Category

Executive Life Coaching

Remote Work Productivity: Tips for Working from Home Effectively

By | Atlanta Life Coach Online, Black life coach, Business Coaching, Company News, Executive Coaching, Executive Life Coaching

We are all dealing with the “new normal,” which means juggling the demands of working from home for an unforeseen period. While this setup has the potential for increased productivity, many people are facing challenges in maintaining their performance. In this blog post, we will provide essential tips for those looking to improve their work performance while working from home.

Prioritize Preparation and Rest:

Your best work day starts the night before, with careful preparation and sufficient rest. Stick to your regular sleep schedule; studies have shown that adequate sleep is vital for optimal performance. Before you end your day, take the time to organize tasks and prepare for the next day, including packing your lunch. Remember, the next day’s production starts the night before.

Dress for Success – Even at Home:

Psychology plays a significant role in our approach to work. Therefore, it’s beneficial to get up, get dressed, and treat your remote workspace as if you are heading to the office. You don’t need to don a full suit or formal attire, but changing out of your night clothes can signal a shift in mindset and boost productivity.

Effective Communication:

While digital tools like Zoom, Slack, and Gotomeeting are valuable, don’t underestimate the power of a live voice. Take the time to pick up the phone and communicate directly with your team members, managers, or peers. This personal touch can enhance morale and overall productivity, preventing an over-reliance on back-to-back virtual meetings.

Optimize Your Work Space:

Create an efficient and comfortable work environment that mirrors your office setup. Invest in a suitable desk and chair that support good posture. If possible, position your desk near a window for natural light and a view. Personalize your space with items like family photos, a jar of candy, or awards to make it feel more inviting and motivating.

Maintain a Consistent Routine:

Avoid treating your home as a relaxation zone during work hours. Mirror your daily routine as if you were at the office. Schedule regular breaks and take your lunch at the same hour each day. Consistency helps maintain productivity by reinforcing a sense of structure and purpose in your workday.

Find Meaning in Your Work:

Take a moment to reflect on the meaning of work to you personally. Understanding why you work and what it means to you can be a powerful motivator. Use this insight to fuel your drive and commitment to excel in your remote work environment.

By following these practical tips, you can significantly enhance your work performance while working from home. Embrace the “new normal” with these strategies, and you’ll find yourself adapting and thriving in this remote work era.

Remember, remote work offers unique opportunities for productivity and work-life balance. With the right approach and mindset, you can make the most of this arrangement and excel in your professional endeavor.

Working from home doesn’t have to be a challenge. Implement these proven tips and watch your productivity soar while you enjoy the comfort of your own space. Embrace the “new normal” and excel in your remote work endeavors!

Have more productivity tips to share or questions to ask? Join the conversation in the comments section below. Let’s empower each other to thrive in this remote work era.

And don’t forget to share this post with your friends and colleagues who could use some productivity inspiration in their remote work journey!

How To Get Your Raise

By | Executive Life Coaching

Naturally, you want to be paid what you’re worth.

An automatic pay rise used to be the norm. But, nowadays due to the economic situation, you have to toughen up and ask.

In some industries, such as tech and finance where expertise is rarer, pay raises are still commonplace. But, if you’re in a career that’s quite saturated you’ll probably have a harder time.

It doesn’t mean you won’t get a raise though, all you have to do.

If the sound of asking for a raise daunts you, a little preparation and planning can give you confidence.

Can You Justify a Raise?

First up, it’s important, to be honest with yourself. Are you already paid a great salary for your job? Will you be able to justify asking your boss for more.

If you’ve been in your job a while and have had persistently glowing performance reviews, then you may be in line for a raise.

You can typically justify a raise if you can quantify how much you have made or saved for the company.

Approaching your line manager for a raise will be less nerve-racking if you’re armed with the knowledge of your accomplishments.

Your current salary will also be a factor, if you’re already earning above average for your position it might be a bit tricky.

Knowing Your Worth

You can check the market rate for your position by using a salary calculator like the Know Your Worth™ website by Glassdoor or payscale.com.

You can also look at job postings on the internet and in the newspaper to get an idea of the typical salary for your position and level of responsibility.

As you’re preparing ask yourself:

• What do I do that no one else does at the company?
• How do I meet my clients’ needs?
• What is my unique skillset?
• What problems do I solve for clients?
• What value do I add?

Carefully answer these questions. Use your answers to calculate your worth.

But, most importantly, you need to know your value in your boss’s eyes. If they value you, they will push you ahead.

Know Your Figure

When you ask for a raise, you need a figure to aim at.
Check that it’s justified and the standard rate from your research.

Many people who ask for a raise ask for 10% to 15%.

Plan Your Negotiating Strategy

Negotiation is about getting what you want and what your company wants.

Of course, your company wants to keep their costs low, and once they’ve increased an employee’s salary, they will have made their decision.

If you put yourself in their shoes, you have to think about why it would benefit them to increase their costs to accommodate your raise.

Perhaps you could negotiate for extra benefits or perks instead of a salary raise?

It has to be a win-win situation.

Document Your Achievements

Hopefully, your boss already knows your achievements and accomplishments. If they don’t, here’s your chance to show them the value you bring to their company.

You could bring with you a file of achievements with graphs and tables showing the money you make, and deadlines met.

You don’t have to sound like you’re tooting your horn, make it about them and how you serve the company.

Get The Timing Right

Good times to ask for a raise are when it’s your performance review, when you’ve finished a significant project, and when your boss is in a good mood!

Bad times are when the company takes a financial hit or is planning redundancies.

State your Case

Start with a list of your responsibilities when you started at the company and your achievements since.

Make sure you present your case logically and coherently.

Explain that you’re delighted to take these responsibilities on and happy to take on more. Show enthusiasm for the company and the future of your time at the company.

Then name the number that you have in your mind. Often people don’t give a number but make sure you do.

Leveraging An Outside Job Offer

The thing to remember here is that you get a lot more with sugar than you do vinegar.

If you have a job offer for money from elsewhere, don’t give your boss an ultimatum.

Instead, explain that you’ve another offer, but you won’t take it because you love the business and don’t want to leave. Then ask your boss to level with you regarding your prospects.

This opener will bring you to the next subject – what will your prospects be in the future.

This approach is much better. It’s not threatening or insulting.

Keep It Positive

You must keep the meeting upbeat and positive, even if they come back and say that they already pay you enough

Choose Your Words Carefully

Sound confident about your achievements. Forget about modesty but don’t diminish your value.

Find your voice to communicate your worth rather than channel someone you know who is great at sales or tells a great joke.

Sound authentic.

Be Patient

If you don’t get an answer immediately, don’t assume you’ve been unsuccessful.

Your boss may be busy and need some time to think. They might also have to get it approved by finance, which could also take time.

Be patient, keep your head down, and wait.

If They Say No

If they say no, don’t get angry and aggressive, find out what you need to get a raise. Then do what is asked of you and ask again.

Final Thoughts

It’s always asking for a raise, even if you think you won’t get it.

People often don’t ask for a raise because they don’t want to come across as entitled, or greedy.

If you’ve not had a pay raise for a while and you’ve been performing, it’s time to shake the insecurity and get comfortable with asking for what you’re worth.

Remember to communicate clearly and effectively to influence your boss’s perception of you and get what you deserve.

Team Performance

By | Executive Life Coaching

“The most valuable asset of a 21st century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.”
-Peter Drucker, Austrian author

How common is it for a person to have a disciplinary for arriving at the office 5 minutes late even though they often stay late after work? And, they typically won’t be acknowledged for staying on.

According to research, 20% of people die from heart attacks on Monday morning. You wonder what type of organizations these poor people are working for.

Archaic, draconian, and authoritarian management work cultures seem to be the norm, but they produce poor performance and outcomes.

Doing things a certain way because it’s tradition is a counter-productive and horrible way to run a business.

For a business to thrive you need to create an environment that is conducive to employees satisfying the ultimate of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – ‘self-actualization.’

But it needs proper conditions.

If you can, avoid any strong emotional reactions. The criticism may not be so important. So keep it in perspective.

Start From a Place of Trust

For a team to thrive, employees need a degree of autonomy.

You need to trust that your staff has its responsibilities and deadlines under control. Assume they are there for the right reasons and that they want to work.

Give them space. Physical and otherwise. Flexibility. As long as work is getting done on time and to high quality, why is there a need to track hours? It’s degrading.

Assume that employees are ambitious and are self-motivated. They have self-discipline and enjoy doing physical and mental duties.

Leadership Style

The outcomes, performance, and culture of a company are directly affected by a company’s management style. Unfortunately, poor leaders are found in most businesses.

Micromanagers, Bullies, and Weak Leaders

If you micromanage or hire people who micromanage, you’re sabotaging the productivity of your team. People work best without someone breathing down their neck.

Sadly, there is a strong tendency for psychopathic personalities to rise to top managerial positions.

Bullies rule by fear, and they cover their tracks. Leaders like these tend to attract other psychopathic personalities as they can endure the stress caused by a bully boss.

This means you’re missing out on a lot of creative talent and you’ll have high staff turnover.

Having malignant personalities in your leadership team will create chaos and stress in your employees.

Strong Leadership

Foster a culture of sharing and openness, you’ll be rewarded with loyalty and respect in return. You need to bat for your team, they need to trust that you have their back.

Motivate your team, not manage your team. Provide training and mentorship. Let your team see you as a comrade, a cheerleader, and a coach. Not a sergeant major dangling a sword of Damocles.

To bring out the best in your team, bring out the best in yourself. Foster a work culture that gives people flexibility, autonomy, and creativity.

Your team’s performance will thrive if you meet these conditions.

Teams need a steward, someone who will guide them, and insulation from the harsh realities of the organization and industry.

Be a leader that managers other leaders, not a manager. Hire people who are unique and creative and want to do things on their terms.

Motivating Team Culture

The reality is that your staff are already motivated. All too often, a person starts a new job full of vigor and a desire to succeed. But, a combination of poor management style and a toxic work culture eventually erodes their drive.

The only way to motivate people is to unleash that motivation by creating an environment that is conducive to excellent work.

People want to work in an environment that doesn’t feel like a workplace and a community. A place where they can be with their friends and bring their real personalities to work.

When all these environmental conditions are met, we are more productive and creative. Create meaning and fulfilment, and a balanced work-life blend.

Build Authentic Relationships With Staff

Apart from the most basic needs of food and shelter, people need to be valued.

75% of people leave a job because of their boss rather than the company. The most important factor in employee engagement is the relationship between boss and employee.

When an employee invests time to get to know the person inside an employee, that employee will stay longer and try harder. There are so many businesses with aloof bosses that the prospect of moving is daunting.

Creating a rapport with your boss includes learning who an employee is behind their work. Ask about their kids, weekends, and vacations. Find common ground, topics you can bond over. And, do it often.

Remember the details from the conversations you have with your staff and refer back later. Follow up and keep the small talk going whenever it’s possible.

You may be run off your feet, so don’t just pay lip service. Be genuinely interested.

You’ll see positive results in the company’s productivity.

Staff Perks

You can attract talent by providing your staff with ways to make their life more enjoyable at work.

If your business model doesn’t allow for huge salaries, you can attract people with benefits such as:

• Free lunches
• An option to buy more holidays
• Sabbatical holiday allowance after so many years of service
• Healthcare and pension
• Free in-house haircuts and massages

Life-enhancing benefits such as these can encourage a person to stay at a company. Things like in-house massages and haircuts also save time on people taking time out of the office.

Final Thoughts

Fostering your team’s performance starts from a desire to make people feel valued and able to achieve a work-life balance.

It can be little things that don’t cost money, just your time and genuine interest in the lives of your staff.

Ensuring their needs are met with additional benefits go a long way. By showing that you truly care about their ambitions, happiness, and wellbeing you will be rewarded with loyalty and respect.
This is the key to achieving an outstanding team performance in your company.

Executive Presence While Working From Home

By | Executive Life Coaching

As we all try to survive in these strange times, work must continue.

Communicating at work now entails using remote technology to take part in virtual meetings, deliver conference presentations, give and hold interviews, and organize vital stakeholder meetings.

This major shift to the way we communicate adds a whole layer of challenges to our work. Communicating via software platforms such as Skype, Zoom, or Google Meet means it’s easier to miss visual and aural clues from our listeners while we talk.

It’s also more difficult to engage people remotely than in person. Learning to work remotely involves learning to use certain technologies and adjusting the way you present yourself professionally.

These are vital skills for a leader and can help with your online meetings.

So let’s look at the executive presence and how it translates to the world of remote working.

What Is Executive Presence?

Executive presence is a set of behavior that you use to command attention. This type of behavior isn’t as much inherent as learned.

It’s a way of projecting a balance of warmth and strength. By strength, we mean demonstrating your ability to make things happen and showing that you’re in charge. By warmth, we mean how you share the same values and intentions with your colleagues.

If executive presence can be learned for face to face communication, it can be learned for remote communications.

Keeping up an executive presence behind a screen is certainly possible.

In-person executive presence typically uses things like eye contact, gesturing, and body language. They are just as important to working virtually as they are in person.

These visual methods of communicating still convey effectively through a Skype or Zoom call. The physical distance between you and the people you’re connecting with means there are some things you need to add.

Do a performance check


If you’re using different platforms for different meetings, ensure you understand fully how each one works.

Make sure you know how to turn the camera on and off, mute yourself and others, and switch to a virtual background.

You want to be able to use the technology like a pro to enhance your executive presence.

Get comfortable with being on camera

With Skype or Zoom calls, don’t switch the camera off. If you mute the camera, people may think you’re doing other things so you won’t be engaged.

Many people aren’t comfortable with seeing themselves on camera. Practicing talking via teleconferencing software will help you to enhance your virtual presence.

The little light at the top of your screen indicates where the camera lens is. So look into it to look like you’re making eye contact.

It can be tempting to look at yourself at the camera. Doing this will divert your eyes away from the camera so you won’t look like you’re making eye contact.

So get off your video or minimize and focus on that little light.

If you’re talking on your iPhone or Android phone, make sure you know where the camera lens is. Some people aren’t aware of where the lens is and look at the screen.

Your Virtual Background

If your office doesn’t look too great or you’d rather keep your home environment hidden, you can download a virtual background.

A virtual background is an image or a video that you can display during a meeting instead of your office, a bit like a green screen.

You can use a virtual background with Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, and WebEx.

Use the technology available to you to make you look good.

Distractions

Remember when someone flushed a toilet during a live Supreme Court broadcast? Or the internet dad correspondent on BBC news whose adorable little child wandered in during a live interview?

You don’t have to worry about distractions like these as no one cares. You might worry about the mailman ringing the doorbell, or an ambulance siren going past. But, everyone is experiencing the same pressures and having to adapt to this new way of working.

Distractions of our daily lives will be inevitable and even welcome. If a pet or child enters the room, acknowledge it, and move on.

It’s best to see the humor in the situation, laugh it off and see it as an opportunity to break the ice. No one is going to hold it against you.

Make Sure Your Sound Quality is Good

It’s a good idea to purchase a decent quality microphone, or you could move to a small room so that the acoustics are better.

Make Your Voice Sound Great

When you use a louder than usual voice, it can add credibility and authority to your voice. You’ll sound confident and clear rather than muffled and mumbling.

Try to talk as if you’re in a large room, even if you are using a microphone.

Body Language

It’s probably best to stand between two to three feet away from the camera so that your colleagues can see your gestures and body language.

Use your hands to gesticulate while you make your points as if you would when you talk in person. And make that eye contact with the camera.

Framing

As we mentioned before, it’s best to stand or sit between two and three feet from the screen so the upper half of your torso is visible.

If you’re so close to the camera that it cuts part of your head off make sure you adjust it to frame you better.

Be Mindful

It’s easy to forget that you are being watched while on camera. When you’re in a face to face meeting, other people don’t notice so much if your mind wanders.

Try not to be tempted to do other work or look at your phone during a virtual meeting as it looks like you’re not engaged.

The relaxed atmosphere of your home might make you feel a little too relaxed on camera. This is a work meeting and so you need to maintain professional decorum.

To avoid talking over others during the meeting, you might want to mute your microphone while others are speaking.

How Leaders Utilize Executive Coaching for Better Business Acumen and Organizational Development

By | Executive Coaching, Executive Life Coaching

While it’s imperative your executive coach can help you develop self-awareness and lead you down the path to continuous self-development, there’s one element that’s equally crucial…

Your coach needs to have a thorough grounding in real world business experience.

Let’s face it, you’re a leader and an expert in your field. You don’t want to be explaining the nuts and bolts of running a business to your coach when you should be the one being guided.

Luckily, the most effective executive coaches can help you to sharpen your business acumen and organizational development. It’s just a question of finding the right coach.

The Key Benefits of Business Acumen for Your Organization

Business acumen is not just a necessary evil for someone running a business of their own.

As a salaried leader of an organization, you’ll notice some distinct and tangible benefits from improving your know-how in this area…

  • Increased efficiency should lead to enhanced profitability
  • By understanding the trade-offs involved in various actions, you’ll be able to make more logical and more strategic decisions
  • Not panicking in the face of threats and problems ensures you make more level-headed and superior decisions

These are all areas where a solid coach can help out.

How can they be of even further assistance, though?

How Can a Coach Help Polish Your Business Acumen and Organizational Development?

In order to help you refine your business acumen, a coach needs to understand how your organization makes money, and how it uses that money strategically. Your coach needs to be fully aware of how you contribute to your organization’s bottom line if you want to make an even stronger impact.

Better business acumen translates to better business decisions so which areas need working on?

While I’ll highlight financial literacy first, I want to make clear that business acumen is about far more than formal training in the intricacies of a balance sheet.

Where your coach will help you most is in interpreting this data and thinking at a higher and more strategic level. This, in turn, can improve organizational development where necessary to further drive profits and improve performance.

Do not underestimate the need for coaching in these areas either. Even if you’re already at the top of your game professionally, a solid coach can always fine-tune your business acumen but how is this so?

Well, business acumen is not an innate ability. You’ll need to develop skills you already have in the below areas and learn any skills that are not in place. Your coach is an invaluable part of this journey.

These components are all central to great business acumen:

  • Financial Literacy: If you want to manage budgets and improve ROI, you’ll need to understand the financial metrics of your company. The more you know about how cash is generated, margin and profitability, the better you can drive processes to improve profits. An effective executive coach will be familiar with all these areas. Your coach can step up your financial literacy by helping you probe into what creates growth in your organization and the reasons behind this. Your coach can help you determine what makes customers buy from your company so you can better attract more customers.
  • Leadership: Perhaps the area your coach can work on with you most easily is leadership. You should already have natural abilities in this area if you’re an executive. Your coach will simply bring out the best in them
  • Marketing: Since your coach will be marketing their own business, they’ll be able to assist you with the overview required to make better strategic decisions based on how your organization carries out its own marketing. And we’ll round out
  • Strategic Alignment: The most critical of these core competencies, an understanding of your organization’s overall strategy can help you and your coach to pinpoint gaps and identify areas where improvement can drive the bottom line

Assuming your coach has the ability to nudge you in the right direction of improving your knowledge of the above areas, what kind of elements can you work on during coaching?

Sharpening Business Acumen for Strategy Through Coaching

You can enrich your business knowledge by training in all the above areas. While your coach can assist you, that won’t be the prime focus.

Here, instead, are 3 fundamental elements your coach will work on with you so your business acumen naturally develops.

  • Your Thought Processes
  • Your Management Style
  • Your Leadership Skills

Your Thought Processes

By understanding the overarching frameworks of your organization, you’ll be better placed to evaluate decisions and steps you’re thinking of implementing, particularly useful for organizational development.

Your coach can dive deep with you into what drives your own decision-making process. By increasing your awareness of the scope and complexity of situations with the guidance of your coach, you can assess more clearly how your decisions will affect outcomes.

Your personality is pivotal here and this, again, is an area where your coach will be instrumental in guiding you.

Fluidity counts, too. Your coach will stress the importance of remaining able and willing to improvise when necessary.

Your Management Style

Any good coach will easily pinpoint your management style. They can readily identify any weaknesses here and push you gently toward making positive changes.

From strategic planning to measuring performance, from dealing with employee problems to managing an unwieldy department, how you get things done can directly affect the outcome.

Thinking about your management style is one thing. Working on it in tandem with a sharp executive coach is another entirely.

For both overall business acumen and the ability to affect organizational change, working on your management style is vital.

Your Leadership Skills

Simply mastering people and leadership skills can have a dramatic influence on your business acumen in general. A great coach will excel in these areas.

In addition to sessions with your coach, developing a mentorship network can also help you to drill down on how other executives lead and manage teams.

Working through a range of approaches with your coach can help you establish which would be most effective within your particular organization.

What To Do Next

As you should see by now, strong business acumen leads to wiser judgments and more impactful decisions. This inevitably translates to business success.

The bad news is that business acumen is not very easily acquired.

The extremely good news is that it can be taught and can absolutely be strengthened. Learning along with experience can get you so far. Why not give yourself the extra edge and speak with an executive coach to see how, specifically, you can push to the next level?

You can schedule an appointment if you’d like to talk through any of the aspects I’ve covered today.

How Executive Coaching Can Teach Emotional Intelligence

By | Executive Coaching, Executive Life Coaching

As a leader, your personal behavior and emotions can directly impact business results.

If you’re a leader ready to commit to executive coaching, chances are both your behavior and emotions are on point. There’s always room for improvement, though.

One of the most common natural traits of influential leaders is an innate emotional intelligence giving an executive coach a strong platform to build from.

Is it possible to teach emotional intelligence, though?

Before we look at this question, a quick snapshot of what, exactly, emotional intelligence consists of…

Emotional Intelligence: The Basics

According to Psychology Today, emotional intelligence is the ability to first identify then manage your emotions and also the emotions of others.

Daniel Goleman’s seminal text Emotional Intelligence – Why It Can Matter More Than IQ outlines 5 key pillars of EI.

In this book, Goleman touches on Hay Group studies that show up to 85% of exceptional performance in C-suite leaders is due to emotional and social intelligence rather than raw cognitive ability.

Here are the 5 areas Goleman identifies as key metrics for success in the executive sphere…

  • Empathy: Recognizing how people feel is crucial if you’re hoping to lead and manage them. With strong empathy, you’ll also better understand the dynamic underpinning relationships, specifically the balance of power. This awareness is useful at all levels of an executive role
  • Motivation: Clearly, you need to be self-motivated, driven and able to show both initiative and optimism when you’re faced with the challenges of an executive’s day-to-day
  • Self-Awareness: Being able to both recognize and understand your own emotions will go a long way when you’re trying to build upon them. Self-awareness generally translates into enhanced realism and self-confidence
  • Self-Regulation: Remaining in control of your emotions when faced with challenging situations and demanding personalities is another benchmark of heightened emotional intelligence
  • Social Skills: An ability to communicate confidently and successfully involves picking up on verbal and non-verbal cues. With emotional intelligence at the required level, you’ll be able to accept and act upon feedback. You’ll also have the ability to persuade and manipulate others using nothing but words

How, then, can executive coaching improve upon these foundational areas of emotional intelligence?

A coach will encourage you to become more empathetic by making a conscious effort to look at the other person’s point of view. You can run through some exercises where you look back at a situation with full focus on the feelings experienced by the other person rather than yourself. If you fired someone, how did it make them feel and why? Perhaps you passed someone over for a promotion. Again, take the time to understand how it made them feel.

While it’s not easy to teach motivation, you can certainly make a concerted effort to confront challenges more optimistically. Your coach can help you with this. Along with your coach, set goals continuously and hold yourself accountable to them. Rather than blindly fixating on an outcome, double down on the why. After all, if you don’t have a genuine reason for doing something, the chances of success are slimmer than if you’re clear on why you’re committed to that goal.

Drilling down on your strengths and weaknesses is a simple but classic approach your coach can guide you through to improve self-awareness. Be honest about how you manage your emotions. Do you respond poorly to conflict or confrontation? How does this manifest in your behaviors and actions? An effective executive will enable you to turn those weaknesses into strengths with better management of your emotions.

Linked to this is the way in which you self-regulate. Your coach can help you determine how quickly you react to negative emotions since these are usually the most damaging to react instinctively against. You can learn to stave off major decisions until you’ve ridden out a peak of high emotions. If you find yourself complaining or experiencing negative emotions, your coach can push you into planning decisive action instead, show you how you can improve the situation rather than unproductively moaning.

Your social skills, specifically communication, can be sharpened in many ways through executive coaching. You can learn to listen more fully rather than simply waiting for your next opportunity to speak or formulating your answer without giving weight to what the other person is saying. You can practice conflict management and learn a great deal about feedback from an executive coach. Act on the feedback they give you as a direct method of improving your social skills during your sessions.

So, these are some very simple methods in which a coach can help you to hone your emotional intelligence but how does incisive executive coaching actually teach emotional intelligence?

Real Coaching Teaches a Behavior Not a Skill Set

Throughout the 70s and 80s, Sir John Whitmore and Tim Gallwey pioneered a style of transformational performance coaching combining the tenets of sports coaching with the core components of transpersonal psychology.

In Whitmore’s Coaching For Performance, he describes true coaching as “the practice of emotional intelligence”. He goes on to add that it’s a “behavior not a skill set”.

So, if your coach is worth his salt, he’ll be embodying the core concepts of emotional intelligence himself. He’ll also be guiding you to develop better behaviors that will translate to influencing others and working confidently with them at all levels.

Pivotal to improving your emotional intelligence is awareness. It is, indeed, the bedrock of emotional intelligence so we’ll glimpse at how a coach can coax out your potential to optimize performance beginning with awareness…

The Triple-Pronged Power of Awareness

Your executive coach can help you to fine-tune and uprate your emotional intelligence in these 3 broad areas of awareness:

  • Being Self-Aware: You need to understand why you do what you do. By better self-management in the face of internal obstacles, and improving the way you self-manage reactions, emotions, and judgments, your overall performance at work will spike. These are all areas an executive coach can work through with you
  • Being Aware of Others: To manage relationships successfully, it helps if you can clearly and rapidly identify strengths and weaknesses in others. By better understanding their motivations and desires, you can inspire them more readily. You coach can teach you to listen more carefully and to develop these skills to great effect
  • Being Aware of the Organization: By learning to keep individual and team goals fully aligned with organizational goals, you’ll have a team and company in harmony and increased performance along with more enjoyment in the workplace. This is something you might be subconsciously aware of but not implement all the time. An executive coach can pinpoint any weaknesses in this area and help you to focus more fully on aligning these goals

How Can You Learn Emotional Intelligence?

Luckily, this is an easy enough question to answer succinctly…

Implementing the solution is where the hard work lies, but that’s something for your coach to work through with you.

Emotional intelligence is not a hard skill. This means traditional methods of didactic instruction would be an exercise in futility. You would be trying to learn something that can’t be learned using that approach and doomed to failure.

Instead, your coach will employ techniques based on real issues rather than role-play with extensive training and practice using experiential facilitation. In plain English, you’ll be central to the learning process with your coach facilitating.

So, executive coaching can absolutely help you develop superior emotional intelligence, and you shouldn’t underestimate the way that can improve your performance in the workplace.

If you’d like to arrange to speak about executive coaching, make an appointment right here.

10 Ways Executive Coaching Can Help Hone Effective Communication

By | Executive Coaching, Executive Life Coaching, Goal Setting

Clear and effective communication underpins the running of any successful organization.

If you’re in an executive role, communication takes on many forms. Mastering the art will give you a precious edge in performance so don’t be afraid to engage a coach to bring out the best in you.

With research showing that either written or verbal communication is involved in fully 90% of business transactions, neglecting the art of communication is ill-advised.

Whether you’re communicating internally or with your client base, whether you’re interviewing or trying to get departments to work collaboratively on a project, getting your message across is only half the battle. You need to make sure that message is understood.

10 Ways a Coach Can Help You To Communicate More Effectively

As with any skill, the best executive coach can help you hone your ability to communicate.

We’ll outline 10 key areas where a solid executive coach can work with the skills you already have in place and help you to communicate with devastating effect, an effect that can dramatically impact the bottom line of your organization.

1) Accept Full Responsibility for Breakdown in Communication

Communication is not communication unless the transmission is fully understood.

In your leadership role, you’re invariably the primary communicator. You’re not only responsible for sharing a message, but also making sure that message hits home.

Beyond this, communicating is about more than simply imparting information. You can better understand the people you work with through effective communication. You can also improve your relationships both within the organization and with clients.

With this in mind, if your message has not been adequately understood, communication has been incomplete. You have failed in your job.

If this happens, don’t pass the buck. The easiest thing is to blame someone else. The much tougher but far more effective approach is to ask yourself what you did wrong, and to bear full responsibility for this breakdown in communication.

In terms of remedying the issue, take a leaf from Michael Jordan’s book. He assiduously reviewed all his past games to identify and work on mistakes. You don’t need to go to the lengths of recording your conversations, but take any failures in communication to your coach and he’ll help you work through the problem, help you to achieve a better outcome next time around.

2) Are You Really Listening or Just Waiting for an Opportunity to Speak?

This is an area where an executive coach can really drill you.

Have you heard the expression, “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason”?

I’m saying this not to be rude but it’s a truism well worth bearing in mind when you’re communicating in the workplace.

Ask yourself if you’re genuinely listening to the other party or simply waiting to slip your next point in. Without listening attentively, you’re unlikely to get the optimum outcome for both parties from any interchange.

Your coach can help you here by making sure you feed back what you’re hearing. Not only does this crystallize and clarify things in your mind, it makes the other party feel like you’re really listening to them.

3) Ask Yourself What’s In It For Your Audience

It goes unsaid you need to think about your own needs when you’re communicating. You shouldn’t neglect what you want from any given exchange, but neither should you overlook what’s equally important…

What’s in it for your audience?

Whether you’re talking one-on-one or presenting to a large group, you should always keep the needs and different perspectives of your audience uppermost in mind.

I mention perspectives because these differ according to someone’s position in an organization, their motivations and their various needs. A one-size-fits-all solution rarely works.

By remaining fluid and ready to switch up your style when required, you’ll be better placed to cater to everyone’s needs without compromising your own.

4) Keep Conversation a Two-Way Street

This might seem like a statement of the obvious but it bears keeping firmly in mind.

When you’re communicating, you should pay close attention not only to the words you hear, but you should also drill down on whether or not you fully understand what the other person means.

Equally as important as what someone says is what they don’t say. Reading between the lines is a crucial skill your coach can help you develop and sharpen. You don’t need to be a mind reader but your coach can make sure you don’t miss out on subtle pointers where someone might be implying something by omission.

Delivering a monologue is a surefire way to bore your listener and put them off interacting fully. Your coach will make absolutely certain your listening skills are equally polished as your spoken delivery.

5) Never Be Afraid of Repetition: I Repeat, Never Be Afraid of Repetition

This might seem like the antithesis of clear and effective communication, but I’m talking about a very specific type of repetition here…

By repeating the way in which someone has interpreted what you’ve said back to them, you can ensure that they really have understood what’s been asked of them.

You can also flip this neatly on its head by asking your audience to paraphrase what you’ve said to them. This will make it clear whether or not you’re on the same page. You can then plug any gap in comprehension by drilling down with more precision.

6) Non-Verbal Communication Counts

Non-verbal communication, according to this study, accounts for more than half of an audience’s perception of the presenter. This holds true whether you’re communicating to a group or an individual. It also works in both directions.

You should never underestimate the value of learning the basics of body language. Proper posture, eye contact and movement can seriously enhance the impact of your words. This is another area where your coach can give you a helping hand.

7) Over-Communicate When Sharing New Ideas

It’s commonplace to overestimate just how much a listener understands, doubly so if you’re talking about a complex or unfamiliar topic.

Just because you see a nodding head or hear a “Sure”, that doesn’t always equate to your message hitting home in full.

While you should communicate clearly and concisely, don’t confuse this with needing to gloss over important details too quickly. Over-communicating an idea followed up with summarizing that idea is a solid strategy to guarantee your audience absorbs the full weight of what you’re saying.

An executive coach can work through a number of exercises to check you get this skill on lock.

8) Remain on Point At All Times

While I’ve talked about repetition used strategically and also about over-communication, keep in mind that you should also stay on message at all times. Avoid verbiage. Resist the temptation to add anything extraneous to the conversation.

Your coach can assist you here by keeping you fully focused on the goal or goals of your communication. 

9) Skip The Visual Aids Where Possible

Steve Jobs famously banned all PowerPoint presentations at Apple.

Facebook also instituted a similar veto on visual aids.

Needless to say, both of these global giants communicate brilliantly at the very highest level.

When you sidestep relying too much on props, you’ll be forced to draw your audience in with words alone. Combining the art of storytelling with non-verbal cues can be far more impactful than rolling out a few tired old slides.

10) Think About Whether What You’re Saying Really Makes Sense

Feedback is pivotal when you’re trying to ascertain whether your message is really punching home.

The listening skills you’ve polished with your coach will come fully to the fore here, along with your ability to take on board what your listener is feeding back to you verbally, non-verbally, and with what they are not saying. Put all these elements together and you can determine how much your message is sinking in.

You can say that communication has been truly effective when all parties can agree that “It makes sense.”

What To Do Next

If you’re looking to enhance your communication skills through the power of coaching, put it into practice right now.

Get in touch and schedule an appointment. I’ll help you to help yourself and, in turn, your audience and your organization.

New Leaders Council-Atlanta ” Work-Life-Balance

By | Atlanta Life Coach Online, Business Coaching, Executive Coaching, Executive Life Coaching, Goal Setting

 

Work- LifeBalance is, at best, an elusive ideal and at worst a complete myth according to the Harvard Business Review. I do believe it is attainable. The idea of balance allows leaders to choose how they will interact with work, family and community.

But what is balance? It is critical to understand what it is so that you can practice it for yourself. What balance is for you may not be balance for the next person. Over time, life changes and we look at balance differently than when we are single versus when we are married or having children or dealing with ill parents. So, achieving balance is like hitting a moving target on most days.

Balance can be in achieving optimal fulfillment in the areas of work, family, fun, health, spirituality and community.

Balance:

  • Is your schedule balanced?
  • Have you planned your approach to balance?
  • How did you fit the essential compartments of balance into your routine?
  • What is keeping you from maintaining balance?

Beliefs:

  • Do you lead with your authentic self?
  • What do you believe about yourself?
  • Where are the incongruences in your life?

Values:

  • What are the values that guide you?
  • Where my values and beliefs in alignment this week?
  • What am I doing to mature your values?

Behaviors:

  • Are your choices and actions causing you pain?
  • How you project yourself each day?
  • Am you saying yes when you know that you should say no and why?

 

Six Simple Steps to Achieving Balance

  1. Decide how much time is ideal for you in each of the important areas of your life.
  2. Be patient with your yourself
  3. Wisely manage the technology you use everyday.
  4. Create a support network
  5. Get your rest
  6. Make YOU your biggest priority

 

 

 

 

 

Executive Coaching – 2016 is the year for to achieve the results you always wanted to experience.

By | Athlete Life Coaching, atlanta anger management, Atlanta Life Coach Online, Business Coaching, Executive Coaching, Executive Life Coaching, Goal Setting

Executive Coaching

Do you want to nail this years projections?

Is your business scaling this year and you want to focus on the processes with your goals?

Are you that business person who is looking for support in one key area?

Then book a call or Zoom session with me today.

Book Your Future!!!

Secrets to Achievement and Change

By | Athlete Life Coaching, atlanta anger management, Atlanta Life Coach Online, Business Coaching, Executive Coaching, Executive Life Coaching, Free Life Coaching, Goal Setting, Good Relationship Advice, how to deal with anger, Life Coach Atlanta News, Life Coach Atlanta Resources, Life Coaching Tools, Offers and Promo, Online Life Coach Case Studies, Relationships

I Speak Life Coaching

Do you have something you want to change or achieve in your life? Maybe you’d like to…

=> Start a business
=> Find new love
=> Get a new career (or a raise)
=> Lose weight
=> Get your child(ren) to behave better
 => Or something else

No matter what you’d like to change or achieve, the secrets to success are the same…

#1: Get clear. As specifically as possible, decide what you want. The more clear you are on what you want to have in your life, the more likely you are to achieve it.

#2: Get perspective. Most people don’t tell anyone what they want or what they are struggling with and because of that they don’t get an outside perspective.

#3: Get support. Very few people (if any) achieve anything great alone. Sports stars have teammates and coaches

Be willing to ask the people in your life to support you.

** Special ZERO COST “Rapid Change” Coaching Session **

Call me at 404-453-9110 or email me David @dsmith.creativexmedia.net