Leaders can make or break your business

Businesses don’t fail, leaders do. Leaders that fail to recognise this and the importance of their leadership skills risk being just “average” in this competitive global economy. Effective leaders engage, motivate and inspire their workforce. They know their purpose, and how to create a shared purpose with their people. Leadership is a skill; people are not just born with it. It can be developed and enhanced through executive coaching.

Executive coaching is one of the most effective ways for people to become more successful and develop skills and emotional intelligence that will enhance their performace. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) two out of three organisations use external coaches and 92 per cent judge coaching by external practitioners to be effective.

One of the leaders I have recently worked with was extremely intelligent, ambitious, hardworking, but he was side-lined for a promotion, because he couldn't communicate effectively. Through coaching, he found out that his communication issues were linked to his shyness and trust. Once he worked through the issues with his executive coach he was promoted and became comfortable leading people. Everyone is different, that's why coaching is more effective than training. Executive coaching is specially tailored to the individual; the only agenda is the client's success.

Great leadership is not a secret, it is a skill that is developed through hard work, experience and learning.

For more information contact us on http://www.inspiring-potential.com

Get Ready for September 2013

Get ready for September!

Sometimes, we feel we have worked very hard, people view us as successful, but we feel we have lost our  “mojo” - that determination and drive to succeed we used to have. We feel demotivated and a bit sluggish getting out of bed each morning.

Does this sound familiar? You may have had this feeling for a while, hoping it will go away. Usually, these feelings are highlighting that something is not quite right, and change and action are required.

What about doing something about it? Now is the time to act and take back control of your life and career.

Sometimes just getting into a different mind-set is enough, it give you the motivation again to succeed, but sometimes more drastic changes are required. Everyone is different and thinks differently. This is why executive coaching can be so effective in determining what actions to take, what direction to follow and how to look at things in new ways.

Inspiring Potential is offering a ‘summer special’, a one session of coaching so you can experience the transformative power of executive coaching without any further commitment.

Usually our coaching programmes are six months long, but in one session we can help executives get their mojo back by helping clarify their goals and identifying how to overcome any blockages to success.

For more information contact us on 0845 355 1159, or check our website www.inspiring-potential.com

Build Confidence With Executive Coaching

Having confidence as a leader does not always come naturally, and many seek executive coaching to help address confidence issues both for themselves and for the benefit of their teams.

The Importance of Confidence in A Leadership Role

“A good leader inspires others with confidence in him; a great leader inspires them with confidence in themselves”. This anonymous quote sums up perfectly the need for confidence in a leadership role – having confidence in your own actions and decisions will inspire others to also feel confident about themselves. The flip side is also true, a lack of confidence from a leader will demotivate team members, driving them to question decisions, actions and responsibilities.

Without addressing deficiencies in leadership confidence levels via avenues such as executive coaching, companies can soon find employee loyalty on the ebb. This is supported by the Hillcroft House report ‘UK Management Culture of Fear’ which found that the quality of essential leadership and engagement skills necessary for a manager halved between 2008 and 2012, and also suggests that 93% of employees would strongly consider leaving their employer due to poor leadership style.

As a leader, confidence is needed in many areas. From direction setting, through to social confidence and self-confidence in one’s own levels of knowledge and competence.

Decision Making and Direction Setting

Leaders who lack confidence will generally find it harder to make decisions, and in particular they may have difficulties setting goals and a clear direction for their team. Fear of making the wrong decision can lead to no clear decision at all, or switching direction part way through a project instead of following through. This uncertainty can cause tremendous stress and morale problems within a team, and leads to poor business performance generally. Through completing an executive coaching programme, leaders will be able to communicate with a sense of mission and value, providing the strategy and the platform to allow their people to achieve results.

Social Confidence

Relationships are key to results and people often choose to support and work hard for a leader because of their personal qualities and because they feel that they have a positive connection with that person.

Leaders who are not confident about interacting with people – either generally, or with specific people – will tend to withdraw from making effective relationships with their teams. A lack of social interaction and contact can make team members feel disconnected from the leader personally, resulting in less motivation to achieve goals set by them.

And for some team members, a lack of social connection with the team leader can become a source of dislike and even antagonism, which can further undermine the leader’s authority and their confidence, leading to even more avoidance of social interaction.

During executive coaching leaders learn to motivate others by being authentic, generating trust and optimism throughout their teams.

Self Confidence

Especially for those moving to a new company or taking on a new role, leaders who feel that they don’t know enough about their job can behave apprehensively. Different processes, as well as the need to learn new products, can cause insecurity even if they are more than capable of learning what’s needed.

With coaching leaders will have the ability to recognise their strengths and what they bring to their teams, drawing on these to highlight their capabilities rather than development needs.

Steps to Improving Confidence

During a programme of executive coaching leaders will be taken personally through a journey to build their self-confidence:

1. Articulating the problem – looking at what form the leader’s lack of confidence is taking and what problems it is causing,  providing the leader with a private space to express their doubts and map out the problem.

2. Identifying limiting beliefs underlying lack of confidence and clearing or modifying those beliefs – for example some leaders may feel that they need to continuously evaluate and self-criticise in order to succeed.

3. Working on growing self-belief and trust in their own decisions – focusing on what the leader’s strengths are, and encouraging them to trust in these in order to make decisions that they feel confident about.

4. Taking control and putting actions in place to address areas for development – this could be further self-development aimed at improving particular skills, for example public speaking or getting training in a specific area of knowledge. Or it could entail setting up mechanisms at work to address particular issues, for example if social confidence is an issue, creating opportunities for social interaction with colleagues, through team building, shared events, etc.

Benefits of Improved Confidence

As well as the personal benefits of becoming a more confident leader, allowing less self-doubt, less stress and an all-round happier working environment, confidence inspires better business performance - better goal setting and better vision – all leading to a more focused workforce, with better buy-in from the team and heightened productivity.

And investing in executive coaching does not just benefit the leader themselves. Speaking at a recent event, Dr Mark Winwood, clinical director for psychological health at AXA PPP Healthcare, said that "the two most commonly reported contributors to stress are poor line management and long working hours" and that “line managers should be coached and supported to become the best people managers they can be.” So encouraging a better management style and greater employee engagement will make teams happier, more loyal and, Hay Group figures suggest, up to 43% more productive.

Find out more about executive coaching  from Inspiring Potential and the benefits it could have for you.

Executive Coaching – What’s Involved?

Executive coaching is often perceived as a mysterious and intrusive process from the outside, one in which many questions are asked, some of which may feel uncomfortable. This can often be off-putting, especially to business executives who typically prefer a concrete approach to solving problems. And for many, the idea that they may need coaching is equally objectionable. But the business of executive coaching has been steadily growing, and the case for its benefits is strong. So what does it really entail?

In fact, the process of executive coaching involves the use of specific and targeted techniques aimed at addressing a range of problems.

Here we give a brief overview of some coaching techniques and what they are used for.

360 Degree Feedback

Executive coaching in itself is about self-awareness, and being open to 360 degree feedback - from peers, from those reporting to the executive, and from those the executive reports to -  can help to form a well-rounded view of strengths and weaknesses, as well as how they are perceived.

This can form the concrete basis for changing behaviour and communication styles to improve performance and get immediate results.

Clearing Limiting Fears and Beliefs

A very focused process, in the course of discussing development needs, as well as changing behaviour executive coaching looks to identify the drivers for current behaviour – usually one or more quite specific fears or beliefs.

This stage then enables the executive to articulate these fears and beliefs, either spontaneously through discussion, or using specific techniques such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), to review them, and to adopt more relevant beliefs.

For instance, in the case of the executive always looking for approval, their belief may be that they are not good enough. Becoming conscious of this belief will enable them to let go of it, recognise their strengths and in place, believe in them.

Video Feedback

Allowing the executive to see how they appear and behave in a range of social situations, video feedback is particularly relevant in reviewing performance during public speaking and presentations, and it is equally effective in looking at interactions with team members and peers. Giving objective feedback, this can often help to counter self-perceptions and helps to identify specific improvement areas and techniques. A continual process, further video footage after coaching has started can show improvement and further areas of development.

Focused Problem Solving

While to the untrained eye this can appear to be simply an executive and their coach talking, this is a highly focused way of helping to reach a decision or solve a problem. Focused problem solving is particularly helpful when the issue is complex, out of the ordinary, or where there are high levels of stress or emotion involved, preventing the executive from seeing the situation in an objective way. And this process is especially valuable for senior executives who do not have peers with whom they can  discuss such matters within the workplace.

Within focused problem solving, the coach will ask the executive to clearly describe their issue, as well as identifying what may be preventing them from seeing a solution. Once the issue is clear, the coach helps to generate options and ideas around it, and then to select the best approach to solving it. If emotional aspects are also involved, the coach will bring in techniques to calm these.

The aim of this technique is to reach a decision, and if not, to create clarity around the issue enabling the executive to take tangible progress towards a decision – such as researching a specific topic or talking to a particular person.

Goal Setting

One of the keys to effective leadership and achieving results is having clear goals and working towards them in a planned way. Executive coaching in this area helps to achieve clarity and focus, and is especially beneficial when an executive perceives conflict between goals, or when there is an issue with priorities. The coach will use powerful questions to create awareness of what the executive wants to achieve, including any limitations that they may be inflicting upon themselves, and here, the GROW model may be used, to look at:

Goal – a clear view of where the executive wants to be.
Reality – where the executive is now – how far from the goal, and what challenges they face.
Obstacles and Options – defining barriers to progress and finding options to deal with them.
Way forward – taking the options forward to reach the end goal.

The Greater Value of Executive Coaching

With many techniques and tools at their disposal, experienced executive coaches tailor their approach precisely to the needs of their client and may use some, all or none of those that we have outlined depending on their brief.

In today’s demanding business environment, many companies place greater value on executives with coaches and mentors, who benefit from a holistic view of their own role, while inspiring and engaging others towards goals and productivity.

Find out more about the benefits of executive coaching with Inspiring Potential – helping you to achieve the results and success you want.

Inspiring Potential

Help needed with fear of presenting in public

I’m the CEO of a mid-size company, and as the company grows I am been required to do more presentations. These presentations cause me enormous amount of stress, and I feel very uncomfortable. Can you shed some light on this issue and provide some advice.

Dear CEO,

What you are experiencing is fear of public speaking otherwise called speech anxiety or stage fright. It’s that sense of fear that overtakes us when we have to present in from of an audience, and it doesn’t matter if the audience is large or small.

Many research papers show that fear of public speaking is among the most common fears along fear of death. The fear of speaking could be triggered by a past even in which you were asked to present, and you felt you failed or did not do as well as you’d like, or it could be a natural fear of inadequacy, rejection, being judged as incapable or incompetent. So how do you deal with this fear.

First of all realise that fear is natural. Whenever we are getting ready for a big event our body prepares us by getting adrenaline released, which causes all of the symptoms we associate with speech anxiety, including having sweaty palms, feeling flushed, increased pulse rate, etc. Everyone, including successful actor, sportsmen, and politicians experience the exact same thing before a performance. However, it is how you interpret and manage that fear that makes a difference. This fear can help you add energy and enthusiasm to the presentation or it can block your performance, if you let it. Most people who are afraid of presentations, see this fear as a negative indicator, and therefore start imagining negative situations in which they forget the presentation, the mind goes blank, people think they are incompetent etc. The key here is to use the adrenaline to your advantage and use the energy to connect with the audience.

Here are some tips on managing your nervousness:

•            Visualise the presentation from the beginning to a successful end, when everybody  applauds and congratulates you for a job well done, including some mistakes and recovering from them, and ending the presentation successfully. For example, many of us imagine thinking that our minds will go blank during the presentation, and it may, but the important thing is how you recover from it.  Instead of just thinking about whatever your fear is, imagine it happening and you gracefully recovering from it.

•            Breathe deeply , I know it sounds obvious, but it is important to take a several deep breaths until you feel calm and centered. By breathing slowly and deeply, you body starts to calm down, and  you can focus on delivering your message rather than on the fear.

•            Practice, don’t try to memorize the presentation word for word. It adds stress if you miss a word. It is better to have one or two word notes that may trigger the point, and rehearse the presentation several times before the actual presentation.

•            Another option may be to seek an executive coach (link to www.inspiring-potential.com), hypnotherapist, CBT provider, NLP practitioner that could help you tackle directly the fear. I had a client who asked me to help her with fear of skiing, she had been skiing for a long time, but didn’t seem to get better. We had one session, and she went on a skiing holiday, She later called me to say how dramatically she had improved , and she was now going down expert slopes.

Fear is natural, but it is also a learned behaviour, which you can unlearn. It is possible to give presentation and be excited and inspirational instead of worried and nervous. Executive coaching can help you deal with the fear and practice with someone that can provide you with feedback.

For more information on our executive coaching (links to http://www.inspiring-potential.com/executive-coaching.php) services to help with public speaking, please click here

Bullied at Work

Q: As an HR manager who’s just started at a large organisation, I’m concerned about a line manager who is considered a star performer. He is dominant, dogmatic and rude to his team but the organisation turns a blind eye, because he brings in so much money. I suspect he may be a bully, although no one has yet come forward to complain. What should I do?

Marielena Sabatier, Executive Coach with Inspiring Potential, writes:

This is a delicate situation. Certainly in organisations, there are ‘bullies in hiding’. They may be the ones who are control-orientated, who have a rigid way of thinking and don’t see anyone else’s point of view or who are constantly blaming others or using excuses to explain why targets have not been met.

In this case, it may be worth trying to provide a safe confidential forum where his team can speak up. As a new person in the organisation, you could try conducting one-to-one interviews with the team, as part of a process of getting to know people.

You may also consider introducing confidential 360 degree feedback as part of the appraisal process. As well as identifying if this manager is a bully, this should also provide you with beneficial information on the management and the culture of the organisation.

If the organisation is turning a blind eye to bullying, your bigger challenge would be to try to create a culture of dignity and respect in the workplace, by actively defining and promoting positive working relationships - and showing employees how to treat each other with respect - rather than simply trying to build a corporate culture where bullying isn’t tolerated. Citing the negative mantra that ‘We don’t tolerate bullying’ is not enough. It is critical to focus on the positive behaviours that are required to succeed in the organisation, such as respect, honesty and clear and open communication.

To do this, you need to get buy-in from other managers, run awareness training and establish a clear policy on how to deal with bullying.

Of course, it may be that the manager in question is not a bully. Some people are so driven by the task or challenge that they are unaware of their behaviour. They may have very little emotional intelligence or it could be the result of inexperience, stress-fuelled anger, fatigue or a lack of communication. Some line managers have an autocratic management style. Others occasionally become aggressive or snappy under stress. For these people, an accusation of bullying can come as a shock.

If this manager shows bullying tendencies, you might consider providing coaching to help him modify his behaviour. Coaching can also help individuals with issues such as aggression, lack of confidence and low self esteem.

Bullying is cruel and disrespectful and there are legal, moral, social and economic reasons why it should not be tolerated in organisations. If it does exist then everyone - bullies, victims and bystanders - should work together to stamp it out.

For further information about how our executive coaching can help your organisation, please contact us.

My job is meaningless

Q. I'm an HR manager in my mid-fifties. I feel my job is meaningless and I’ve got another decade to go before I can retire. I have worked for this company over 20 years and I don’t want to move. I feel valued and respected here. What can I do to re-motivate myself?

Marielena Sabatier, Executive Coach with Inspiring Potential, writes:

With the passing of time in a particular role, it is easy to get the idea that this is all you can do. I would suggest that you explore your options firstly within the role itself. Is there any option to adjust the scope of role so that you are incorporating some aspects that give you more meaning?

A job that has become meaningless can indicate that it is not aligned to your values. So the first step is to identify what would make your job meaningful. Bear in mind, that this is a very personal question. Everyone has different values and defines meaningful in a different way, so it is important that you do some soul searching and identify what is meaningful to you.

Ask yourself: What is important to me in my role? What would make my role meaningful? What am I motivated by? When I last felt really motivated, what was it about the situation created that state? How would I like to help others in the company?

Look for ways that will allow you to incorporate your values and your 20 years of experience into your role. For example, if you value creativity then look for ways of being creative. Or look for ways of utilising your experience in new ways, maybe become a mentor to less experienced HR managers. Only you know what can make a role meaningful to you.

If you cannot see options to bring meaning into your role then there may be some scope to do something else within the company or even to create a new role. The role that you dream up could be exactly what your organisation needs and it may be possible for you to make a case for it.

If this is still not an option, then you need to ask yourself: What is it costing me not to move? In other words, what are you missing out on by staying there until you retire? Is it fear that is keeping you there? This is a common factor as to why people stay in places that they don’t like.

Fear is often backed up by a belief that any new venture may not succeed. It is important to realise that such beliefs are personal and not universal laws. By being very clear on what you would ideally like to do, much of the fear can start to disappear and you can start visualising what you really want and make it a reality. Getting the support of a mentor, friend or a coach at a time like this can help you to clarity your options and re-energise your enthusiasm and motivation.

For further information about how our executive coaching can help your organisation, please contact us.

Lonely At The Top!

Q: I’ve just been made head of the HR department in a large organisation and I’m finding it ‘lonely at the top’. I feel I have no one to talk to internally. If I’m the boss, how can I ask for help from members of my team, on important decisions, without losing face?

Marielena Sabatier, Executive Coach at Inspiring Potential responds:

Feeling lonely at the top is common among senior executives. Many feel they don’t have anyone to talk to internally. It could be that other senior executives in your organisation have similar fears and concerns - and they may be surprisingly receptive if you’re able to ‘test the water’ and raise the issue of ‘loneliness at the top’.

These feelings are often driven by a fear of being found out or of not being good enough for the role, which is usually rooted in lack of confidence.

So, even though you are not alone in your thinking, it is important that you realise that a good manager can ask for help from his or her team and involve them in important decisions without feeling threatened or undermined. Your team provides you with support to ensure that important decisions are examined carefully and from different points of view.

In order for you to feel more comfortable, it may be necessary for you to:

• Understand what is the root cause of your discomfort in asking your team for help?

• Consider how you feel about showing vulnerability.

• Define what makes a good boss and ensure you develop the confidence to be one.

• Get some feedback on your managing style.

I would recommend seeking help from a coach or a mentor, so that you can:

• Understand the beliefs underpinning your feeling of isolation.

• Develop the confidence to be yourself.

• Become more self-aware.

Self confidence is a state of mind. People who lack confidence often focus too much on their weaknesses. It is important to have a balanced perception. Undertake an honest assessment of your strengths and how they help you perform your role successfully.

A coach can help you shift your focus and develop more confidence, in a safe environment. A good tip to improve your confidence is to think about different times that you have felt confident in the past: what were you doing, thinking and feeling? How did it help you succeed in that situation?

By focusing on developing self confidence and awareness - and by accepting your strengths and weaknesses - you can be a better manager and confident enough to ask for help when needed without feeling exposed.

For further information about Inspiring Potential's career coaching services please contact us.

Tips in delegating effectively

As a manager today, do you ever got the feeling the work you delegated was not done properly, the results were not satisfying and you ended up wondering if you wouldn’t have been better off doing it yourself? It’s a common complain among my clients. Now the tricky question, Have you ever considered, that it is the way you have delegated the task the problem?

There is a misconception that delegation is just about giving a task to a person on your team without taking the time to explain it, identifying clear goals and setting deadlines. However, effective delegation requires you to take some time to think about what it is that you want and expect:

• What exactly is it that needs to be done and to what standard?
• Who in my team can do it and I trust to do it?
• Why is it important?
• By when specifically (date & time) do I need it done?
• How will he/she know she has achieved or not your standard?

In times in which we are under so much pressure at work, both with regard to strict deadlines as well as to the required quality of the results, we tend to forget that delegation is not only about assigning tasks to your team in order to take some of the load of daily work off you, but that it has a significant impact on your team’s motivation, confidence, their professional and personal development and ultimately their productivity.

So just remember: Slowing down to delegate effectively will speed up your performance!

Benefits of executive coaching

The benefits of executive coaching for leadership development and improving people management

Are you the boss of your own company or department?

Are you managing a team of employees?

Are you expected to know all the answers?

What happens when you don’t?

Who do you turn to?

You cannot be expected to know all of the answers, all of the time and what’s more, you must not be too hard on yourself if you don’t. There are always answers, it is just a matter of finding the right ones and implementing them properly. Often gaining a different perspective on a situation will help to resolve it.

This is where executive coaching for leadership development and the improvement of people management skills comes in to play. Executive coaching from Inspiring Potential comes in the form of a series of one on one telephone conversations, geared towards raising an individual’s self awareness and their performance in the workplace. These conversations enable the individual to tap into their inner strengths and reveal their true potential.

Through the development of effective leadership and improved people management or interpersonal skills, Inspiring Potential can bring out the best in your executive management team. We have worked with everyone from CEO's to Business Owners and Directors to Senior Managers and our approach gets results. We help individuals to develop their leadership skills, raise performance levels in themselves and their teams, manage their stress levels, build self confidence, improve their managerial style and resolve intra-office conflicts. We also help senior management to deal with taking on new job roles and deal with redundancy issues on both sides of the boardroom table.

Executive Coaching – click here for more information on our executive coaching service

Leadership development

The most effective way of improving a company’s performance is to improve the interpersonal skills of the company’s executives. The business leadership training provided by Inspiring Potential, is specifically targeted at company executives to improve their leadership skills which will in turn, lead to improved productivity from the work force and increased profits for the business as a whole.

It is difficult however, to achieve this without the trust and support of your subordinates. You can feel ostracized, unable to gain valuable insight into what’s actually going on, on the ground or at the levels beneath you. Our training methods give you the tools you need to be able to acquire the trust and support of your work force and turn them into a dynamic, highly focussed and motivated team that are working together, with you, toward your common goals.

This new form of business leadership, leadership through emotion, is what is being demanded in today’s working society and companies that have embraced this philosophy are far outstripping their competitors, not only in terms of production and performance but also in terms of staff morale and retention.

Leadership Development Training - Contact us now for more information.

People Management

Great people management or interpersonal skills are vital to the success of any company. Effective people managers bring out the best in their co-workers – and create a vibrant and productive work space that is both inspirational and nurturing.

However many of today's managers have been promoted from within and just because someone is good at their job or they are a time-served member of staff, does not mean that they will necessarily make a good manager of people. In fact, in practice many of them don’t.

Great people managers are very different to great employees. In many cases they have an entirely different skill set. Sure, it helps it they’ve done the job themselves and know about the company structures but this inside knowledge can be picked up quite quickly. The extra knowledge and motivational people skills can’t be picked up in house, but they can be taught.

The effects of poor people management can be extremely damaging to the performance of your workforce and its morale and a workforce with low morale is one that is not operating to the best of its ability. If your members of staff are not listened to or allowed to communicate their ideas, they won’t feel valued and staff that don’t feel valued end up leaving the company. A high turnover of staff leads to the company spending large sums of money on recruitment drives and training.

Also, a manager who has “earned” their promotion could be compromising your business growth by refusing to recognise and tap into other talents that exist on your payroll for fear of losing the position they have worked for such a long time to achieve.

Our executive coaching packages are extremely effective in assisting managers to refine their people management skills. Through a series of confidential, one to one sessions, a manager can identify and 'own' their problems in this area, receive sufficient motivation to change their behaviour, experiment with trying out new ways of managing and improve their emotional intelligence.

Click on the link to learn more about our Executive Coaching packages.

What Can Executive Coaching Help With?

Leadership Development

Enhancing the leadership performance skills of key executives within an organisation is vital to the success of any business. This leads to the increased productivity and profitability of the company as a whole.

Managers and business executives alike have used coaching as a tool to help them further develop their leadership skills. An executive coach is non biased and objective and as such, is free to ask even the most awkward of questions. These are questions that may otherwise have remained untendered, due to a colleague’s unwillingness to voice any concerns or objections or even to make suggestions for fear of reprisal. Often it is the answers to these sometimes difficult questions that are the catalyst to change and corporate or commercial advancement.

Raising Performance

Finding good staff is hard enough these days, finding real performers, even more so. When one of your key players takes their eyes off the ball, as happens from time to time, it is important to address the issue as quickly as possible.

Our executive coaches specialise in getting people back on track, refocusing their attention and reframing situations to realign their priorities and raise their performance. Many high performers will actually request help of their own volition, knowing that something is off and that it needs to be rectified so that they can once again enjoy the fruits of success.

Stress Management

With the number of reported cases of illness brought on through work related stress, at an all time high, it is important that, as an employer, you watch for any of the tell-tale signs. As soon as you suspect that stress may be playing a part in the underperformance of your workforce, you should act to find a solution.

It is estimated that the average case of stress induced leave equates to a 31 day absence from work. Stress has a negative effect on people’s mental, physical and emotional well being. Stress can damage working relationships, sometimes irreparably. And stress can lead to reduced productivity and ultimately to claims against the company for compensation.

At Inspiring Potential, we address the causes of stress; we don’t just deal with the symptoms. We get to the root of the issue helping employees to develop new ways to rid themselves of stress.

Self Confidence

Anyone who has ever had their confidence knocked, be it at work or in a social environment will instantly recognise the signs. These can include an unwillingness to take on new roles or responsibilities, indecision, defensive behaviors, a general withdrawal or introversion and a negative outlook.

An Inspiring Potential coach will work with the individual to uncover the root cause of this predicament and empower them to take responsibility for change. The Inspiring Potential coach will help them to recognise that they have power to control their level of self confidence and that they can adopt new strategies to act with greater self confidence.

Management Style

Good people managers are inspirational; they bring out the best in people, allowing them to perform to the height of their abilities. They make the workplace a fun place to be, a vibrant and productive arena in which teamwork and individual performance are recognised and rewarded.

Good people managers are crucial to the success of a company. They are in touch with the morale of their team and they facilitate the free flowing of ideas and communication throughout the working environment. They also reduce the level of staff turnover and help to realise an individual’s potential as well as boosting the self confidence of those in their charge.

Our one to one manager training programmes are designed to help new and established managers address existing issues and deal with any issues arising. They will increase the managers’ self awareness, encourage them to take responsibility and ownership and to try out new behaviors in order to resolve these issues. Our programmes will encourage improved emotional intelligence to enable them to communicate properly with their team.
Resolving Conflict

Inspiring Potential can help you and your people managers communicate more effectively, reducing and resolving workplace conflict. If appropriate, we can host facilitated sessions between the parties involved or work with each party on a one to one basis through our Executive Coaching programmes.

Perhaps these issues have come up as a result of an employee review or a 360° feedback report. One of our coaches would then work with the individual to get to the root of the issue. One of the tools we use is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This helps us to understand the different personality types at work within your organisation. We are then able to suggest the implementation of strategies to resolve the conflict.

Handling New Roles

As an executive, you are supposed to know all the answers and most probably do; it is just that this is a new role to you and perhaps things weren’t properly explained by the previous incumbent. Perhaps the job role as it was previously understood, has changed slightly and there are other protocols to follow.

Without this inside knowledge, it is difficult to assume full responsibility; but assume full responsibility you must, in the full and certain knowledge that there are those amongst the existing staff that are just waiting for you to fall on your face. At Inspiring Potential we work with you to find ways in which you can quickly bring your new team members on side, helping them to help you, and feel good about doing so.

Coaching your team to success

Coaching your team to success

In times like these, people feel uncertain and they need to re-build trust and re-engage with the organization. The uncertainty in the economy, political situation and work is causing stress and people to shut down, put their head down, and do the work until the storm passes. The problem is that people are stressed, not working at the fullest potential, and trying to stay under the radar and playing safe.

For people to re-engage and trust they need to feel valued and appreciated, they need managers and leaders to coach them and lead the way.

A CIPD survey on coaching last year reported that 80% of the companies are using coaching, and 63% is done by line managers, supported by professional coaches.

So how could you inspire your team to perform better? In uncertain times, people increase controls, and effectiveness measure forgetting the relationship building. History shows that focussing solely on effectiveness works only for a little while, as stress increases and therefore problems like absenteeism, and turnover increase.

Coaching is a core management competency that can help you improve effectiveness and morale in your team. You can help your team feel valued, and re-engaged into what they do. Here are some tips:

· Start any conversation by agreeing the outcome, what does the other person want to get out of the conversation

· Help the people in your team develop their own insights and awareness by asking them questions. You know how it feels to be told what to do, without being asked for your opinion or input, it’s safe but disempowering. It stops the creative process of the person doing the job being innovative to to come up with new ways of solving problems.

· Listen with curiosity to what your team has to say. Ask questions instead of solely directing them. Next time one of the people in your team asks you a questions, ask them first what they think, and what would they do?

· They probably know what they need to achieve what they want, ask them?

· Help them create an SMART action plan to achieve it.

By introducing coaching as a management competency in your organization, you start creating a culture of empowerment and employee engagement.

If you need further help please visit us on:

http://www.inspiring-potential.com/coaching-skills-for-managers.php