Being in business or working in a senior executive role brings a lot of responsibility. The more senior the role, often the more stress.  You have a lot of people looking to you and relying you to provide a good work environment that will enable them to thrive as well as earn a decent living.  They look to you for inspiration and security.

The decisions you have to make on a daily basis are challenging.  It’s not easy to have the clarity to make these decisions when there’s a thousand other things to do and so many people to communicate with, from customers to suppliers.

It can be a lonely place at the top and having someone to bounce ideas with and discuss options seems like an impossible luxury.  This is where working with a coach works so well.

You will have someone you can trust, who will listen to you without prejudice , without criticism.  Who will challenge thoughts and behaviours that are holding your back, who will congratulate you unequivocally where it’s due, and help you find the oh so elusive work life balance.

What qualities make a good CEO

What makes someone a good CEO?

A  question that comes up regularly in my meetings as a leadership and executive coach is what makes someone a good CEO.

Whether a founder CEO or not, there are certain qualities when it comes to leadership, communication and behaviours that increase your impact as a CEO and indeed, when adopted and honed, can make life a lot easier and less stressful.

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mediation

Don’t forget you do have choices

Your choices can change everything

Do you feel like you’ve lost control? Does it feel like everyone else is powerful, things are working for them, but you just find that nothing works out how you want it to? Then realising that you have choices may help.

Choice is such an important part of life.  Most of us, are lucky enough to be able to make so many choices about how we behave, how we work and live.  We can choose how to react to others, to situations – we are not powerless.  This is often too easy to forget in the day to day busy-ness and stress of life.  It’s too easy to be passive and react to situations with frustration, anger or hopelessness, blaming circumstances or others for what happens when the most constructive thing we can do is recognise our options and move forward.

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The pearl and oyster analogy

Tools for resilience – the pearl and the oyster

Resilience: The pearl and the oyster analogy

During my time training as a resilience practitioner, I learnt many useful resilience techniques.  Learning that through adopting these, we can develop and become good at resilience was hugely inspiring as previously I don’t think I completely understood how much influence we have over our own reaction to challenging situations.

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unknown to known coaching

Unknown to known : making change easier

Unknown  known

Having the courage to face change

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

What is it about change that is so painful? It happens to us all the time and yet we cling on to things in the hope we can somehow avoid it. We dearly want things to remain the same and ignore the fact that change is one of the most constant aspects of life. As Heraclitus said “there is nothing permanent except change” and he was right, wasn’t he? If you find change uncomfortable, it can add a challenging layer to all that you do and that happens to you.

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Conflict coaching

Would you like to increase your impact?

Creating an impact and developing gravitas

It’s probably true that we could all do with some work on our presentation style.  I’m not particularly talking about standing up in front of an audience and delivering a speech, but more about the day to day dealings with others at work. I’ve spent a great deal of time observing how others come across and realise there is much we can do to improve our impact.

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