Yearly Archives: 2016

What to do when it doesn’t work! 1

 in Guest Post  tagged Angus McLeod / clients / coaching / Jeannette Attryde

In this weeks guest post experienced coach Jeannette Attryde shares some insights from her work.

What to do when it doesn’t work!

By Jeannette Attryde

"What to do when it doesn’t work!" by Jeannette Attryde

There has been a recent trend on Twitter of the hashtag #IAlwaysGetAnnoyedWhen and it got me thinking about the last time I got annoyed. I am not the sort of person who is easily angered or frustrated so it took some thinking and I decided that the times when I get annoyed are usually when I can’t help somebody.

I decided to start my business to give me the ability to focus on doing what I love – helping people. The desire to help is also why I volunteer for the local council as an Employment Mentor helping the long term unemployed overcome barriers to work. So when I can’t help somebody I feel frustrated, disappointed and like I have failed.

There are likely to have been times when you have been trying to coach somebody, or manage somebody, and no matter how much you try or what techniques you use, you just can’t achieve the outcome you are working towards. How does that make you feel? Probably similar to myself. My first reaction is to look internally to try and work out why I “failed”, why my skills “weren’t good enough” on this occasion, and what else I “should have done”. But there is one simple truth I overlook – you can’t help everybody.

So how can you get some real perspective on the situation and why this happens?

Firstly, it is worth remembering that these occasions are very few and far between. When you assess the objective data you will see that these cases make up a tiny amount of the people you have worked with and it’s important not to forget all the successes you have had because of one or two cases which didn’t work out.

Secondly, as a coach you are there to facilitate change. As Angus McLeod describes in his book Performance Coaching,

“The coach is not the player, but an instrument, in service to the art of the coachee…”

so there will be occasions when despite your best efforts the coachee cannot or will not change. This can be due to lack of will, lack of skill, or lack of ability. There may be occasions, such as one I recently experienced, where the person I was working with needed a much more directive intervention than I could offer through coaching. In that case the best help I could give was to ensure he was referred to the best source of that support. If I had tried to work with his it would have been frustrating for him and may have weakened his trust in any interventions subsequently recommended.

Thirdly, to make a real collaborative team and achieve the goals the coachee desires will need an element of rapport. If the two of you do not have that rapport, then the relationship can be strained and any work you try to do together may be undermined. Similar to when you are looking for a romantic life partner, it is better for either party to recognise at an early stage that the chemistry is not there and to seek an alternative partnership which will be more productive. There is no shame in this, it is simply that you didn’t “click”.

And finally, as well as doing some self-reflection, use your coaching supervision, or other coaches/managers to discuss the situation. There is always something to learn from these events and it may be something that is visible to you through the guided reflection that coaching supervision gives you.

About Jeannette Attryde

Jeannette AttrydeJeannette Attryde is the owner of Different Perspectives, Coaching and Consultancy. She has over 17 years’ experience in leading and managing teams of varying sizes in a range of organisations including Blue Chip Financial Services companies. Whilst specialising in Leadership and Management coaching, she also works with people from all walks of life to identify and achieve their goals through tailored personal coaching. Sessions are conducted face to face, by phone/Skype or online messenger.

Jeannette loves connecting with people and can be reached in the various ways below

Website – www.different-perspectives.co.uk

Twitter – @DP_Jeannette

Facebook – www.facebook.com/differentperspectivesuk

LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/company/different-perspectives

 

 

 

 

 

 

Networking on Social Media 101

 in Guest Post  tagged clients / coaching / connecting / Dr. Rhonda Anderson / marketing / networking / social media

In today’s guest post Dr. Rhonda Anderson shares some of her experience and knowledge with some practical advice:

Networking on Social Media 101

By Dr. Rhonda Anderson

"Networking on Social Media 101" Written By Dr. Rhonda Anderson

 

Social media has become a way of life and it impacts our personal and professional lives in a major way. There are millions of people each day sharing information about their lives, businesses, news, sports, and the list goes on. It is evident that in order for your coaching business to thrive, you must also utilize social media. If you are not using social media and you are successful as a life coach, then kudos to you. On the other hand, you are leaving a lot of money on the table by choosing not to be active on the world-wide web (www).

The one big advantage of using social media is that it is FREE! It adds tons of value to your bottom line when you market your services and products on these platforms. It is the first place people look to find you when you tell them you are in business. I am not a master at social media, but there are a few things I have learned that can help you with building your network full of potential clients to market your services to and to build a tribe who will respect you as a life coach. Below are a few tips to help you build your network without leaving your home. Especially, if at times you do not have time to do face-to-face networking. Below are a couple of things you can do to make yourself visible on social media and begin growing your network of potential customers and collaborators.

  1. Get social! Choose social media platforms that are right for your coaching practice.
  2. Establish yourself as a subject matter expert in your coaching niche(s).
  3. Start and/or join groups and discussions on your social media platforms where your target audience is.
  4. Don’t be afraid to connect with people you do not know. Add them to your network and establish a relationship before selling to them. Don’t be afraid to ask for a conference call or a face-to-face meeting if the person is local.

 

About Dr. Rhonda Anderson

Dr. Rhonda Anderson is a Life Transition Strategist and the President/CEO of A Scholars Touch, LLC. She specializes in Life, Education, and Business coaching. Dr. Rhonda serves youth (ages 12-21), adults, and entrepreneurs with obtaining success both personally and professionally. She has coached clients both nationally and internationally in group settings and individually. In addition, she is the co-founder of iNSPIRE Entrepreneurs and is the co-host of a web series called Changing Lives 365.

Web: www.ascholarstouch.com Social Media: @ascholarstouch

5 Ways To Get Your Clients To Breakthrough When They’re Well and Truly Stuck

 in Guest Post  tagged breakthrough / clients / coaching / Lottie Moore / physical metaphors / stuck

In today’s guest post coach and mentor Lottie Moore shares some of her practical experience and knowledge:

5 Ways To Get Your Clients To Breakthrough When They’re Well and Truly Stuck

By Lottie Moore

"5 Ways To Get Your Clients To Breakthrough When They’re Well and Truly Stuck" by Lottie Moore

At some point in our coaching careers we all come across the clients who are ‘stuck’, who, despite our best efforts, are unable to move forwards with their plans, dreams, or ambitions.

As coaches this can be a frustrating process.  As an outside pair of eyes, we can often see, or at least guess at, what the issue is that is holding the client back.  Quite often it can feel that there is an elephant in the room with us, glaringly obvious, and yet unmentioned by our client despite all our best lines of questioning and cajoling.

Sometimes even when the client recognises what it is that is holding them back from achieving their goals, they are unable to break out of the old, destructive patterns of behaviour.  You may sit in sessions with them where it seems likely that they are going to breakthrough what is holding them back, only to see them in a fortnights time to realise nothing has changed.

So how do we help these clients?  How can we facilitate them moving forward when they appear to be well and truly stuck?  Here are my top 5 tips to creating breakthrough when it’s needed most

1. Drop the F-bomb – sometimes your client may just require some serious reinforcement to realise how important this issue is. A carefully placed f@@k, or equivalent bad language, can bring it home with a bang how pivotal you think this issue is.

2. Use Physical Metaphors – creating great confidence and self-belief in one area can hugely assist your client to live that out in other areas of their lives. Activities like glass walking, or arrow breaking with the throat can have a deeply impactful effect on all areas of life, and learning the skills to use these activities in your daily work is easier than you think.

3. Look Back To Move Forward – you don’t need to be an expert in timeline therapy to assist you client to look back on their past experiences to find out where the initial cause of the limiting belief sits. By uncovering what lies at the root of the problem, they can then start to take steps to move away from past learnings that are holding them back.

4. Create Anchors – although physical metaphors are great for this, they are not the only way to enable your client to use this powerful NLP technique. Get them to think back on a time were they were hugely successful and happy, then assist them to create a physical anchor such as a simple hand movement.  When they are struggling with what is holding them back, they can then use this anchor to root them in success and positivity.

5. Be Kind – Life can always seem easier to an external set of eyes, but it’s important to remember that we all have our own shiz to deal with. Don’t let yourself get frustrated or disappointed if it’s taking your client longer than you would have hoped to reach that moment of breakthrough.  Sometimes all anyone needs is patience, understanding, and encouragement, so keep being that positive influence in your client’s life, and reminding them of what they are capable of when they set their minds to it.

Clients that take a long time to reach a point of breakthrough can rock our confidence in our coaching ability, but also can be hugely rewarding when they finally get there.  I hope these 5 tips will be of use to you next time a client that is well and truly stuck comes through your door.

About Lottie Moore

Lottie MooreLottie is a multi-award winning coach and mentor who lives life outside of the comfort zone.  Best known for her firewalking, and physical metaphors training, Lottie is passionate about creating change for the individuals and groups that she works, encouraging them to look beyond their limitations and shine

 

Lottie loves to connect and can be found at: breakthrough to personal power

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The most popular quote from our twitter account from week 3 of 2016: 1

 in popular twitter quotes

Most RT'd quotes last week on @thecoachingblog

Each week I share the most RT’d quote(s) from the blogs twitter account over the previous week. Last week the quote with the most RT’s was:

M “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

(Winston Churchill)

Tweeted on 18th January

There was a 2-way tie for the quote with the next highest amount of RT’s between:

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

(Winston Churchill)

Tweeted on 19th January

and

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

(George Bernard Shaw)

Tweeted on 24th January

thank you

Many thanks to everyone who shared the quotes above and the other quotes from last week. I know that there are various aspects that can influence if a quote attracts your attention – if you saw the tweet, personal style, if it speaks to something happening in your life at that moment etc.

Which quote do you prefer?

(For those of you as geeky as I am and wondering what tool I’m using to measure individual RT’s this week I’ve been playing with www.twitonomy.com)

Is Holding Three Months’ Worth of Overheads enough to Mitigate the Small Business from Risk?

 in Guest Post  tagged business / cash flow / finance / financial coaching / forecast / Hayley Chiba / measure / money / overheads / risk management / sales projection

Finance is one aspect of running a coaching business. In today’s guest post finance expert Hayley Chiba shares some of her expertise of working with small business and entrepreneurs.

Is Holding Three Months’ Worth of Overheads enough to Mitigate the Small Business from Risk?

By Hayley Chiba

"Is Holding Three Months’ Worth of Overheads enough to Mitigate the Small Business from Risk?" by Hayley Chiba

Business coaches and consultants often advise a small business, to always aim to hold 3 months’ worth of their overhead costs. This is to mitigate the risk of some down turn in the business.

In fact, this could apply to any unforeseen event occurring, where this meant the business were unable to generate sufficient sales to cover their fixed costs.

As a business coach, overall this is a good metric to have, but I was recently asked this question by a business owner. He still didn’t feel assured and satisfied that he had risk covered. If a business coach is to provide a valuable metric to his business owner client maybe a fuller dialogue is needed. As we know, better discussions with our clients can often lead to longevity and trust from your clients, as it gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your deeper value to your clients.

The problem is, that using an arbitrary figure like this, does not really relate directly to the specific level of risk that the business is facing.

Using this measure is fine if it relates to a business with low growth. Also, if it has a foreseeable pipeline of sales and a good insight into future potential environmental factors which may affect the business.

Just concentrating on holding a reserve only buys time, actually 3 months in this case.  You need to consider, if there were an unforeseen event, how would that impact on the business financially?  An unforeseen event may be the loss of a major customer, change in law or perhaps the loss of a key employee. Having considered this, how long would the business need, to put in place an alternative plan? Furthermore, how long would it take for “business as usual” to resume?  This then leads us to think that we may need a much longer period of time, perhaps more like 6 months. As well as thinking about the amount of time the business needs to recover, we also want to consider if the business owner is actually looking to change something about the business.

Specifically, if they are thinking about undertaking a significant investment to grow the business. In this case the potential risk will rise as the return from the investment into growth activity is still to be proven.  Spending out on more investment for growth will, in the short term, lower the profit margins and available cash. This can feel daunting especially when the business owner realises their current healthy profit margin is going to be eroded and in fact with it, any cash reserves they have built up.

So, I always recommend that in this case, further projections should be made. This will give the business owner the peace of mind that eventually, he is going to see the results he is anticipating. More importantly though, having some sort of forecast of what he expects to happen and measuring against this, every month, will flag quickly to him, where the plans are not playing out the way he was expecting. This will give him sufficient time to look at this, think of the actions he needs to take and make the necessary adjustments to his action plans to try to bring his results back on track.

The key report required to help give visibility on whether the new investment is viable is the Cash Flow Forecast.

I always suggest starting with the current situation and financial shape. Hence at this point it is crucial you understand your current position in terms of some key components.

  1. What is the current Sales Projection based on hard data? We can all dream, but sales forecasts should be based on some credible extrapolation of the past or last year’s actual data achieved.
  2. What are the current profit margins and specifically what is the gross profit margin? Gross profit margin being sales less direct costs.
  3. What are the overheads and what is the average run rate for the overheads? Overheads will naturally fluctuate due to the timing of supplier invoices. Marketing, administration, repairs and travel are good examples of this type of spend. They reflect areas where the timing of spend is discretionary and not fixed as a monthly fee. Breaking out spend where there is some flexibility on when to spend, gives a view of what overheads are absolutely fixed and have to be covered month on month.

So, armed with these 3 areas of information, you should be fine now to create a time based cash flow forecast. Not you of course, the bookkeeper or the business owner himself!

This forecast should be drawn up as a monthly forecast, (or even weekly depending on the nature of the investment spend). Plot it forward until the point when you expect the business to be seeing the benefit from the investment. This is often longer than you realise. The cash flow forecast should show the benefits materialising, which take the business to the next level. Ensure that the forecast covers this full time span. Many business owners stop short of this point. They only project across the time of when the spend is actually taking place. You need to see what happens to the business shape post the spend. You want to see if and when the business shape returns or even improves versus its original shape. This will often result in a forecast for at least 1 to 2 years out.

Having created the forecast, the most crucial action is to measure against this monthly. Failure to do this, may mean that the forecast is not delivered. You will need a flag to alert where and when the business   moves off-track. Ensure that there is a consistent and methodical tracking of the key components of this cash flow forecast.

Planning and then measuring, will help to confirm if the growth investment decision was the right decision. Where it is proving not to be, this early warning flag should give sufficient time to plan how to mitigate these costs by stopping the things that are not working and reinvesting in other areas.

Protecting the business pot of cash is as important as building that pot of cash, whether it relates to 3, 6 or 12 months’ worth of overheads. If you can advise him fully by including these additional necessary steps where appropriate, you will ensure that the business owners hard earned cash is not eroded.

That’s something I’m sure he will certainly thank you for!

About Hayley Chiba

Hayley Chiba

 

Hayley Chiba is a qualified Financial Controller working with small businesses. She runs her own business, Better Numbers Limited, which provides one to one Financial consulting to £1m + growing businesses in the Bristol, UK area.

She also provides Financial coaching to Entrepreneurs, Home Business Owners and Start-ups via her Ecourses. She dedicated to helping small businesses grow through increasing their personal and business financial awareness.

 

 

Connect with Hayley via:

Website: www.betternumbers.co.uk

Faceboook: www.facebook.com/Betternumbers/

Twitter: @betternumbers1

Linkedin; uk.linkedin.com/in/hayleychiba