Articles and Insights
How to Increase your Self Confidence
Are there times when you struggle with a lack of confidence? Does imposter syndrome kick in? Do you experience a loud inner critic? Does this stop you from performing at your best at work? For many of us this is true. Most people experience moments of low self...
6 Ways of Finding your Purpose
A lot if written about living a purposeful life and career. Yet it can be hard sometimes to know how to discover your purpose. What do I mean by purpose? It is knowing ‘why’ we are doing something. It may be that what I am doing aligns with my values or what...
How to Develop a Growth Mindset
Think back to the last time you got a new phone, or there was a software update on something you use daily. I imagine that if you are like me you had some initial resistance to learning how to use it. You didn’t give up! You tried a few things, some worked, others...
Leader as Coach in a Virtual World
Leader as Coach - How do I do this virtually? One area that my coaching clients still struggle with is how to be an effective coach to their employees in this new world. Many have had enough of working remotely and they miss the informal coaching conversations, along...
How to improve your listening skills
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou All good conversations - coaching or otherwise - require that we pay really good attention to the other person. We all know when...
Creating Time to Think – Paying Attention to Help Others
Thinking for yourself is the thing on which everything else depends. Nancy Kline, Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind (1999) How wonderful is it when someone pays attention to you with fascination, curiosity and intrigue? What happens when someone gives...
Are you having fun?
Has work become a bit more of a drag for you recently? Are you feeling a loss of purpose and engagement? I’ve been hearing about this a lot from people recently - both coaching clients and in groups. You will be familiar with the context. Many of us are working from...
Work, Self Care and Guilt
I love to swim. I feel incredibly lucky to live somewhere I can swim regularly.
This morning I woke up late and hesitated. Did I have time to swim? My better self sent me down to the pool, but after 2 lengths the guilt set it. How come I was swimming? I should be working! Not only am I in the pool but there might be urgent emails piling up after my new rule of no looking at emails when I am not at my desk. Oh – and did I say my diary says I am officially off today…..? So what is this guilt anyway?
Wow – when I catch myself thinking this I am quite shocked. To put things in context, I have recently acknowledged the I am burnt out. It has been brewing for a long time, and those close to me are not surprised. I’ve had most of the symptoms including, unfortunately, mild depression. Something I have never experienced. It has been quite shocking.
So here I am feeling guilty about looking after myself and intrigued about this guilt. I know that only by recovering am I of any use to anyone.
I am guessing some of you are also experiencing guilt when you take time to look after yourself. When we do things which will restore our wellbeing, we are often pulled away in our minds to what else we ‘should’ be doing. Our working lives have become so pressured with the expectation to be ‘on’ all the time. Covid-19 has made this worse for many people I know. Needing to be ‘on’ all the time for work to make up for the time spent looking after the kids or talking to family and so on.
We feel guilty that we might not be seen to be pulling our weight in our teams – I know I do. We feel guilt for not supporting our boss in every way possible – after all they are also in this state. We feel guilty for not spending enough time with family, friends, children.
Guilt, guilt, guilt.
This morning I happy to say I caught myself and slowly I managed to stop the noise. Instead of hearing the guilt I kept swimming and let it float off into the distance. Oh that felt good. 30 minutes of time to get oxygen into my system, to feel the water on my skin. 30 minutes to calm and come back to myself.
Now, I am at my desk writing this. I still haven’t looked at my emails. Who knows what I should be dealing with. Yet…. I know that writing feeds my soul as much as swimming so instead I am sharing this with you.
As coaches and leaders it is important for us to be listening out for this guilt in others. As a coach, I am listening to hear how I can support my clients to better look after themselves. As leaders, we can have explicit conversations with our teams about their own wellbeing. We can have rules about email access, working hours and model this by taking time to look after ourselves.
I remember a previous CEO of global Pharma company who went for a run mid morning from the office. After his run, he stood in the coffee queue in the main office in his sweaty running gear. Everyone saw him. He was making a clear statement that taking time for yourself is good. ‘If I can do it, so can you.’
Do you recognise this guilt? I’d love to hear what you do to let it go. How do you let it float off into the distance? What do you do to look after yourself? How do you look after others?
I am wishing you and myself a guilt free weekend.
Career Reflections
It’s time to reflect and plan. Over past few months I have been very overwhelmed. 2020 was going to be a busy year before Covid-19 - and then it arrived with all it’s challenges and opportunities. I am an ambitious and career minded person - yet something about this...
Are you listening?
Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of the other person. Thich Nhat Hanh Yesterday I ran a ‘Social Connection Call’ for leaders in a corporate organisation. During these calls participants take time in small groups to talk...
A little (self) kindness goes a long way
Are you compassionate at work? To yourself first and others? Over the past weeks the word compassion had popped up - in my reading, in conversations with others and with clients in my coaching practice. I have been writing about empathy recently - but what is the...
Finding our Way in Work – Lockdown Questions
My working life has been about helping others to find their way at work - through coaching, facilitation, leadership development. The truth is that I too am constantly trying to find my own way in my work. I notice, in lockdown, I am locked down with work. Despite...
Empathy Matters
It has not been long since we first heard of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and it has now spread to different parts of the world. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared it as a global emergency and countries are putting measures in place to manage...
My lightbulb moment
When I left London and moved to Singapore in 2015 to set up an APAC business, I was faced with a new challenge. In the UK and Europe most of my facilitation and training was face to face and classroom based. My APAC clients were requesting virtual bite-sized learning...
Apart we are struggling – Together we can thrive
Relating to each other is hard wired into us as humans. We are programmed to relate, to live and work in groups, to be part of teams and families. In organisations we achieve outcomes through relationships with others and our sense of belonging and fun in a team helps...
To Create a Coaching Culture at Work – Start with Ask
In a recent conversation with a client, he asked - “how do you build a coaching culture and can we do it quickly?” The answer to these questions is simple at heart, and with focused attention I believe it is possible to create a coaching culture in any organisation....
But I Like Change, Don’t I?
A few years ago I got the job of my dreams, a role with a seat on the Executive Committee of a large organisation. I can remember how happy I was when I heard I had been successful. Then, for the next 6 months, it was all down hill emotionally. One day I went into the...
Think, then act. Don’t react and regret.
When someone at work irritates you, are you able to resist reacting to them? A coaching client described her challenge in interacting with colleagues. When they asked questions which she thought were irrelevant, she lost her cool, over-reacted, and then regretted it....
In Praise of Curiosity
Inclusive leaders are curious leaders. I recently met a leader who told me she has been managing a team of people for the past 6 years in a high turnover market – and no one has left. When I asked her why they stayed, she talked about curiosity. She described how she...
How to Lead a Purpose-Driven Work Life
Do you have a strong connection between your purpose and your daily work? Recently I became curious about my own connection to purpose in my work and the impact this had on my energy levels, my focus and my general mood. It should be easy for me. I run my own company,...
Empathy matters – in coaching and in leadership
The ability to sit with another individual is core to coaching. Often people are coming to coaching with challenges or concerns. They may be seeking help to move on from things that have happened in their career, or help to deal with broken workplace relationships....
Are You Politically Savvy?
When you think of organisational politics, what comes to mind? When I ask this question in workshops I hear words like 'backstabbing', 'empire building' and 'game playing'. I also hear 'influencing' and 'getting things done'. However the negative images always...
Invisible Threads are the Strongest Ties
We need human interaction even more than air, say psychologists. In his book "Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect", UCLA professor Matthew Lieberman says that "being socially connected is our brain's lifelong passion". His neuroscience research shows that...
Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change
I have been working in women’s career development for over 25 years. I ran my first women career group back in 1993. Working with women as a coach and in groups has been and is one of the most rewarding parts of my career. I plan to continue doing this work for as...
Political Savvy and Authenticity
It’s quite rare to find people, men and women, who feel thrilled at the opportunity of engaging in office politics. From my experience, the most common way in which people deal with office politics is denial – bury your head in the sand and hope it would go away. Even...
On Coaching and Diagnosing
For a few months now our team has been running a programme about one-to-ones and appraisals at a London hospital. The programme provides managers, both clinical and non-clinical, with coaching skills and a framework for having one-to-one meetings with their staff. The...
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