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).

Give these online resources a whirl!

The Internet is full of all sorts of resources and tools that offer marketing and public relations suggestions and solutions. Below you will find links to pages we find useful—perhaps you will find one or two beneficial to your practice!

• Mashable: This online news site is dedicated to covering digital culture, social media, and technology. Mashable is an excellent source for articles and infographics, including these recent reads: like Which social network should you use – and when? and How to Perfect Your Elevator Pitch.
• Social Mention: This website allows for real time social media search and analysis. Conduct real time searches to see where/when your brand (or any other search term you choose) is used in social media. You can also set alerts when your search terms are picked up across social media channels. This tool is an excellent means of tracking your brand on the web.
• Hootsuite: This online source is the leading social media dashboard used to manage and measure your social networks. If you post messages across multiple social media channels, this is an excellent source for scheduling posts in a single, easy-to-use location.

What online tools and resources do you find beneficial? Share them with us here or over on Facebook!

Wrestling with “I Don’t Know”

There you are – you’ve asked what you think is a great, insightful question. You sit back in your coaching chair, looking forward to hearing what your client has to say, and then comes the response: “I don’t know.”

I doubt there is a coach anywhere who hasn’t at some point been faced with a client’s blank stare and the words “I don’t know” in response to a challenging question.  (Of course, if you’re asking powerful questions, you probably should face a few “I don’t knows” once in a while!)

So, what do you say in that kind of situation? Often, the client is just temporarily stuck and unable to get past a self-judgment. Sometimes, it just takes a completely different question or simply phrasing the question in a slightly different way to help your client find a solution or to begin to work through the problem.

Here are a few possible answers and techniques to the “I don’t know” response that have proven helpful over the years.

• “Who does know?”  (Most of the time, the client will smile, laugh, and say “I guess I do.”)
• “How could you find out?”
• “Let me challenge that ... do you really not know?” (said with a smile)
• “Something is telling me you really do know – maybe the answer is just not bubbling up for you right now. How could you get at that answer that lies deep inside?”
• “Maybe you don’t know [that specific point], but what do you know that’s related to that situation?”
• “If you don’t know, who else do you know who might?”
• “If your [father, mother, boss, colleague, daughter, et al] were here, what would they say?”
• “If the wisest person you know were here with us right now, how would that person respond?”
• Repeat the question again.
• Remain silent.

Which ones of these have you tried? What were the outcomes? What other techniques or questions have you used with success? Please share below and help us build each other’s coaching tool chests!

Brenda Bence

Brenda Bence is an experienced senior executive coach, dynamic trainer and speaker, internationally-recognized branding expert, and author of four award-winning corporate and personal branding books.

With an MBA from Harvard Business School, Brenda spent the first 20 years of her career building mega brands for Fortune 100 companies, where she was a senior executive responsible for billion-dollar businesses across four continents and 50 countries.

In 2002, Brenda left the corporate world and founded BDA International. Now, with clients that span the globe and with offices in both the U.S. and Asia, Brenda travels the world speaking, training, and coaching individuals, entrepreneurs, and corporations to greater success through creative yet practical brand development.

Ready, set, organize!

April is Records and Information Management Month. Do your part by taking a look at your records—are they organized? Kept efficiently? Disposed of properly? Take some time this month to get a better grip on your records.

Organized records and efficient information management is key to increasing your overall productivity. It is also beneficial for better performance, encouraging free thinking and better brainstorming, and thus, better results.

Tips for better organization of your records:

• Include filing and record management as part of your weekly (or even daily) schedule. This will help you to avoid being lost in a mountain of files and will allow you to be better organized and know exactly where items are exactly when you need them.
• Peruse existing files and organize them. Take time to label or color code documents by type—are there files you use more than others? Files you only use for reference? Files you don’t use at all anymore? Organize them in a way that makes sense to you and dispose of those files you no longer need in an appropriate manner.
• Don’t forget about digital files! They are just as important to keep organized.

What are your tips for better record and information management organization?