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]]>Leaders live and operate in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous(VUCA) world. This has been proven so categorically in recent times.
So how can leadership programs help?
Before we can demonstrate our leadership by leading others, first we develop personal leadership skills, we need to lead ‘self’ first.
We are all a product of our past experiences – all that we have absorbed through our sensory experiences becomes embedded deep into our unconscious in the form of our values, beliefs and mental rules.
In the daily hustle of doing our job roles, we seldom stop to question our unconscious belief system. The first step to becoming a powerful leader is to first build your personal leadership skills before learning to lead others.
The best leadership programs start with raising your consciousness to help you create awareness of whether your belief system supports your current day functioning? Does it allow you to show up with your full resourcefulness or are you leading in an auto mode without pausing to calibrate your thinking, acknowledging your feelings or modifying your behaviour.
As a leader you are poised to have an impact on many followers who will role model what you demonstrate. A leadership program will enable you to pause, to think, to modify the beliefs that are holding you back and be the leader that can maximise his/her impact on the followers.
The best leadership programs will enable you to be a leader worth following by
- raising your awareness and make you think again
- educating you with practical models and frameworks and
- helping you to practice behaviour change using simple tools and techniques.
So how to find the best leadership development programs online?
When you are looking for a leadership program online, look for those that help you examine your inner belief system, that enables you to experience change during the program, that are thought provoking and not prescriptive. Look for online leadership programs that ensure that you have a SMART personal leadership plan with mechanisms embedded in it to hold yourself accountable for consistent efforts to bring about the transformation you want.
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So what to ask from an executive coach?
For those who are new to executive coaching, you may not know what to expect in the first session.
The Discovery session is an important session to get maximum mileage out of the coaching engagement. As the name suggests, discovery is about sharing your vision, your dreams and what you want to achieve through the coaching journey. It is about taking stock of the current reality and examining your values. It is also about affirming your strengths and using all this knowledge to design your Coaching goals along with your coach. Discovery session will help you define what is truly important to you at this stage in your life.
So what exactly to ask from an Executive Coach?
A trained and skilled Coach can answer any questions that you might have about how the coaching will work. The coach will explain to you what to expect from the Discovery session and what kind topics can be brought to the session. The coach will answer any question that arises in your mind.
You can also ask about confidentiality and what is the Code of Ethics that your coach follows. This can allow you to be free to share what is on you mind and be vulnerable.
Why hire an executive coach to set you on the path to self-discovery?
Because coaches are trained to listen – to listen to what you say and what you don’t say. Their single agenda is to enable you to work through what might be holding you back and maximise your impact in business and in life. In every session a coach brings his/her lifetime of experience to use it for your benefit through listening, asking, supporting and also challenging appropriately. Executive Coaches will enable you to overcome your deep seated beliefs to grow into your most powerful persona.
So next time don’t think too hard about what to ask from an Executive Coach. Share your vulnerabilities and let the Coach do the job that you hired them to do.
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]]>The post Let your Sages Reign! appeared first on The Coaching Anchor.
]]>Sage yourself! What a wonderful phrase coined by Coach Shirzad Chamine!
I always knew about #Saboteurs and how they can sabotage our success.
All of us know that the 4 Cs – #Compare, #Complain, #Criticize and #Condemn are negative behaviours. Yet we indulge in them and get a temporary high, we get to feel superior from others and boost our ego for the time being. Till the next thing comes along and sends us again on a roller coaster of emotions!
What has also become clearer to me is that all of the 4 C’s are a manifestation of our Saboteurs – the protective mechanism we built in our growing up years when we were dependent on others and had fewer resources. These protective mechanisms are like a cast that we put on to protect an injury when we were 5 years old…and we are still living with this cast even though as adults we have outgrown that hurt many times over – a metaphor shared in the Positive Intelligence Program.
But there is a better way to be!
We can Sage ourselves! We can use our better, more judicious and more empathetic self in all our interactions – business or personal!
We can avoid negative Cs and use the positive ones!
From ‘Comparing’ to ‘Collaborating’ – When we compare, we are only comparing some features of our self with someone else and either
we come up short or we feel superior…both are just a way to satisfy our ego. A better strategy is to learn that aspect from another person or teach them what you know better than them!
From ‘Complaining’ to ‘Coping’ – Complaining arises from a #victim mindset, a pattern of thinking that things happen to me, I have no control over my circumstances – yes sometimes circumstances are tough but we always have control over something e.g. our behaviour. Focus on your locus of control and gradually find a way to cope with difficult situations.
From ‘Criticising’ to ‘Celebrating’ – We are naturally wired to evaluate the negative information, it is a primitive strategy for survival but belongs to the caveman days. In the modern day and age we can have a higher impact and motivate our family, our teams and employees much more by celebrating small wins. Our appreciation can take them a long way.
From ‘Condemning’ to ‘Containing’ – Our Judge Saboteur is constantly acting as the Judge, the Jury and the Executioner and to what avail? We can have better interactions, build more self-esteem in ourselves and others when we leave judgement aside and use our sense of empathy and ‘contain’ our sense of judgement.
Ultimately everything in this world manifests as energy – you always have the choice to create positive energy that enhances, uplifts and moves us forward.
It starts with us. Convert your C’s. Let your Sages reign!
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]]>The post 5 Situations When a Life Coach Can be the Only Working Solution appeared first on The Coaching Anchor.
]]>Human beings have unimaginable potential, only if they allow themselves to see it, feel it and experience it. Yet many of us live life in a sub-optimal way, choosing to settle rather than finding the courage to overcome fear and go after our dreams, desires and ambitions.
Or sometimes we are so driven by our ambition that we may lose sight of other aspects of our life and regret that in hindsight.
So how does a life coach help? A Life Coach, at the very least, is an objective sounding board, and can look you in the eye and show you a mirror without judgement and without undermining your sense of self. A certified Life Coach is skilled and trained to help you become aware of your thinking and behavioural patterns and change them to work towards your life goals.
So when to hire a Life Coach? How can a life coach help you? Here are 5 situations when a Life coach is your only working solution:
- When you want to change something in your life but feel stuck – As adults we have answers to our problems within us or at least how to start solving the problem, provided we know where to look. A life coach will help you examine your thought patterns and get rid of limiting beliefs that are coming in the way of finding the solutions to your problems.
- When your self-doubts come in the way of self-growth – We are often our worst critic. Quite often, even before we can start moving forward in the direction of our simple and complex goals, our self-doubts become the barriers to action. They hold you back from unleashing your full potential. A certified Life Coach will help you to clear the path and find your way out of the fog of self-doubts.
- When life feels unbalanced and unproductive – Sometimes we have to juggle many roles and it can create dilemmas and conflicts that can be extremely stressful. When we have competing motivations, a life coach can be the lighthouse that guides your path and helps you navigate your way around obstacles.
- When you want to clarify your values, wants, needs and set goals for the future – A certified life coach will take you through a systematic process of discovering your values, needs and desires and setting meaningful goals that align to your values and principles.
- When you wake up and don’t feel excited at the prospect of what the day will bring for you or if you go to bed feeling dissatisfied frequently. The secret to living well is to keep learning and growing. Zest for life is the elixir that keeps us on the growth path. How can a life coach help? A life coach will help you to let go of your perceptual filters that might be giving you a limited view of life and help you see what might be holding you back.
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]]>The post 7 Signs That You Need An Executive Coach to Make That Shift appeared first on The Coaching Anchor.
]]>If you are in the corporate world, the workplace can sometimes feel like a battleground – either you are combatting the market forces, the competition, internal politics or your own sense of inadequacy to handle multiple fronts, all at once!
This can be stressful, energy sapping and unproductive. It can blind your vision, make decision making short sighted and come in the way of thinking resourcefully and acting decisively – a dangerous place to be for leaders and organisations who depend on competent leaders to achieve business objectives.
So when to hire an executive coach? An Executive Leadership Coach can help you not only when times are tough but also help you plan for what is to come and ride the wave with a strategic plan even when the seas are turbulent.
Here are 7 signs that you need an Executive Coach to Make that shift!
- When you want to scale to the next level that requires a significant Step-up in the way you think, in the way you work, in the way you manage your team and the way you perceive your role. As Marshall Goldsmith said ‘What got you here, will not get you there’. What you have is table stakes, it is what has got you to the table to be even considered for the next level. Remember that the corporate career is a pyramid, it narrows as you get to the top of the ladder and for you to be the one chosen to lead, you need to be able to see your strengths as well as past your blindspots. An Executive Leadership Coach can hold that mirror for you and help you navigate the path to success.
- When you do get the next level promotion – Every new role can feel a bit challenging even if we felt ready for it. It requires shifting gears and operating at a higher level. An Executive Leadership coach can enable you to steer clear of rookie mistakes and help you feel a sense of calm as you manoeuvre yourself through many twists and turns.
- When you want to magnify your impact as a leader – An executive coach can be your confidante for your worries and your objective thinking partner to set Bold, hairy, audacious goals
- When you need a fresh perspective – Sometimes the organisational politics and stress of the job can get to you – your thoughts may become overly critical and may rapidly spiral into negativity. An executive leadership coach can help you reset your thinking and enable you to find that fresh way of thinking to leverage your strengths and make the shift needed.
- When you are at a crossroads and want to make a shift in your career – Leaders are used to handling dilemmas and taking decisions everyday for business. Yet a career change can feel destabilising for self and family. It can make you doubt yourself considering you trained and worked for one thing and now want to jump ship. A supportive Executive Coach can facilitate your thinking with the help of appropriate tools to shine the light on the way forward.
- When you feel an internal need for an objective sounding board – Being a leader can be lonely, a trained, certified Executive Coach knows how to listen without judgement and how to support and challenge you without being challenging. It can feel therapeutic to discuss your self-doubts, your frustrations, your dreams and your aspirations. The answers are always within us, what we need is a conduit through which we can channelise our thoughts and move to action.
- When your stress levels are high – When the prospect of getting yourself to the workplace seems more and more difficult and work instead of being enjoyable feels like a big burden. Stress is part and parcel of any career – an Executive Coach can enable you to gear up to handle the stress and take challenges in your stride and how to side-step challenges without losing sight of your goals.
Leadership is a process of continuous growth. Corporate careers continue for almost 3 decades or more. Even if you made it big early in life, you may still need a thinking partner to overcome some stressful and challenging issues. Sitting still is not an option for leaders whether executives or entrepreneurs. Executive Coaches can meet you where you are in your leadership journey and be your guiding light.
So next time the thought crosses your mind ‘Should I hire an Executive Leadership Coach?’ then that is exactly the right time to get in touch with an Executive Coaching Services firm and explore the need.
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]]>Most often (80% of the time as per one research quoted by Richard Boyatzis, American Psychology Expert) we operate from what we know and rely on our past internalised knowledge rather than gathering inputs from our senses from the here and now.
Our instincts are useful to help us survive in dangerous situation but are they serving us in our daily life?
Hans Rosling in his book #‘Factfulness’: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think quotes extensive research to share how even the most accomplished, educated and even those incharge get it wrong when it comes to estimating how bad or good things are in the world.
#Factfulnesss explains how our instinctive programming leads us to exaggerate situations, read in-between lines(erroneously) and distort how we view the world, others and ourselves. Our personal perspective further magnifies the problems and how we react to them.
We get caught in the web of our own making.
We do this in our everyday interactions, in our relationships, in facing challenges and in every turn in life.
Our instinctive evaluation of any negative information emanates from our fear for our survival and we tend to view the post modern dilemmas with the emotional repertoire developed for facing dangers of the primitive times!
So how are you mitigating your fears and regulating your instincts for better interactions, better relationships and better living?
Next time you are overwhelmed or feeling insecure, check the facts first…maybe the feeling will pass.
May we all live to learn and do better each day!
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]]>The post See beyond what you see appeared first on The Coaching Anchor.
]]>Everything that happens, happens twice.
First in our mind’s eye and then in the real world.
Human beings have the special human endowment (different from the Animal Kingdom) – we have the gift of ‘Creative Imagination’. We can distort what is in front of our eyes and dream BIG! We can imagine the impossible and then manifest it through our other endowments.
Imagination is the key.
And if you have seen Lion King, then you have known it all along!
RAFIKI: You must look beyond…beyond what you see!
So how do you see ‘Beyond…beyond what you see’?
You Visualize. You Crystalize. You Picturize. You Sense. You Embed the Image.
And you See, Feel, Hear, Smell and Taste only This( – the image) that your mind conjures up so vividly.
Not the losses, not the failures, not the self-doubts, not the distractions, not the criticism, not the comparison.
Then you breathe.
Because breathing in and breathing out is the only way to be present – to be mindfully engaged in the tiny machinations that will manifest your vision.
Focus on the ball, focus on the posture, focus on the thought in your head, focus on the breathing and then swing!
Swing into action.
Whether in ‘GOLF’ or in ‘CRICKET’, or in ‘LIFE’, this strategy will give you the desired ‘PAYOFF’!
This is how all the successful people in the world manifested their success, they dreamt, they intensified the associated image – the colours, the feeling, the sounds and immersed all their senses in pursuit of their dreams!
And you can do it too!
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