Pressure at work: caffienate or meditate?

Executive coaches are hired for senior directors to ensure they continue to be as clear thinking as possible. Ideally they’ll lead a business onwards and upwards and inspire and motivate (all going well) their colleagues and teams. Realistically though, not every company offers the exec coach benefit to every principal in their leadership line-up. And even in businesses that do – there’s no guarantee that those executives will be noticebly calmer and more strategic.

Most professionals at some time or another will have to manage pressure at work leading to increased stress. The most common factors for this are:

• the content of work – do other people or departments depend on your work being accurate and timely 
• workload – the amount or the speed of a product or service being delivered is just too much for a contracted 40-hour per week team
• clashing personalities – it’s great when everyone gets on and puts in equal effort. It’s super-tough when personalities clash and still have to work together week after month
• a difficult boss – people rarely leave companies, they leave bad managers
• no clear route to progress
• expectations not met – by not being clearly defined and well managed
• limited financial reward for the effort invested or the results produced 

So when stress occurs what are some ways of dealing with it?

Lots of workers at all levels of seniority manage stress on a regular basis. It might be work related (as in the list above) or it might be that we’re bringing personal stress (family, finances, fitness, relationships, health) in to work with us – which is pretty normal.

Communication is a decent first step and in an ideal world we’d all be collaborators with clear shared visions, putting maximum effort in to get there as quickly as possible with the most benefit for the most people – customers & company. In reality though … that’s rare!

My question about caffienating or mediating is based around whether speeding up our brains(caffeinating) or slowing down our minds (meditating) is a more effective way of increasing productivity.

Coffee has become an increasingly acceptable stimulant over the past 50 years. It used to be that instant blends were the norm however now more and more of us are choosing the strength of that stimulant (1 – 5 from weak to super-strong). Coffee can help to integrate a home life with a work life. A late night watching tv or a few glasses of wine with friends don’t leave such obvious footprints on our work day once the 2nd cafetierre’s been gulped down.

And then there’s the late nights of emergency meetings or perfecting pitch presentations. Coffee’s a normal part of squeezing more awakeness out of a flagging work force. Sounds like – in moderation – it’s all good.
Mediation on the other hand works by slowing the mind down. When a person invests 10-15 minute a couple of times a day focussing on their breathing, paying attention to their physical body and the life-force that flows through it, the results they produce stand out over time. Meditation delivers clarity (on many levels – personal & professional) and that clarity makes decisions simpler and solutions more creative.

Looking at these 2 choices, caffeination or mediation, I’m reminded of a very wise executive coach in London I worked with for 2 years. When stuck with a decision of which of 2 excellent virtual assistants to hire she asked, ‘do you have to choose between them?’ – the answer turned out to be ‘no’ and so I hired them both. This I’m sensing is the answer to the caffienation or meditation question: if they both get result in different ways ‘do you have to choose’?

For more info: http://jenniferbroadley.com

How to manage conflict at work: Part 1 – the issues

Managing conflict at work can be one of the most valuable skills any leader develops. A team whose differences are respected amongst each other – strengths, work patterns, communication styles, personalities and life choices – is a powerful team. A manager who encourages diversity and is equipped to manage difference skillfully is an asset to any company. 

One of the most stressful things in any professional's life is heading in to work every day knowing that there's someone they have to interact with that will cause them stress. To do this day in day out, for weeks and months on end is like slow torture and can lead to anxiety, sick days and physical and mental health issues. All too often this is not the result of 2 people in a team who can't get on, it's the result of a manager, not being equipped to spot relationship difficulties amongst their people, and if they do spot it, not having the skills to manange the process towards awareness, resolve and active professional development.

I have seen and heard horrific examples of badly managed teams AND badly managed managers. These include:

• public humiliations of jobs done badly around a table of 14 team leaders - a project picked apart in front of peers 'why did it happen?! what were you thinking?! this is worse than useless?!';
• an inequipped manager avoiding a conflict situation in her team, which escalated to a violent outburst followed by one of the 2 parties being signed off work an into a mental health unit for 6 weeks until perspective and stability had been re-established. The investigation focussed on the actions of the 2 employees and not on the manager as requiring intensive further training and development;
• an director who had been with a company for 22 years (expensive to manage out of the business). The turnover in his team was extensive because the managers were constantly fed with non-timely, incomplete information, given little direction, and when a project or task was presented had to repeat or refine it given the new information that only at that presentation was shared by the director. This director played a very political game with the board of the company, discrediting (over time) his managers who ultimately took their skills elsewhere. 

As a corporate and executive coach I mainly deal with high performing, aware professionals whose goal is to be clear about their strengths and their ability to contribute to the maximum in the roles they're in (like a national athlete working ongoing with a personal trainer). However, in at least half of every case I'm asked to consider, a  director or manager want's me to 'fix' a person who reports in to them 'make them see', 'get them to understand how their actions impact the team'.

In these cases I have to explain (sometimes to the point of losing the contract) that if I 'fix' this person without having the ability to coach their manager to increase his/her skills and awareness it's a poor time and money investment for the company. It's like teaching a child cleanliness then leaving them in a home where the parent's shower once a week – it just increases the child's awareness that the culture they live in is not developed enough for them to fully thrive.

The issues for companies with potential conflicts between employees are:

• how to justify the waste of time, money and productivity once a conflict situation gains its full momentum (employees, leaders, human resources, knock on effect to team morale)
• how to skill their staff up to ask for help before a situation escalates
• how to train managers to know the difference between normal creative friction and ongoing, stress-enhancing, harmful behaviour
• how to continue to develop teams and leaders regardless of there being issues and conflict situations (so being proactive in keeping professinalism and awareness high)

In Part 2 of this article I'll highlight the top 5 solutions to managing conflict at work … stay tuned!

 See more at: http://www.jenniferbroadley.com

How to talk to your CEO …

How easy is it to get to talk with your CEO or board directors? If you’re like most people in medium to large corporates you won’t have clear access to the majority of the senior leaders. And to some extent it has to be like that. Heirarchy’s are not there for the vanity of the directors, but to protect their time so they can think and deliver in ways only they can do.

We’ve all heard the water cooler chat about ‘they should stop spending money on the marketing and spend more on the product’ or ‘if I was running this show I’d never pay those contractors to be on call – save the money and hire some permanent staff’ – the expert opinion of those not in the know.

However, sometimes there can be priceless feedback from employees –  and that different business angle from a new view point can be insightful, simple and financially rewarding to a company. How does that employee get their idea from their head, up 4 levels of management and still have their concept be as authentically represented as when they thought it up? Plus, how do they ensure the acknowledgement of the idea comes back to them and doesn’t get allocated to a career-hungry senior manager somewhere up the line?

So there are a few things that probably need to be in place to get your ideas to your CEO. Your success with this might well be influenced by:
• the size and culture of your company
• the professionalism of your manager (and therefore his/her ability to influence)
• your capacity to grasp the big picture within which your idea sits (especially if your company owns many brands or has a number of different products or services)

 Here are 5 ways to get your idea to the CEO:

1. Write the concept down and email it to a colleague or a friend so that there’s written confirmation that the idea originated with you
2. It’s always a right first steps to talk with your manager and ask him or her for their feedback and whether they think the idea has value enough to go to whatever height of leadership has the decision making power. This may be all that’s needed and once progress is made, or the idea adopted, the acknowledgement comes straight back to you
3. You can email or phone the CEO’s assistant and ask what whether you can have some time in the diary. Be prepared to explain what it’s for as it’s a PA (or EA)’s job to gate-keep for their boss and to make a first judgement as to whether this will be a valuable use of their time. If that answer is to send something to the PA first so she/he can review it, by all means do that then follow up in a day or two to check what he next step might be.
4. When you get time with your CEO, make sure you’re prepared. Your conversation may make a lot of sense to you and you may be very passionate about the area of the company in which you work. The Chief’s job though contains a responsibility for every employee within the organisation, plus the production and delivery of the product and service of your company, and the satisfaction of the clients who access those products and services. Her (or his) time is precious so you must know your information and how to answer reasonable questions around it.
5. Relax. Remember that the CEO has work his or her way to where they are with victories and challenges along the way in the same way that you’ve had those. You’ve got the meeting because it sounded like it was worthwhile so be yourself and speak from the heart.- See more at: http://www.jenniferbroadley.com

An executive coach – your ROI

What’s the Return On Investment of working with an Executive Coach? This is such a juicy question. Ten years and over 1000 clients ago, as I tentatively opened my doors to my first incarnation of being an executive coach. I had very little understanding of the value I was bringing to my market. I charged accordingly at £50 to 100 an hour – where I could get that fee and I worked with some middle managers, some junior executives and many small business owners most of whom hired me out of their own salaries.

What happened? My clients thrived. There’s no other way to say it. They were already good at what they did and since most of them had genuinely never had an agenda-free, them-focussed, you-define-your-own-success kind of conversation in their lives, the executive coaching conversations worked to massive effect. My clients were promoted, they got salary increases, some moved to dream jobs, others made huge personal changes and all of them thought thoughts and took actions that they wouldn’t otherwise have known were within their sphere of choices.

How did I measure these results? It just couldn’t be done on monetary terms. How do you measure clarity, reduced anxiety, increased courage, richer conversations and raised awareness? It could only be measured through lives lived out and success stories shared.

After about 50 clients and repeatedly seeing their huge shifts, I had to put my fees up. I continued to work for individuals – authors, publishers, editors, film producers – and then increasingly I go taken on by small then large corporates. I was seeing 2 – 6 clients a day and loving every conversation and every little light-bulb moment – of which there were many.

At this time – about 2004 – I was adding to my executive coach skillset with some further study around metaphysics. Thoughts become things. What we believe is what we see. Limited thinking produces limited results; courageous thinking creates extraordinary & fast-tracked outcomes.

How did I measure the success of this extra service? Again, it couldn’t be done on monetary terms. My clients were loving it though – doubling their sales numbers, launching (and closing) new brands and some even starting families where they’d previously given up hope.

Every year I reviewed my fees and reviewed my client results until I was working with MDs, senior directors and international business owners. At this level the fact that I charged £400 an hour and £2500 a day really wasn’t that relevant to an individual or a company. If a finance president had a breakthrough realisation, his company was the 7-figure beneficiary of that. If a marketing director left a coaching session with a richer strategy, her CEO and shareholders would celebrate those results and bank the bonus.

The money and the sales were never the point – they were the measurable outcomes. The point was (and still is) that a progressive professional could hire an executive coach to expose more of their potential and make their life easier, more meaningful and more successful.

When you hire an executive coach you believe your work life and your personal choices will change for the better. If you pick an experienced executive coach this will undoubtedly be the case. Your results can be measured by the improvements in your own life then and also in the lives of your colleagues, your family & friends, and those you’ll never even know that you’ve touched and change.

A worthwhile return on investment is not just about what’s released in your own experiences, it’s ultimately about what you give back –  your ultimate life’s legacy.

See more at: http://www.jenniferbroadley.com

Successful leadership – genuinely be yourself

‘What does it take to be successful in top leadership?’, I’m asked by a client about to step up to an MD-on-the-board role. And I found my usual coach approach of ‘empower the client to discover’ went right out the window. ‘If you really want to lead with style’, I said, ‘then genuinely be yourself’.

My experience has often been that by the time you, as a senior executive, are invited to be part of the elite leadership team that make up the board of a large corporate, it’s your character, experience and intuitive creativity that are really being called on.

You’ve done the journeying; the one that starts in the first years learning the formulas for acceptance which allow you to integrate into the company structure. As a team member you had to learn how to get on with colleagues, how to keep time, meet deadlines, produce results and communicate clearly, respectfully and using the language of the organisation.

Then you moved up to management; you learned the skills that allowed you to communicate clear goals, to motivate, to listen well, to spot your team member’s strengths and to influence their thinking as well as that of peers, directors and clients. You met deadlines and achieved results.

As a director, you felt the pressure and responded. You developed to know how to champion your business sector within the overall company vision. You inspired those around you to think more creatively, you knew which were the quick wins and which opportunities were best played out over a longer, more strategic time period. You worked out that to consciously invest in your own development at this point meant you could work less (yet smarter) and earn more. You hired teams knowledgeably and inspired with wisdom.

So now you’ve done your time, you’re ready for board level and your role from here is to oversee the business of a whole country or the negotiating of billion-pound contracts.

You’re part of a leadership team that together steers a healthy course of growth for products, services, customers and employees alike. What’s different from here is that there’s less instead of more structure because the market isn’t defined by past results it’s created by honoring the future. It’s time to downplay some of the rigidity that got you there and up-play some of the true you.

Successful leaders, over time, learn how to trust their  intellect, their emotional intelligence and their intuition. The investment of time and personal & professional development has been focussed for the boardroom for a decade or more. From here your ability to create and to influence from a place of integrity and uniquely you-ness is massively leveraged. Competitors, customers and the rest of the company are watching and learning from your style. You may not know it yet, but in your part of the corporate world … you’re already a super-star!

See more at: http://www.jenniferbroadley.com

Leadership development – can I do it myself

Numerous times in my 12 years of coaching and leadership development I've been asked by clients whether I think they'd have got to the conclusion they reach by themselves. I almost alway say 'yes'. When an answer needs to be found and layers of assumptions need to be let go to find it, that process will inevitably happen. Conversations will set you thinking, choices will present themselves, learning opportunities will occur, people will leave your team, others will join and gradually the vision you were holding will get closer and closer.

 

So what's the point in investing time and money with an executive coach if you're going to get there anyway? The answer is clarity and speed! Everyone learns a methodology of thinking and of working that comes to them with the education they've had and the experiences they've accumulated. Successful corporate leaders recognise that the process of acquiring more knowledge and refining what they know is ongoing (sometimes on a daily basis because change can happen so fast). A committment to lifelong learning inevitably sets the super-achievers apart from the pack.

 

Along with the specific wisdom you acquire you also collect specific assumptions and habits. They may have served you well last year or in your previous role, however today those tools might be the exact thing that's going to slow you down on your journey to achieving the big goal.

 

I had the priviledge very recently of talking with on of the UKs top masters squash players. He has national and international events coming up over the next 6 months and was talking about his training program. It included daily gym work for stamina, court work for accuracy, and sparring with other equally-levelled opponents for reactions and maintaining match fitness.

 

'Who's your coach?' I asked. 'I don't have one right now' he replied. (What?!!). I shared that 'all the training you're investing in right now is great for sustaining your fitness and perhaps even slightly improving you game over the next 4 months. However, by yourself you will quickly reach a plateau and you'll cease to be stretched by your sparring partners. When the World Masters arrive you absolutely want to bring your 'A' game. You can do more and be more by hiring a coach. This will allow a trained, experienced eye to observe your game from the outside, to make some small (or perhaps significant) changes and to partner you in defining and achieving some stretch goals giving you the best competitive advantage when the tournament season comes round.'

 

As much as this makes sense in sport, it makes the same sense in business. Directors, CEOs and team leaders can fast-track their growth and their 'business muscle' by partnering with a great executive coach. This coach isn't going to run your business day-to-day, nor will they put in the hours that are required to reach your ulimate vision. What they will do is to ask you some excellent questions, challenge some subtle assumptions, push you to stretch your comfort zone. 

 

The knock-on effect of working with an experienced executive coach is that your clarity will grow, you'll have key conversations more suscinctly and confidently, you'll know who to draw closer to you and who to distance yourself from and instead of achieving your goals in a year or two's time, you'll notice them taking form in just a few short months. Leadership development is an ongoing investment in keeping key directors clear, motivated and action-orientated. If one of those leaders is you, the ultimate result is that your productivity soars and you achieve twice the success in half the time. 

See more at: http://www.jenniferbroadley.com

The top 5 benefits of working with an executive coach

A decade ago it was still relatively rare for corporate senior team each to have an executive coach; that’s not the case now. Human resource professionals have long championed the concept of keeping their key leaders clear, confident and collaborative by supplying them with regular external coaching conversations.

Executives themselves are now sharp to the fact that they perform better and are generally happier when they have an independent, confidential place to work things out.

In over 12 years of delivering executive coaching in media, retail, medical, technology and energy industries here are the top 5 benefits I’ve noticed in executives who have regular conversation with their executive coach:

1. They are more productive

Someone who thinks clearly can filter out the distractions faster, communicate with purpose and target the most important next steps first time round. Also, a director with clear goals can monitor their progress and get other team members and stake holders to buy in to the effective delivery of those goals.

2. They make decisions faster & with more confidence

When a leader plans things in their mind, or even talks them out with their fellow directors, there can still be a blinkered, corporate approach to the ‘route to success’. When a strategy is discussed with an independent person from outside the company (and confidentiality is guaranteed), assumptions are challenged, new angles are explored, great ideas are affirmed. All these elements contribute to the forward motion of a project as you’ll realise ‘I am clear’; ‘I do know the answers’; ‘this is a great product/service and we need to let people know that’.

3. They communicate clearly and with awareness

Communication is key to getting any sort of high level business results. Whether that’s with your team, your peers, your CEO or with customers, clients, readers or viewers – they have got to be clear why engaging with you is a good idea day after week after month. So tailoring the same message a new way so that it’s equally as inspiring is a skill worth developing. Talking through who to influence, when and how is something all great executive coaches will ask their clients to be clear on.

4. They see opportunities ahead of time

You’ll have seen certain people spot a niche, a trend or an idea way before the rest of the pack are any where near, right? Well when a mind is primed for patterns of activity, or it spots a common question being asked by the company, the customers and the market generally, it’s going to form those commonalities into an action plan more quickly than someone who’s still focussed on last year’s activity. Investing 30 minutes every fortnight with an executive coach keeps you sharp, aware and open minded – the return on that investment can be off the scale.

5. They are happier

It’s a funny thing to measure happiness. Does someone laugh more, do they get more things right, do they lift the mood of a room just by being there? Who knows. What 12 years of coaching executives has shown me though is that a single conversation asking the right type of questions and allowing the right sort of information to come forth can change a person’s life for ever. A huge statement I know, however I see leaders, CEOs, MDs and senior directors who appear to the outsides world to be already successful (because most often they are!), take their personal and professional lives to a whole new level. They listen better, ask more constructive questions and acknowledge the changes and the progress in a way that makes their corporate and home life altogether lighter.

Executive coaches are not for the faint hearted. They are for corpporate pioneers, games changers and  team champions. If you’re a leader in business and are considering what ‘more’ could look like – the right executive coach will open up new ways of thinking, new choices and new life results.

See more at: http://www.jenniferbroadley.com

Business leadership – getting easier

It’s a question I’ve been pondering for the past few years – is business leadership getting easier? I read articles and work in businesses that say change is occurring faster and markets are ever more complex, my experience however just doesn’t bear that out (and I appreciate it may be because I’m privileged to work with the most focussed and motivated leaders).

Last week I was working with a long-standing client whose progress within her company has been off-the-chart over the past 12 months. The expectations she set herself 18 months ago were a stretch for her to imagine (I had a hunch she could raise them even further but even successful business leaders can’t see from the outset how breathtakinglytalented and inspiring they are).

We worked on thoughts and she held clear intentions. For 3 months we refined her intuitive thinking habits and everywhere possible she held intentions for the outcome of meetings, the agreement of teams and the impromptu opportunities that would spotlight her experience and contribution to the national company decision makers. Moment by moment she was prepared.

We worked on thoughts and she held clear intentions. Within 6 months the opportunity to shift from regional to national occurred. This had been her expectation and one of the reasons she’d committed to working with me as her executive coach. With a set of new processes, communication tools and thought habits she was actually more than equipped than she’d expected for the national position – it wasn’t so much of a stretch.

We worked on thoughts and she held clear intentions. It didn’t take long for her to get up to speed with the national picture, the leadership team and a plan for where the brands could be expanded and refined to make a meaningful difference for the company.

Then … we worked on thoughts and she held clear intentions. Unexpectedly and in within 6 more months an international position was offered to my cleint. This was the expectation I’d been holding for her (quietly) – I could see she had a healthy relationships with risk, I could  hear how well connected she was, I could feel how passionately she wanted to contribute and how committed she was to put the hours in for a fast-tracking career push (I suspect she’s no where near finished either).

The speed of change was somewhat to do with her thoughts and her intentions and perfecting something simple; the real breakthrough however, came when her habit of conscious thinking and intending turned into genuine belief. When she saw time after time that refined thinking and clear intention holding got results (underpinned by a philosophy of ‘more for all, no exceptions’), she honed that tool until she became unconsciously competent with it. Once that occurred she was destined to rise and rise.

So to the original question, ‘is business leadership getting easier?’, my conclusion is ‘yes, if you’re willing upskill body, head and heart together’. When business leadership gets committed to perpetual change and equips themselves with advanced tools that connect them with ‘more for all’, they can’t help but make business simpler.  Simplicity, as we see again and again (Apple, Innocent, Blinkbox), is the hallmark of all successful brands, products and services.

See more at: http://www.jenniferbroadley.com

Executive Leadership Coaching – Busting the Myths

Over the last fortnight, in the process of building an ‘extension’ onto my present business activities, I’ve met an extraordinary range of diverse leaders – some corporate, some entrepreneurial, most a bit of both. Here’s what’s been interesting to me – they have each been successful in their own way, achieving well (from my limited exposure to their work & home lives) and motivated – but not a single one of them had considered engaging an executive coach, a mentor, or an independent leadership partner to speed up the process of living their vision?

Here’s what I also noticed, when given the opportunity to talk one-to-one, every single one of them – after 30 minutes of me listening, asking some key questions and feeding back to them what I’d heard – said they felt clearer, more motivated and more confident in their ability to achieve the vision they’d been holding in their minds. They all said that they’d invest in regular coaching conversations if they were sure to achieve ‘twice the success in half the time’. That means that the expectations they might been holding for 4 years are achieved in one. Imagine the reality of what that means for work life, home life, family, fitness, finances … it’s got to be worth exploring.

Here’re the 5 questions I get asked most when a new executive leader is working out the value of coaching:

1. What if I don’t have any issues to talk to you about

Great, because I don’t work with clients who have issues, I work with clients who have unreleased potential. They’re already successful at what they do. What they want from me is perspective, clarity and someone to hold them accountable as they stretch their abilities beyond what they’d do alone.

2. How can you teach me if you haven’t done what I’m doing

I’m not a teacher or a consultant – I don’t have your answers. I’m a coach, I have the questions – you’ve got your answers. It’s a huge myth – perpetuated by trainers, consultants and mentors (none of whom are coach trained) – that executive coaches will offer up solutions. We won’t. I equip you to explore, get clear and expand. Your executive coach should be executive coach trained and preferably have 1000s of hours worth of relevant experience and quality client testimonials.

3. How can you help me get ahead in medicine (or construction, media, IT, retail, oil & gas) if you’re not a medic

Great leadership is about developing the courage and skill set to know yourself deeply. You can only engage, inspire and stretch your teams and collaborators to the point at which you’ve experienced that engagement, inspiration and stretching yourself.

4. Most of the directors and CEOs I know don’t use a coach

Don’t be too sure about that. And ask yourself, of the leaders I have access to, are most of them true innovators, creatives and ground breakers? Because if they are, you can be sure they’re smart enough to be investing in all the development available to them to be clear of their motives, to multiply their skill set and to drive their business forward at speed. You’d be surprised at how many stand-out leaders are quietly partnering with a great executive coach.

5. How do I know it’s going to be worth the investment

You don’t. But here’s the thing – if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to get the results you’ve always had. Expanding your thinking and your skill set is the quickest way possible to start to play a bigger game. To stretch your vision, your action taking, your confidence, your influence and your overall results. Do what you do with a new restaurant, a new sport, a new relationship – book in a date and have the experience.

 See more at: http://www.jenniferbroadley.com