Tag: human behaviour

What is business coaching?

Business coaching is a sharing of expertise, mentoring, support, accountability, planning, and implementation. The right coach for you will add value to your business by setting and reviewing goals and helping the businesses focus on what is most important. Additionally, a coach will help you look at why you are in business and identify areas of business that possibly you were not aware of to achieve success. You don’t know what you need to know until you become aware.

The aim of business coaching is to help you and your business develop successfully in the way that you want. Business coaching can teach the skills needed to grow your business, the ability to raise targets and focus time and attention on what really matters. You will get independent and objective advice to help you make decisions.

What are the options for business coaching?

You are in control; you may need to consult with a few coaches to identify what are your specific needs and find a coach you can identify with and like their approach. You can have one to one coaching, coaching workshops or virtual coaching. These sessions can be weekly, fortnightly, by video, phone, or email, or whatever you agree with your needs. It is important to remember it is about your solutions.

---

What are the benefits of coaching? 

Business coaching will help you achieve your goals and identify any specific needs; however, both of these may increase with coaching.  Accountability is a major benefit, many of us need support to remain focused and not to procrastinate. Coaching will unleash both you and the company’s potential and bring about changes, growth, and long-lasting business results. Coaching can help a new business or transform and improve an existing business. The right business coach can help you develop staff, enhance performance, improve productivity, and work-life balance, and generally help overcome obstacles and challenges. Business coaching can also help you develop a business plan, a sales and marketing strategy, develop confidence and interpersonal, time management and organizational skills as well as improve overall performance, productivity, and effectiveness. 

How does it work?

By focusing on your specific needs, which often change over time. Business coaches take an impartial look at your business, its strengths, and weaknesses and work with you to get the most out of the business. Depending on your needs, you may agree a time period or have an open-ended agreement. The depth of support required, and the time frame will dictate the frequency of the sessions. This helps keep a tight focus, generates more commitment, and encourages you to take the action necessary between sessions. Knowing you will be talking to your coach on a regular basis is a real motivator to make changes. You should become more focused, organized, and structured.

---

Why does coaching work?

Coaching is effective because you have the coach on your side to help you focus on what matters most to you.  Because you agree to regular sessions you focus and commit, become more organized and structured.  Coaching is personal; it is about you as well as your business. It will develop your personal needs and strengths as well as those of your business.

What is the difference between business coaching and business consultancy?

Business coaching will help you to clarify the most important goals and aims for your business, helping you take and keep control. It can teach you techniques and skills to make the right decisions.

Business consulting on the other hand is much narrower and will focus on business aims, objectives and targets and how to achieve them. The business will be analyzed to see how it operates and you will get advice how to improve profits or run it better. It can be particularly useful for specific projects, rather than ongoing business support.

We combine the two to give you maximum support to remove any barriers to business growth.

---

What type of coaching models are there?

There are a few different coaching models. Many coaches follow what is known as the GROW model. The GROW model is applied to many forms of coaching, whether it be in a business, life or sport. You work through the GROW model and continually review your progress towards achieving your goals, which are often surpassed by further goals.

G – goal
Your coach will ask you lots of questions to establish specifically what it is that you want to achieve.

R – reality
Identify where you are right now in terms of meeting your goals, the progress you’ve made so far and any obstacles that might be getting in the way.

O – options
You will be challenged to look at all the options open to you. You will look at things that you could do, but not necessarily should do.

W – will or way forward
You turn your ideas into action points. You will agree with your coach what you will do and when you will do it by. This will be reviewed at your next session.

Do you think you would benefit from a business coach supporting you with the sustainable growth of your business?

Book an initial free chat to see if we match.

---

Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram

How to Thrive When Everything Feels Terrible

I realized some time ago that one of my overriding life values is to support others, handy when you consider that is my business. When I look at sole proprietors and entrepreneurs businesses in terms of business growth, often one of the hurdles to business growth is not their marketing, it is not their processes but it is their people, especially if they are the only person in the business. I thought I would some reading I have been doing and give you an insight into potentially why you and your staff might be a barrier to the success of your business.

For some reason (another conversation), many humans thrive on negative energy and enterprises such as news media use that energy to sell their wares. The news we read, social media we peruse, and conversations we have and overhear. We absorb stress from our family, friends, and coworkers. It all takes its toll even if we don’t subscribe to their beliefs.

The Mighty ( I am still exploring it), a community platform that provides health information and brings people together around specific health issues. It recently surveyed more than 70,000 readers and community members around their awareness, perceptions, and experience with the coronavirus crisis. Interestingly respondents reported their top three emotions were frustration, worry, and anger. No sign of hope or other positive emotions.  

Negativity can have toxic effects. I read some recent research that identified that we falter when exposed to negativity or rudeness.

Do you have coping strategies to reduce the amount of exposure?
Share your strategies with our conversation on Facebook!

Witnessing rudeness interferes with our working memory and decreases our performance. Mere exposure to rude words reduces our ability to process and recall information. We tend to shut down, stop communicating, and cease being helpful to others. Dysfunctional and aggressive thoughts (and sometimes actions) skyrocket.

Fortunately, there is a productive way to counter those effects. It’s called thriving — the psychological state in which people experience a sense of both vitality and learning. Thriving individuals are growing, developing, and energized rather than feeling stagnated or depleted.

In studies conducted across a range of industries, it has been found that people who experience a state of thriving are healthier, more resilient, and more able to focus on their work. Here are some top tips to thrive. When people feel even an inkling of thriving, it tends to buffer them from distractions, stress, and negativity. In a study of six organizations across six different industries, employees characterized as highly thriving demonstrated 1.2 times less burnout compared with their peers. An additional benefit is that it provides confidence in themselves and their ability to take control. They were far less likely to have negativity drag them into distraction or self-doubt.

So how do you increase your thriving especially when it feels like you’re drowning in negativity?

Avoid negativity. Pay attention to what you’re ingesting: what information you chose to read, the media you consume, the music you listen to, the people you choose to spend time with, and the people you look up to. Negativity seeps into our pores through these sources. So make simple choices away from negativity and toward positivity.

---

Watch out for what you say out loud. Negative language is particularly insidious and potent. Be mindful of what you’re thinking and saying. Yes, those around you influence you and your mood, but we have more control over our thoughts and feelings than anyone else. And what we say out loud also carries significant weight. It’s ten times more damaging to our sense of thriving if we verbalize a thought than if we just think it.

---

So, think twice about how you’re framing and speaking about a situation. Instead of saying,  “This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” or “It’s catastrophic,” (or “devastating” or “terrible”), tweak your language to be more neutral. You might say, “This situation is challenging,” which recognizes the opportunity for growth or learning. You can — and should — acknowledge the truth, while minimizing its power to drag you down.

---

Adopt a neutral mindset. Negative thoughts and worries take us off track. We’re more likely to struggle on basic tasks. Long term, repetitive negative thinking is associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. It also hurts others because they are then exposed to our negativity. Of course, it’s all too easy to dwell on toxic people or situations. We might play the blame game, ruminate, or overanalyze the situation. It’s far better to adopt a proactive mindset, focusing on what we can control and what we should do next.

---

Use neutral thinking — a nonjudgmental, nonreactive way of assessing problems and analyzing crises. This includes staying in the moment, reacting to each moment as it unfolds, and keeping your focus on how you can influence your next action. Don’t get sucked into analyzing past failures or hijacked by future fears or thoughts. Take one play at a time.

---

Practice gratitude consistently. There is lots to be said about the benefits of gratitude. Gratitude reduces our stress, makes us happier, and helps us reach our goals. Routinely feeling grateful increases the social support we receive, which further reduces stress and its negative effects. It’s especially powerful when practiced alongside neutral thinking.

---

Take care by managing your energy. You can also increase your resilience in the face of negativity and encourage thriving by exercising, eating well, and getting enough sleep — all things we know we’re supposed to do but we often fail to when we’re bombarded with negativity. When we exercise, our muscles pump “hope molecules” into our bodily systems that are good for our mental and physical health. You can amplify these effects by exercising outside, with others, or to music.

---

Healthy eating also helps you stave off negativity. How well do you respond to frustration when you’re hungry? We lack the self-control required to respond patiently. Sleep is also important. A lack of it impairs self-regulation and self-control, which can produce more negativity. Research has linked poor sleep to frustration, impatience, hostility, anxiety, low levels of joviality, lower levels of trust, workplace deviance, and unethical behavior. Sleep deprivation also hurts the relationship between leaders and their followers, and diminishes how much help people provide to others.

---

Seek out positive relationships — inside and outside of work.  Research has found that de-energizing relationships — in which one person possesses an enduring, recurring set of negative judgments, feelings, and intentions toward another person — have four to seven times greater impact on an employee’s sense of thriving than energizing, positive relationships. To offset these effects, surround yourself and spend more time with energizers — the people in your life who make you smile and laugh, and lift your spirits.

---

You may not be able to stop the flow of negativity in your life, especially right now, but you can resist its toxic effects by making smart choices about who and what you surround yourself with, the mindset you adopt, and the information you consume. Not only will you be better off because of these choices — those around you will too.

If you would like us to review the people within your organisation or support with implementation of processes that support positivity connect with us today.