Be courageous: change your story

You can picture it.

You're sitting at a family gathering, maybe dinner or a barbeque...

And he starts telling that same old story.

You know, the one you've heard a million times and know every single word.

There's one in every family, it's that person who tells the same old stories. It probably drives you crazy. You probably think twice about inviting him. But you do and you listen to the stories again and again.

Well, I started asking myself. Why is he stuck in his story? How is it serving him? And if it's a terrible story, why does he keep telling it?

People do get stuck in their stories, but they are always serving some purpose. And it's really worth figuring out what that is.

Sometimes we get stuck in a story because it reminds us of something bad that happened. Why would we do that? So that it serves to fuel our fear about doing what we really want. When we can recall a bad consequence for taking action, then it justifies us in not taking action.

But don't worry. Here's the good news.

You can ALWAYS change your story. No, it doesn't mean rewriting history or somehow forgetting the negative stuff.

What it means is focusing on what works, how we have been courageous and how we can feel empowered, even after experiencing something negative.

It's not the bad stuff that happens that counts, it's what we've done with it, how we have responded, what happened next.

Lisa Bloom, PCC

These are the stories we need to tell. These are the stories that change our reality. What's your powerful story?

Lisa Bloom, PCC is founder of Story Coach Inc. and the Certified Story Coach Program.  Download her ebook ‘Using Stories to Get Great Clients’ at http://www.story-coach.com.

Stand out!

Try doing something really good, and then keep talking about it, a famous Public Relations specialist once said. Concept which is frequently applied in business, where most leaders are interested in collaborating with famous companies and successful people.

I have always enjoyed coaching entrepreneurs; they have the ambition and energy to establish new records. The term entrepreneur is defined as a person who is willing to build an enterprise, a person with a dynamic character and a leadership style that involves taking risks or new opportunities for development.

Lately, I have been working with numerous entrepreneurs, from different cities and I couldn’t help but notice that most of them are highly influenced by the financial approaches and keep investing a lot of energy on controlling the cash-flow, their employees or how to make more money…It is well known that people working with finances keep telling entrepreneurs that they take risks beyond their financial power without rigorously calculating their possible win.

The two approaches however, are not contradictory (the entrepreneur approach and the financial one), but complementary – the dynamic activity of an entrepreneur is focused on developing his business by using a financial approach, centered on the return received from that certain business. But this can only lead to fights for power or influence.

In general, during moments of crisis, finance people stay in control by using a defensive strategy, while in times when opportunities occur, entrepreneurs rely on an offensive strategy – taking risks in order to get rich.

But leaders, who inspire people to excel, come more from the entrepreneurial field rather than the finance field.

This is how I met Steven, an entrepreneur who developed his business for more than 5 years on the market, but who could never tell whether that business was running good or bad. Actually, it was going nowhere. Since the economic crisis, Steven’s best adviser was his accountant – who always managed to scare the new marketing and sales strategies out of him. His greatest challenge was to stand out and show everyone that he can face the market’s requirements and can bring performance to it. In other words, to build an image, a reputation, even if this can hardly be achieved without expensive investments. Steven was more of a defensive entrepreneur. He thought there was nothing he can show in such times of crisis. But he thought that only if he could find that certain secret or type of service that could make him stand out of the crowd, then things would run much easier.

- How could he find that secret?

Marshall Goldsmith described, in one of his articles about entrepreneurship that one of the smallest construction businesses from the three bidders that were trying to buy a certain health project managed to win the auction by publishing the fact that it was the only one who employed the most people in the area. So without being famous, the business could build a reputation by using an unknown advantage that was given to the market. Steven began asking his clients why were they working for him and what kind of benefit did his business bring to them. It was then when he discovered his true business reputation and had the courage to stand out and bring new clients. He didn’t hesitate and started taking action!

Rodica Obancea, ACC

You may build success using the things you know very well and then start promoting them.

Rodica Obancea, ACC, is passionate about change, emergence, living systems. She works within business environment, with managers, teams for achieving ambitious results. For more information, visit www.successcoaching.ro.

Registration now open for ICF Global 2012!

If you are a coach looking for an opportunity to break out of your daily routine and recharge—you will not want to miss ICF Global 2012 – Connect. Learn. Inspire. this October 3-6 in London, UK.

ICF Global 2012 is the world’s largest coaching conference of 2012 and will allow you to connect with colleagues and ideas from all over the world; learn the latest in coaching techniques, trends, and theories to apply to your practice; and get inspired by a community of like-minded peers to continue your professional commitment on positive change.

And you will do all of this from one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities—London. The London experience in itself is sure to stretch both your imagination and professional growth this October.

ICF Global 2012 will maximize the personal and professional potential of coaching professionals who attend—the four day conference will include:

• Three world class mega catalysts (Brené Brown, David Whyte, Camila Batmanghelidjh);
• 35-plus educational sessions providing knowledge and tools to gain a competitive edge in the coaching profession. As sessions and speakers are finalized, they will be posted to Coachfederation.org/ICFGlobal2012; and
• Numerous occasions for networking.

Registration is now open! Register early to take advantage of the early bird discount.

Have you attended an ICF Annual International Conference in the past? Share your experience(s) with us below or on Facebook.

Holding onto motivation

Last month, we asked our Facebook fans, “how do you stay motivated?” Take a look below to see how our Facebook fans responded:

• “By always asking myself: ‘why is it important?’ again and again…” (Zoran Ilic)
• “Walking while others are driving…driving while others are flying…flying while others are cruising…and enjoying life. And your age is the second best motivator for you to do more good.” (Bongani Nkumane)
• “A clear vision…” (Camil El Khoury)
• “Yes, I agree with Camil, a clear vision and my personal life mission.” (Fernando Moyano)
• “Be curious…you’ll find motivation wherever you look.” (Sergio Melich)
• “By visiting ICF Conferences! That refills my batteries.” (Martin Jessen)
• “Reflecting on how far I’ve come.” (Brian Slater)
• “By being selfless but still looking inside to find beautiful discoveries each day!” (Jaya Bhateja)
• “Read!!!!!!” (Joe Cross)

What about you? What keeps you motivated? We’d love to know—leave a response below or join the conversation at Facebook.com/ICFHQ.

The Lone Coach

Individual, independent career coaches, executive coaches and life coaches make an interesting feature in the varied coaching landscape. They need to compete against much larger organisations, but they have the opportunity to provide complementary services. But there are pitfalls too.

It was a deliberate choice, eight years ago, to try it on my own and set up my own individual coaching service. First of all, I was given the opportunity and a carte blanche by a small consultancy in London. Secondly, I knew I could set up something that was different, filling in a need in the market that was left untouched so far.

As with many independent executive coaches, my clients chose me as much for what I am as for what I am not. I can work discretely, without my clients’ colleagues, bosses or even their PAs knowing what I am there for. Independent coaches can offer a service that is totally bespoke. My clients know that they work with me and only me; they can be assured their account will not be handed down to a more junior person after one or two meetings. When they work with me, clients know they will not have to study any set theory and they are not pushed in a fixed programme.

However fascinating and liberating, independent coaches have no immediate colleagues or bosses to fall back on. But by building your own support system, you end up with one that is very personal to you. You have to go the extra mile to achieve such a support system, but the extra effort leads to a very satisfied feeling about it. There are no safety nets and we don’t always work with fixed tried and tested programmes that have been rolled out many, many times. To me, that keeps me on my toes. Having to make it happen from scratch with every new client is exciting and keeps routine at bay. I provide my own reward system but my clients are very positive in their feedback and it goes out to me and to me alone. All the collateral jobs, like administration, PR, networking, account management and sales are mine. Being my own boss, I am doing them with pleasure because I have a very good sense of the direct effect of them. But I get all the praise and feedback.

Independent coaches have to be extremely flexible and adaptable and I feel we can offer a very high quality and standard. Never once have I felt small against the big boys: we offer mostly similar services, but also quite different ones. However, I do notice I have started to get more and more clients, individuals and companies, who say they are tired of working with those large organisations with all their overwhelming sales and networking abilities and their heavy handed fixed programmes.

Most of my clients are stuck in a rut, they are ambitious but are failing to materialise their ambitions and they don’t understand why. Their ambitions are personal, and so are their struggles with themselves and with the competition for the top job. Bringing me on board, away from the peering eyes of their competing peers causes the breakthrough that baffles everyone, not in the least themselves. Being slightly different than most of their colleagues they had side-tracked themselves. They are lone rangers.

But without us lone ranger coaches they might never have found the way up again.

Peter Sioen

Peter Sioen, Masters in Psychological and Pedagogical Sciences, is an career, executive and life coach in London, UK. He developed and runs the successful Client Centred Coaching service at Mvantage with clients being middle and senior managers and management teams in medium to very large organisations. His self-coaching manual is currently in preparation with one of the UK’s major publishers. Peter has a background in grassroots work with the socio-economically deprived and is an advocate for progressive and ethical entrepreneurship, self-development and commercial value of diversity. Learn more at www.mvantage.co.uk; http://petersioen.tumblr.com; and/or follow Peter on Twitter (@petersioen).