
10. Be playful and childish – do silly things – make a note of what occurs to you when you do silly things.

Talking with a coach can also help to trigger your creative juices and help you think about things in new and creative ways. If you’d like to explore this option please contact me. You might be surprised at how much creativity you can come up with in a 1/2 hour phone call.

Activities last month

Dealing with Change

Many of our recent activities have been focused on how to deal with change and better lead yourself and others through change.

We’ve run workshops on various aspects of change and this has been a hot topic with many of our coaching clients as many organisations are down-sizing and restructuring.

If you would like to know more about how we might be able to support you through a period of change or uncertainty, please contact us.

Stress Management/Resilience Coaching

We have completed coaching programmes with several senior executives targeted at improving their effectiveness under stress. The coaching has enabled these leaders to understand the route cause of their stress and to recognise the early signs in themselves and then to develop strategies to better manage themselves so that they remain effective, decisive and in control.

What is coming next month?

Next month our featured topic will be Motivation.

Until then,

Warm wishes

Helen

Motivation

Welcome to the April issue of the Pelican Coaching newsletter. If you enjoy this newsletter do please feel free to forward it onto a friend or colleague. If you would like to subscribe please click here.

Thanks for all your great feedback on last month’s Creativity questions, I’m delighted that they worked for so many of you and helped you to conjure up some amazing metaphors for Creativity.  This month’s topic is Motivation.

You can view all my previous newsletters and the various topics at our newly designed BLOG page on our website, where we’ve laid out the newsletters in a way that (hopefully) makes it easy for you to find any the featured topics.

I hope you enjoy this newsletter and as always please let me know your experiences, positive or otherwise, from trying out the questions and ideas.

Featured Topic: Motivation

Motivation is a topic that often features in our Coaching sessions ‘How do I get motivated and stay motivated?’ or ‘How do I motivate my team?’ seem to be questions that we all wrestle with.

Wikipedia defines motivation as ‘the activation or energisation of goal-oriented behaviour’, so what are some questions you can ask yourself or your teams to get them activated or energised?

Why not print off this Newsletter and explore these questions in a creative space away from your desk.

1. When were you last really motivated to start, continue or finish something?
2. Can you remember how it felt? What three words would you use to describe the feeling?
3. Exactly what was it that you were motivated to do?
4. Can you remember what got you motivated? Was it pride at the prospect of finishing or perhaps imagining the positive feedback you’d get as a result or perhaps an immovable deadline that you had to meet or something completely different?
5. If you can think now of a few situations where you were truly motivated over the last couple of years, what was the common thread(s) for you?
6. Is it important to you to get acknowledgement for your achievements?
7. What sort of acknowledgement or reward increases your motivation levels?
8. How do you acknowledge or reward yourself for a job well done?
9. What is the key goal that you’d like to get really motivated towards at the moment?

10.  Can you describe exactly what it will look, sound and feel like when you’ve completed it? Is the goal something you believe you can do?

11.  Would it be helpful to commit to the goal publicly or perhaps print it out and post it on your wall?

12.  At what time of day are you at your most productive and effective? When are you going to spend time working on your goal?

13.  Are you going to give yourself permission for your motivation levels to ebb and flow? How will you do this?

14.  What will you say to yourself to gee yourself along? Where might you get inspiration from?

15.  How will you remind yourself to focus on what you can do rather than the difficulties or challenges?

16.  How might you build in time to notice how much you are achieving? What will be your first acknowledgement point?

17.  Who might be able to help keep your motivation levels up? What might be able to help you achieve your goal?

18.  What learnings do have from previous successes that you can use now?

19.  What else might happen as a result of you completing your goal?

20.  What will believe about yourself when you’ve completed your goal?

Talking with a coach is also a great way to get motivated. If you’d like to explore this option please contact me. You might be surprised at how activated and energised you can be following a stimulating and challenging coaching conversation.

Activities last month

Posters and Postcards now available.

We have designed posters and postcards of our wonderful book pictures with the refreshingly simple quotes. For more information see the website.

New Book

I’ve started work on another picture book, this one is called ‘Being Creative’. It should be complete in the next month. So watch this space.

Communicating and Influencing remotely

We have been working with a number of individual clients and teams who want to improve their ability to communicate and influence over the phone or video conference. The coaching (and mentoring) sessions are held over the phone and by video conference enabling the clients to practice reading remote body language and varying their style to achieve different outcomes.

If this is an area of challenge for you or your team please contact us to explore how we might tailor an approach to meet your needs.

What is coming next month?

Next month the theme will be DEALING WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Executive Coach and Consultant

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

Dealing with difficult people

Welcome to the May issue of the Pelican Coaching newsletter.

A reminder that you can download a free copy of my ‘Being Resilient’ picture book from the website. If you haven’t already looked at it, it might make you smile.

This month’s topic is Dealing with Difficult People. As usual, I’d welcome your comments on the questions that really worked for you or that made you challenge your current way of thinking.

If you enjoy this newsletter do please feel free to forward it onto a friend or colleague. If you’ve just received this newsletter from a friend or colleague and would like to subscribe please click here.

Featured Topic: Dealing with Difficult People

I’m sure that you can immediately think of a person you consider to be difficult (it may even be someone that everyone around you considers difficult too).

You might believe that this person makes you defensive, frustrated, confused or angry.

You might also feel a strong sense of resentment towards this person.

The questions below are designed to help you to explore your reaction to the difficult people that you meet, and to help you to begin to deal with these sorts of people before they deal with you!

You’ll probably guess that I don’t really really believe that there are ‘difficult people’ only people who cause us to challenge ourselves in new, difficult and often uncomfortable ways. You cannot change how people are but you can choose how you let them impact you!

Why not print off this Newsletter and explore these questions in a quiet space away from your desk.

1. Can you remember when you were last at your most calm and assertive?
2. What does calm and assertive feel like for you? Can you describe it in as much detail as possible? What colour comes to mind? Can you liken it to an animal?!
3. What is your body language like when you are calm and assertive? What is your tone of voice like? fast or slow? deep or high-pitched?
4. What do you know to be true about yourself when you are at your most calm and assertive? (what do you believe about yourself in this state?)
5. Who are you when you are calm and assertive?
6. Can you think of someone that you are always calm and assertive with?
7. How do you think they feel about you? How do you expect your next interaction with them to go?
8. How do you feel about the possibility of another interaction with them?
9. Now, can you think about someone who you consider ‘difficult’?

10.  What do you know about them as a person? What is important to them? If you were ‘in their shoes’ how would you see the world?

11.  How do they perceive you?

12.  What would make them less cautious of you?

13.  What is your body language like when you are with them? What is your tone of voice like? fast or slow? deep or high-pitched?

14.  What are you thinking and feeling when you are with them? What colour comes to mind? Can you liken it to an animal?

15.  Who are you when you are with this person? Who would you like to be?

16.  As you think about a future interaction with this ‘difficult’ person what do you believe will make a difference for you?

17.  How exactly will this (or these things) make the interaction better?

18.  How will prepare yourself mentally and physically for the interaction?

19.  How will you feel differently during and after the interaction?

20.  Who will you be with this person in future?

Talking with a coach is also a great way to explore your challenges with ‘difficult people’. During coaching sessions we can explore these sorts of questions in more depth and also use other tools to understand the likely preferences and motivations of others.

We also regularly run workshops on assertiveness and influencing.

Activities last month

Being Effective

Elisabeth Goodman and I have been working on our ‘Being Effective’ workbook. This is a ‘Personal Effectiveness’ book that will build on the ideas in my ‘Being Effective’ picture book, but also include Elisabeth’s process improvement expertise. We are very excited about the various possibilities with this book and how it will supplement our Effectiveness workshops.

New Picture Book

My ‘Being Creative’ picture book has taken a back seat this month with other commitments but I hope it will be available in the near future. Watch this space.

Coping in Difficult Times

We are delivering a two hour workshop called ‘Coping in Difficult Times’ for an organisation undergoing a number of redundancies at the moment. The workshop is similar to others we have delivered before but with an emphasis on creating thinking time in a turbulent environment.

If this is an area of challenge for you or your team please contact us to explore how we might tailor an approach to meet your needs.

What is coming next month?

We are developing a telephone workshop to help leaders think about how they can be better coaches. More on this next month when the featured topic will be Maintaining your Energy.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Executive Coach and Consultant

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

Assertiveness

Welcome to the June issue of the Pelican Coaching newsletter. I cannot believe that it is already our first anniversary issue and I have been writing these newsletters for a year!

When I first began it seemed quite a daunting commitment to write a newsletter EVERY month but I now really enjoy the discipline of it and your continued support and feedback make it a very interactive process, so thank you.

As we have been going a year, to keep things fresh, I’m going to try a change of format to the featured topic. This year we will have a Top 10 Tips feature instead of the 20 Questions format. As always, please let me know if you find these tips useful and if the format works for you.

Thank you if you commented on last month’s newsletter, I am delighted that many of you enjoyed the topic of Dealing with Difficult People. This month’s topic is Assertiveness.

Featured Topic: Assertiveness

Assertiveness means different things to different people.

For me, assertiveness is NOT being loud and direct or being able to get your way all the time. It is also NOT necessarily something that can be learnt on a effective communication and body language course.

I think true assertiveness comes from a belief that you are equal to others (not better or worse, just equal) and you therefore communicate assertively from this position of equality. Effective communication and body language help but you cannot change the message without changing the messenger.

Assertive people therefore do not need to get their way all the time but they do know what is important to them and care about the values of other people. Assertive people are more interested in a “win-win” solution than a victory.

Top 10 Assertiveness Tips

1. Know your boundaries

In each interaction you have, think about what is important to you and where your boundaries are. What is really important and what are you prepared to compromise on?  If you focus at this level you will maintain your sense of self and be able to negotiate on the details. You will know when to dig your heels in and when it’s OK to let go.

2. Seek to understand the other person

If you are to reach a ‘win-win’ solution it is important to understand the other person and what their values are. In an equal interaction both views are equally valid. What is most important to the other person and where are their boundaries?

3. Acknowledge the other person

Always acknowledge the other person’s point of view and/or emotional state BEFORE stating your own views and frustrations. Phrases like “I know it is important to you to……..” or “I can see you are frustrated by……..” demonstrate how you value the other person and see them as equal to yourself.

4. Be clear about what you need

Let the other person know what is important to you and the outcome you would suggest. Be as clear and direct as possible. It is always worth saying what you want, you never know the other person might agree!

5. Get the balance right

Stay connected to yourself and your feelings. A great way to do this is to take deep diaphragmatic breaths and be very aware of your feet planted firmly on the ground. As you do this you will notice that you feel calmer, talk more slowly and have more time to think.

6. Choose how you react

From a position of balance it is much easier to choose how you react to things. If you find yourself getting upset or frustrated take more deep breaths and think before you say anything. What is making you emotional? Remember it is very important for the other person to be honest in order to move the situation forward, to do this they may say things that make you uncomfortable.

7. Mind your body language

Stay aware of your body. Remember that what we say with our body is far more important than anything we say with our words.  Assertive people tend to be on the same physical level as the other person (sitting if they are sitting, standing if they are standing etc.), have open body language and use slow deliberate gestures with their hands to support what they are saying.

8. Speak slowly and considerately

Assertive people tend to speak in a slow considered manner which also gives them more time to think.  If you slow down you will not only come across more assertively but you will also be able to choose the right words for the situation. Try and avoid sentences like “You always…..” or “I understand that, but…..” opt instead for “I feel that….” or “I appreciate that……”.

9. Ask for time

While you are practising assertiveness take the time you need to make the right decision or say the right thing. If you cannot think of an answer or feel uncomfortable then ask for the time you need. Expressions like “Let me think that through….” or “Can I take some time to reflect on what you’ve said…”.

10. Coach yourself

As you start to notice yourself becoming more assertive, give yourself encouraging feedback. It’s amazing how saying “Well done you….” or “You are doing well…” to ourselves makes a difference. If you struggle try telling yourself “It’s OK, you are doing the best you can”. Try giving yourself permission to just try something new and notice what happens.

Talking with a coach is also a great way to explore what assertive means for you. Please contact us if you’d like to explore further.

Activities last month

‘What is Coaching’ workshop

We have developed a two hour ‘What is Coaching’ workshop that can be run over Video Conference or Face-to-face. During the workshop we explore the role of coaching in developing empowerment and practise using coaching models with non-business scenarios. If you think this might be useful in your organisation or would just like to know more, please contact us.

Telephone Coaching Surgery

We are running a new telephone Coaching Surgery for remote staff in a large organisation. Staff can sign-up for 30-40 minute Coaching Sessions and explore their current business challenges with a certified and accredited Coach. If you think this might be useful in your organisation or would just like to know more, please contact us.

What is coming next month?

Next month the Featured Topic will be Coaching Tips for Leaders and Managers.

If you enjoy this newsletter do please feel free to forward it onto a friend or colleague. If you’ve just received this newsletter from a friend or colleague and would like to subscribe please click here.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Executive Coach and Consultant

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com

Goals and Resolutions

Happy New Year and welcome to the New Year issue of the Pelican Coaching newsletter.

I hope you had a good break over the holiday time and are now recharged and refreshed and ready for an effective, resilient and healthy 2011.

Thanks for your lovely comments on the reflection questions in December’s newsletter, I’m glad you found them so useful. Building in time for regular reflection can make us much more effective. In fact, when you are at your most busy and chaotic take five minutes out to stop and think about what you are doing, and why, and notice the difference it makes to your focus and motivation. Go on – I challenge you – and let me know how well it works.

This month’s featured topic is about new year resolutions and goals, have you already broken the resolution you set for yourself? If you have, don’t worry you can start again using the ideas below, if you haven’t, then why not refine your goals using some or all of the ideas below and see how much more powerful they feel.

As always, please let me know if the tips below are helpful and if you want to share your resolution or goal with me (in confidence) please do – sharing your goals with a coach is a great way of making them more real, actionable and important.

Resolutions and Goals

The tips below will (hopefully) help you to acheive your personal goals and resolutions.

Top 10 Tips

1. Write your resolution or goal down

The first step to goal setting is to be really clear on what you want to acheive and why, and the best way to do this is to write your goal down. Write your goal in the positive e.g. ‘I want to make time for reflection so I am more considered in my actions and therefore more impactful’.

2. State it as if it is going to happen

Make your goal as definite and specific as you can e.g.  ‘I will build in 15 minutes reflection time after lunch every day’.

3. Don’t share your personal goals and resolutions

I recommend that you don’t share your personal goals and resolutions with anyone other than your coach (or a trusted supporter). Goals and resolutions are very personal things and often well intentioned judgements or suggestions can dampen your motivation. Keep your resolutions to yourself unless you know that you are going to get support.

4. Think about how you will feel when you have succeeded

Imagine how your life will be different when you have succeeded in your goal. How much better will you feel about yourself? Think about what you will be doing differently, what you will be saying to yourself, what others will be saying to you and how you will be looking at the world differently.

5. Just do it

As you will already know it is often the starting process that is the hardest part of goal acheivement. There is never going to be a perfect time so just do it! It is amazing how much easier something is once you’ve started. Make it a conscious habit for at least a couple of weeks so you remember to do it.  You may even want to set an alarm or message on your mobile phone each day to remind you.

6. Use a ‘mantra’ to support your resolution

Think of a ‘mantra’ that you can use to help you develop this new way of life. For the resolution I’ve used as an example the mantra could be ‘ calm and considered’ or ‘thoughtful and wise’ (with the first word said on the ‘in’ breath and the second word said on the ‘out’ breath).

7. Make things easy

If your resolution is a ‘big hairy audacious goal’ find a way of making things as easy for yourself as possible so you can succeed. Think about the smallest thing you can do to get started on your journey and focus on this initially. Often if we take the pressure off ourselves a little bit of magic happens.

8. Forgive yourself

If you miss one of the targets you set for yourself then forgive yourself and start again. None of us is perfect and it really doesn’t matter. Treat each day as a new day and put the past behind you. Give yourself a really good pat on the back for starting again.

9. Take the time to notice how good you feel

Once you have started to get into a routine then make sure you take the time to notice the differences. Notice how you feel differently and any other changes that are taking place. If you can notice how good you feel this will increase your motivation.

10. Write a thank you letter to yourself

Why not have a go at writing a thank you letter to yourself, imagining you are living your resolution and your life has changed for the better. It might sound weird but have a go and see what happens. e.g. ‘…thank you so much for making the time for me to reflect each day, I feel wonderful. I know it was hard to get into the routine but thank you for perservering and pushing yourself when you really didnt feel like it….’

Let me know if you have a tip that I’ve not included here that works for you.

Highlights from last month

New Puppy!

My partner and I have adopted a new puppy called Wellington. He’s 10 weeks old at the time of writing this and already a fabulous little character.

It’s amazing how many lessons one can learn from a puppy (and from most animals). Wellington reflects how we are feeling each day (even if we don’t know it ourselves!), if we are anxious so is he, if we are calm and centred then he behaves like a little angel.

He is also teaching me to just live in the present and enjoy him, it will be wonderful when he is house trained and able to go out on a lead but for now he is a little bundle of fun who just wants to please.

Next month

The featured topic next month will be Dealing with Change, this is also the theme of my new book which I hope will be ready by then (Christmas and New Year have delayed things slightly), so more on that next month too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, if you have please forward on to friends or colleagues or tweet.

Warm wishes

Helen.

Leadership and Team Coach

Pelican Coaching & Development

www.pelicancoaching.com