First Meeting, Objectives & Coaching Contract

Thoughts and observations from Lorraine Candy's book about Mums and their teenage daughters

So my team got relegated… perspectives from my Coaching life

The 4 steps you could take as part of the learning process to say No!

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Resilience is one of the key buzzwords from the past couple of years

So, with most of my Coaching programmes, an individual will come to me because they are wanting or having to change something in their lives. This can be that they want to find a new career, job or role, they are having a baby or they need to reflect on how to deal with people or tasks more effectively within their current work environment. The list is endless, but one thing is for certain, they will all experience some or all of the emotions on the Transition Curve that I’m going to describe below. The Transition Curve, or Change Curve, is based on the findings of Kubler Ross. Kubler Ross reflected more on the stages of grief, and identified that you go through 5 distinct stages of grief : Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. In my work as a Parental Transition Coach, these stages have been adapted to reflect the emotions that you can go through during any significant transition, as noted above. The Change Curve is a very trusted and reliable tool that can be used to understand the stages where people are when they are going through a major or significant change in life., and how they adapt to the change that is taking place. The Transition Curve identifies that during any significant event or period of change, you may experience initially shock, excitement, confusion. The second stage brings in different emotions depending on the event such as uncertainty, denial, self doubt, even anger, with people thinking things won’t change, or that something is unfair. You will then travel down to a low point in the emotions, where you may feel frustrated or isolated, and this will then be the Turning Point in the transition. At this stage, you may need to reflect that you need to adapt to the change that has presented itself, and start trying to move forward. This can be an opportunity to try doing things differently, start asking for help more and think about how you manage things better in the future for yourself in particular. As you move forward, you will be looking forward to bigger and better things, and once you’ve worked through your own transition, you may actually be in a position to support others with their own transitions going forward. Understanding the different stages of personal change can help you make sense of perspectives and emotions that you and others may experience during a particularly challenging time in your life. Change can force you to re-evaluate your hopes, aspirations and beliefs as well as who you actually are. Being able to recognise that what you experience personally or professionally during a transition is part of the normal process of change can be helpful. To help manage yourself during a transition effectively and efficiently, it’s important to look for support and help from those around you, to seek opportunities to talk things through and focus more on the future. These can all play their part in helping you to prepare for and manage your new reality.

Photo Credit: Virtual Photography by NUX Photography #virtualphotography In late 2020, I attended a training course called The Daring Way facilitated by Roxanne Hobbs of The Hobbs Consultancy. On this course, I was joined by two fabulous ladies, and we shared our experiences via Zoom over these three days, covering elements from Brene Brown’s book “Daring Greatly”. We had such a great time over that 3 day course that we decided to get together in the same group for the follow up course “Dare to Lead” at the end of March 2021, which reflects on Brene’s findings from her book of the same name. It’s pretty intense over Zoom, as face to face training is too, but it also makes it more personal, and I found myself sharing a lot more experiences than I thought I would over the 3 days again. I thought I’d share with you all my key takeaways from the course, especially as I can now state that I am Dare to Lead trained. Brene’s books are based from a quote by Theodore Roosevelt where he describes “the man who is actually in the arena…. daring greatly”. From this, Brene founded what was at the Heart of Daring Leadership: • You cannot be courageous without rumbling with vulnerability • Self-awareness and self-love matter • Courage is contagious, and therefore we need to lose our armour and be brave She also identifies the four skill sets of courage as follows: • Rumbling with Vulnerability • Living into our values • Braving Trust • Learning to Rise The course focussed on understanding these 4 skill sets. A lot of time is spent on the first one, as this is the one that requires the most work to reflect and build upon. Whereas “The Daring Way” had looked at rumbling with vulnerability in a more personal way, “Dare To Lead” encourages more focus into the work arena. This gave me a fascinating insight into how I can reflect on when I am vulnerable during a work situation, and how I can be more open, honest and courageous in the future to help not only myself, but more importantly my clients. One area that really made me think was the ways that shame can show up in organisations – they were all words I’d either experienced myself in my former work roles, or had heard from clients, and it really did crystallise my thoughts as to what I could bring into my coaching going forward to support my clients more in this space. Shame is important to understand as it can prevent people from being brave and courageous. One really great tool we reflected on was whether your Leadership is more “Armoured” or “Daring”, by reading sentences, and deciding where you sit on the scale between the two. Reflecting on what potentially causes you to want to armour up and how you can work on this and become more Daring is really key. I am going to be looking at this further in the coming weeks. There was so much covered within the course that I could write 10,000 words but I think you might all switch off, so other key take aways are summarised as follows: • Square Squad: draw a 5cm x 5cm square and write the names of the people down who really matter to you. It’s trying to get you to be concise as possible • Values: This is an area that I feel is really important for everyone, and i work through these with my coaching clients a lot of the time. Brene reinforces this message during the course encouraging you to get to two values that define you – so what matters to you? • Understanding how to give better, more engaged feedback • Braving Trust: how clear is kind, and unclear is unkind. This part breaks down trust into seven elements – Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-Judgement and Generosity. I’m looking forward to working with these elements in future coaching conversations. The time spent with my Dare to Lead colleagues was precious, challenging and enjoyable, and it was sad that our learning journey together has now come to an end. However, we will continue to dare greatly with support from each other. I am looking forward to putting the learning into practice over the next few months. In the meantime, I’m off to re-read Dare to Lead – it’s the least I can do after my recent learning journey.

Setting 2021 intentions and goals

So another week of chaos at Downing Street has unfolded with high profile exits of senior advisors etc, and as we watch political correspondents falling over themselves to give their own opinions, it made me wonder if there is an explanation related to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator that goes some way to explaining the chaos, so I did a little bit of research to help me understand better why things might have run the way they have in recent months with Boris at the helm. I checked a few different websites, and they all seemed to indicate that Boris Johnson is an ENTP type. As an ISFJ, he’s my complete opposite! What does this mean for what’s been going on recently? What are those typical characteristics? The different letters mean the following: • E = Extrovert (v I = Introversion) • N = Intuition (v S = Sensing) • T = Thinking (v F = Feeling) • P = Perceiving (v J = Judging) Looking at the above, the Extroversion element is probably not unexpected, as Boris seems to enjoy bouncing ideas off people rather than inwardly reflecting, especially if you watch him at the dispatch box. The Intuition element indicates that he prefers to look at the bigger picture and strategy, rather than the detail of what needs to be done. If we think about what he has promised during press conferences (i.e. the number of tests we would be doing at various stages etc)… he promises to deliver, but he then needs more people around him to get the detail done, and the plan delivered. On the Thinking part, this means his Head rules his Heart, and again, based on his interactions this is probably not surprising. Finally, for the Perceiving element, this indicates that he prefers to be more spontaneous and flexible than organise himself within a fixed plan. Well, that’s a Eureka moment, and probably explains why Brexit is still being negotiated as his personality type actually gets energised by last minute pressure, and why someone like me then panics as I like to work more methodically towards the deadline (and hence why a lot of the British population is also concerned, whereas Boris has the belief it will be done!) I think what’s really interesting with this type is how they deal with stress situations… this type can react by generating possibilities with no data or follow through, withdrawing and avoiding people, working harder but less effectively. They need to therefore spend a bit more time reflecting on what they need to do, talking to others to get support with problems (although they wouldn’t want to be offered a solution!), and bringing more organisation into their portfolio. In my previous work life, I often operated in a Chief of Staff role using my attention to detail and organisation skills to support the Team Lead. The Team Leads were often the opposite type to me, and a similar story to the above would have played out when working with them, without my intervention and work ethic. Therefore, my conclusion would be that Mr J needs to ensure he gets some more Sensing and Judging types within his new team in the coming weeks to help bring equilibrium of thoughts and deliverables going forward. Otherwise, we are going to continue seeing chaos reigning and being reported for a long time to come! And regardless of political persuasion, that’s not good for the country! If you are interested in finding out more about MBTI, please get in touch with me!