No saboteurs under the tree for me please!

In working with my coach recently I had an “ah ha” moment about gremlins. Usually when I have such a moment, I would be referring to my own gremlins, or saboteurs, whose voices sound in my head telling me things like “I should be better at this” or “I should avoid trying this because…”.  But this time, it wasn’t my own saboteur that I became aware of.  It was the saboteur of my family member, inflicted upon me in the form of compassion and concern! This happened a few months back, when I was explaining to this family member my desire to write a letter of apology to a friend and she was quick to say “I wouldn’t do that. You don’t know what response you are going to get, you either are going to be hurt by the response or not be able to trust the integrity of it." This was a response that came from a place of great love and concern for me on the part of my family member, and I greatly appreciate that love and concern, so I trusted that advice and followed it. But I realize now that this response also came from my loved one’s saboteur! After so much effort at listening to my authentic voice and being courageous to weed out the voice of the saboteur within me, how amazing that I hadn’t even considered the voice of the saboteur in loved ones that take on an even trickier mask; shrouded in love and concern!

Once I realized that my loved one’s concern was coming from her saboteur, I was able to look at the situation courageously again and reconsider writing that letter, which is something that I know deep down I really need to do.  It amazes me though that for three months I had pushed that idea to the back of my mind because of the way I trust the love and concern that this person has for me. I knew that she would never steer me in the wrong direction, intentionally. I trust her. The big ah-ha here is that it is one thing to trust people who love us, but quite a different thing to trust their saboteurs!

So, how do we know when we are getting good advice compared to when we are being victimized by someone else’s saboteur without even them knowing it? I think the answer to this must remain consistent with how we listen to our own voices, and that is to really check in with the message and feel our reaction to it. Does it draw us closer to what we are striving for, even if it is scary, or is it keeping us stagnant or even pushing us back from what we really want?

I think one of the greatest gifts available to us in this situation is that when we recognize the voice of a saboteur coming from a loved one disguised as concern, we can choose to move toward what we know is right for us despite it. When we do so, and act in resonance, we will experience authentic learning and grow from the experience regardless of the outcome. Then, when we do not melt or shrink into nothingness for taking this risk, we not only experience authenticity for ourselves but we also give a gift to our loved one. They get to see that their saboteur doesn’t need to work so hard, that the human spirit is a lot more durable than we give it credit for being, and that there is value even in disappointment  as long as we are willing to accept it openly. By this occurring, even without our ever talking about it, space expands within us AND  between us , opening us to the possibility of daring to be more authentic with one another and with the world around us as well. The more we show courage to live our authentic life and let our vulnerabilities be seen, the more we create a safe space for our loved ones and those around us to do the same.

This year instead of looking for that perfect gift to put in a box to give our loved ones, what if we wrapped up the gremlins that we share with one another and ship them all off to another land far, far, away…like the Island of Misfits…where they will stay forever? What if the gift we gave to one another this year was to no longer let our own saboteurs get in the way of each other’s courageous living? 

For Christmas this year, I am personally going to give each of my loved ones a big beautiful bow that has space running through it, to show my commitment to being conscious of needing to silence my own saboteurs when they are confiding in me and replace them with space to hold their courage and creativity. What gift do you have to offer to those you love?

Whichever festival of light you celebrate with your loved ones, may your authenticity shine on those around you this holiday season.

Regina Hellinger

Regina Hellinger is a certification student in the final stages of certification with CTI, currently working as a coach with aspiring coaches, educators, and gifted individuals, as well as being a teacher of the gifted in Orange County, FL.  You can reach Regina at www.ReginaHellinger.com, or by Twitter @ReginaHellinger.

Top ten reasons to get your coaching clients to journal with you

This post originally appeared on the ICA Blog.

It’s a simple fact. Asking your clients to journal and share their journal with you will completely transform your coaching business. Here’s why:

1. You Gain Access to Critical Information: Reading their journal gives you CRITICAL insight to their values, beliefs, and behaviors. This information is crucial for effective coaching and for helping your clients get past the barriers that stand in the way of their success. When you can read their stories, you can also clearly see how to help them. This source of information is vital for deep poignant coaching that has a long term impact.

2. Calls are RICH – no wasted time: Reading their journal in between calls keeps you up to date with what’s happening in their lives on an on-going basis. What that means is that when you are meeting on the phone or in person, there is no time being spent on just catching up. You are already caught up and can jump right into moving forward, delivering high value on each and every call.

3. Continuous Self-Reflection: Asking them to journal daily encourages them to self-reflect regularly. The effect is an increase in attention to the role they play in their own lives and a greater sense of ownership and responsibility for their relationships and their personal circumstances. They feel a greater sense of empowerment with every passing week.

4. No Loss of Momentum in Between Calls:  When you ask your clients to journal, you maintain contact, communication, and a consistent focus on personal development, especially in between calls. This means that there is no sliding backwards, but rather always forward movement. Some say the magic or the growth happens in between calls.  Journaling allows you to share that growth with your client. 

5. Increased trust and rapport in a shorter period of time: Journaling in a safe and secure on-line environment enables clients to share their fears, their insecurities, and even their past experiences with greater ease. Trust is built more rapidly, enabling you to move more quickly with your clients.

6. Faster results: Giving your clients the forum to express themselves in a journal means that you are getting more done with your clients in a shorter period of time. You are covering greater ground and getting to the meat of your coaching with greater speed.

7. Documentation of progress: When clients journal every day for the duration of their coaching period, they are literally documenting their progress and tracking their change over time. They can look back to the beginning of their journey and see how far they have travelled with you.

8. Proof of YOUR impact and influence:  As they are documenting their experience in their journal, they are also creating evidence of their evolution. This is extraordinarily powerful as a testimony of your impact on their success. Your comments are available for their review, and the value of your time together is tangible.

9. Safety Deposit Box for their Story: Their journal lives long after their coaching with you has concluded. This creates a long term bond with you that draws them back over and over again. They have a need to return to the story they created, and you are the holder of that story.

10. Coaching Groups means journaling together: When you coach a group of people, you can ask all the participants to share their journals with one another and spend some time reading and responding to each other’s journals. This adds infinite value to the coaching experience and establishes an online journaling community that stays together long after coaching is complete.

Kim Ades, MBA

Kim Ades, MBA, is president and founder of Frame of Mind Coaching and JournalEngine™ Software. She is one of North America’s foremost experts on performance through thought management. She works exclusively with highly driven, accomplished professionals in their field and uses the unique Frame of Mind Coaching process to ignite significant change and life transformation. Clients say that an hour with Kim has lifelong impact. She is internationally renowned for her innovation and passion in the coaching industry. With clients from Malaysia, to South Africa, Canada, and the US, Kim and her team of coaches have transformed the process of coaching and training through the creation of JournalEngine™ Software. Author, speaker, entrepreneur, coach, and mother of 5, Kim has developed a thriving coaching business and implemented a simple idea into an industry leading company that now coaches leaders in their field worldwide. 

Four tips to “auto-coaching”

This post first appeared here.

Very often, managers and individuals will ask to be coached to become better at:
- Planning
- Delegating
- Resolving conflicts, and communicating with others (ex : providing useful feedback)
- Balancing personal and professional lives
- Transitioning to a new job
- …

Profound change with the above will happen in coaching sessions through new behavioral skills being developed as a result of specific actions being put in place, aligned with the person’s values and vision.

That being said, I have found that there are few things managers (as well as individuals) can do to help themselves. You can call it “auto-coaching” !

When you are “struggling” with a task or project, or with “someone” (could be in communicating with a colleague , a team member or another team), I found those 4 tips below to be extremely helpful. And they will certainly make your life easier in a number of situations. 4 tips in 4 questions you can ask yourself:

1. Why am I triggered ?
This question will bring you back to yourself, and as discussed in here, will bring awareness to your very own needs that are not fulfilled in the situation. Developing that awareness, I have found, will bring clarity with yourself, starts to release inner tension (anger, guilt, despair, resentment, ..) and put you in a much better state to ask yourself the next three questions.

2. What do I really want ?
In any difficult situation, I would like to suggest it all comes down to that simple, and yet difficult, question. Difficult, because if you think about it for a minute, we barely ask ourselves that question. What is my intention ? What do I want out of that situation ? Therefore, going back to our true intention will further bring clarity.

3. Why is it important for me to invest time and energy in what I do in this situation ?
Imagine we are all given at the beginning of each day a given amount of energy to spend during the day. And everything we do (words, actions, thoughts, …)  taps into that reservoir. Where would you rather use that energy ? In blaming others or further fueling a conflict ? Or instead, be true to your values, and think about why the things you do indeed matter to you ?

4. What do I do now which is in my power to positively change or influence the situation ?
Once you have asked yourself the 3 questions above, which will bring clarity within you about the situation, the last thing you need to ask yourself is “What do I do about it ?”. Sounds easy, right ? But how often do we get stuck here ? It is about personal accountability and taking responsibility, and positively change any situations. It could be having the courage to talk openly to someone, looking at the situation differently, or admitting our mistakes.

Those 4 questions and tips are not always easy to answer and follow, and will take courage to face. But as you “auto-coach” yourself more and more, you will develop new habits.

And you will find that it is actually liberating!

By Eric Marin

Busting talent assessment myths - testing the test

The below post originally appeared on the pan blog:

The talent assessment industry has exploded over the last 10 years as paper and pencil tests have migrated online. With hundreds of test vendors and thousands of tests at your fingertips, selecting the right assessment tools for achieving the best possible results for your organization is no small feat. Let’s take a moment to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the testing tools available.

MYTH: XYZ Test Works for Everything

Once you’ve determined what the goals of your assessment program are, it’s no easy task unearthing which testing tools are right for the job. Although many assessment tools can be very effectively leveraged across a number of applications, not every test works for every purpose. There are 100’s of respected test publishers who have developed 1000’s of scientifically sound instruments, giving you lots of options to find the exact tools suited for your program’s unique goals. From skills tests to personality tests, cognitive tests, job-specific tools and more, the options are limitless when it comes to selecting a tool that addresses exactly what you’re looking to accomplish.

Since pan is an assessment marketplace working with a diverse cross-section of the most respected test publishers on the market today, we have vast exposure to how the most popular testing tools are being leveraged. This unique setup equips us with the ability to provide neutral advice about which assessment tools would suit your unique program best. In many cases, we find that it’s a complementary mix of tests from different sources that facilitates the most impactful assessment programs. Another great source for unbiased advice on choosing the right assessments is Charles Handler’s Rocket-Hire Buyer’s Guide to Screening and Assessment Systems.

MYTH: Online Assessment Options are too Restrictive and Narrow
This myth might have you scratching your head after just reading about the wealth of assessment tools available. When we encounter this feedback, it typically comes from organizations that are talking with or utilizing a particular assessment publisher. Working with a single assessment vendor can present limitations, particularly if you’d like to consider using a battery of tests to accomplish your assessment program goals. Some questions to ask yourself when selecting an assessment vendor:

1.Does this vendor offer the best of everything I need to accomplish my assessment goals, or would it be beneficial to cherry pick assessment tools from multiple sources?
2.Does my organization have any custom, proprietary tests, forms or surveys we’d like to incorporate in an assessment program?
3.What level of administration is involved, and how are results reported?
4.Will these assessment results integrate with my ATS or other technology systems?

If these questions raise any red flags for you, the team at pan is happy to provide friendly advice on how to come up with a custom solution that addresses your needs in each of these key areas.

MYTH: Developing a Custom Assessment is More Effective Than Using an Off-the-shelf Tool
To get to the bottom of this myth, it’s important to have a deep understanding of your assessment program’s distinct purposes and goals. pan has found that for the vast majority of hiring and development initiatives, there are a wide range of off-the-shelf assessment tools that can be deployed immediately and leveraged very successfully. There’s no doubt that custom assessments have value in unique or highly proprietary scenarios, but take a lot of time and money to develop, validate and refine.

Before pursuing the development of such a tool, consult with an unbiased talent measurement expert source such as pan. Our technology platform hosts 1000’s of custom assessments for world-class public, private and government organizations, and we are happy to offer our insights on when and how to utilize such tests either solely or in conjunction with off-the-shelf tools.

Understanding empathy as a mirror neuron tool in a coach kit

There are numerous examples in our day to day life where we relate to other people’s experiences almost as if they were our own.  A person watching a football game can feel the rush and excitement almost to the same extent as the players themselves. While watching suspense movies, we find ourselves totally immersed in the experience of the movie characters. How one is able to tune into other people’s experiences, emotions and intentions so easily and instinctively?

This phenomenon of being able to mentally experience the other person’s experience brings a lot of value to the field of Coaching. Most coaches are skilled, aware and knowledgeable. They do their best to help and support their clients. Still, some have this mysterious ‘human’ factor that makes them more successful with their clients. Sometimes, when we can ‘relate’ to the other person’s experience, conversation seems to flow effortlessly while at other times, it may quickly lose direction and it becomes a struggle to keep it going. While there can be a number of reasons for it, ‘empathy’ is certainly one extremely important attribute of a good coach. An empathetic person will definitely make a great coach. A coach who instinctively understands what a client is going through is more likely to win client’s trust.  Why is it sometimes easier to establish rapport with some people while it seems hard with some others? The connection or the rapport could simply be the empathy factor.

In an interesting study published in Family medicine 2009 by the researchers at the University of Wisconsin, the effect that practitioner empathy had on the severity and duration of cold in their patients was studied. The result showed that the participants whose physicians showed higher levels of empathy had less severe and shorter cold than the participants who scored their physicians lower on empathy. This amazing study proves very well that empathy can have healing effect.  An empathetic coaching relationship can also bring about similar powerful positive transformation in the client.

The important question is whether we are born with it or can we develop it?

A relatively recent discovery in the field of Neurosciences explains quite a bit. There are specialized cells called ‘Mirror Neurons’ which respond at the same level whether the action is performed by self or another person in front. Mirror Neurons help us perceive not only the other person’s emotions but intention behind his action as well. Another fascinating research finding is that mirror neurons ‘feel’ others, rather than thinking/analyzing them. Before this finding, it was generally believed that our brains use logical thought processes to interpret and predict other people’s actions. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have found compelling evidence that people who are more empathetic possess a particular variation of the oxytocin receptor gene. So, Empathy is a genetically determined trait. In this study, the most empathetic were able to get an accurate read on others' emotions. This ability can bestow important advantage in terms of handling people and situations. In contrast, members of the other groups were found to be less capable of putting themselves in the shoes of others and more likely to get stressed out in difficult situations. Those who do not consider themselves as empathetic should not despair as the researchers suggest that it is still possible to be caring and empathetic by sincerely trying harder. Another beautiful promise of recent times is the concept of ‘Neuroplasticity’. Neuroplasticity is the capacity of the brain to change itself by constantly practicing the desired behavior. Therefore, it is definitely possible to train our brain to be more empathetic!

Himani Tyagi is a youth and career coach, currently pursuing her professional coach certification from International Coach Academy. She holds a PhD in Molecular Biology and has a lot of experience in research and teaching. She is passionate about Neurosciences and its implications in improving everyday life. She is seeking to integrate Neurosciences into her coaching approach to help people better their lives. She is a mom to two beautiful boys. Himani loves to read and spend time with her family.