Coaching & Personal Development

Self Describing Skills – Key Strengths
By Peter Fisher

You need to be the best you can at describing your best qualities; particularly your key strengths. In my coaching practice I generally, at some point, ask my client: “What are you good at?” purely as a means to establish if they have already thought through this most important question.

Some have, but more often they haven’t and the answer usually involves lots of head-scratching, umms and arrhs and then quite often a monologue on what they’re NOT good at!!

Your answer to this should be your key strengths statement which we talked about in personal marketing on my website – let me remind you.

A “Key Strengths” statement is a summary of your most powerful skills and attributes.

The Key Strengths statement

• Highlights your most important skills and abilities
• Differentiates you from others
• Avoids generalisations
• Provides examples of your achievements
• Spoken naturally should take no more than two minutes

Of course at interview, the question may take many different forms: Read more »

Eight Steps to Taking Control of Every Situation in Your Life!

Taking control of every situation in your life can be achieved if you apply these 8 steps:

1. Define What Ails You.
2. Discover the Effects.
3. Seek the Source.
4. Identify Your Role.
5. State Your Desires.
6. Seek Options.
7. Learn Winning Techniques.
8. Master Your Relationships.

Like it or not, we are all gladiators. We go to sleep and wake up in a social arena from which there is no escape. Challenge upon challenge confronts us, walls restrain us, and a mob of spectators mocks, sneers, or cheers us. Each and every day brings new battles whether we want them or not and whether we’re up to them or not. Life forces us to face one skirmish after another – no choice in the matter.

What we can choose, though, is which kind of gladiator to be, victor or victim.

Being a victim in this social arena translates into having bad relationships.

Most people are victims – victims of their own perceptions.

That’s because people don’t develop and listen to their own unique, authentic self. Rather they allow their mental spectators – those little tyrants rattling around in their heads – to tell them second by second how to fight their battles, what they can and cannot do. These tyrants applaud and they hiss, they encourage and they discourage.

These mental spectators are the memories of the judgments of real-life people. For example, it’s the memory of your aunt saying, “I hope you marry someone rich, because you’re not going far on brains.” It’s the echo of your father growling, “You’ve got a back problem – no spine.”

And their influence over your relationships can’t be overestimated.

Millions of people accept the judgments of their mental spectators as the truth and, therefore, the mediocre results that come from believing those judgments.

With so many people living this way, the question becomes, is this the way I have to live? Fortunately, the answer is not unless you want to.

Read more »

Overcoming Work Addiction

Why are you so busy? Do you really have too much work? Is work so important to you that you’ll sacrifice just about anything in your life to get the job done? Even if it’s at the expense of your health and your relationships?

If you find these questions disturbing then see how you rate with these ones:

• Do you work more than 50 hours a week?
• Do you dream about work?
• Do you feel that in order to succeed you must work late most of the time?
• Are you a stranger in your own home?
• Do you constantly miss family and social events because you’re always working?
• Do you schedule and undertake more than you can get done in a 40-hour work week?
• Do you get bored when you’re not working?
• Is missing family and social events because of work unavoidable?
• When on holiday do you constantly check your phone messages and email?

Your Score Read more »

Personal Power

All of us would love to have personal power – the power to manifest our dreams, the power to remain calm and loving in the face of fear, the power to stay centered in ourselves in the face of attack.

Our society often confuses personal power – “power within” – with “power over,” which is about controlling others. There is a vast difference between personal power and control.

Personal power comes from an inner sense of security, from knowing who you are in your soul, from having defined your own intrinsic worth. It is the power that flows through you when you are connected to and feel your oneness with a spiritual source of guidance. It is the power that is the eventual result of doing deep inner emotional and spiritual work to heal the fears and false beliefs acquired in childhood.

Without this inner work to heal the beliefs that create our limitations, we are stuck in our egos, our wounded selves. The very basis of the ego is the desire for control, for power over others and outcomes.

Our ego is the self we created to attempt to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. We created our ego self in our attempt to protect ourselves from the losses we fear – loss of self, loss of other, loss of security, loss of face. As children, when we didn’t get the love we needed, we decided that our true Self must be unlovable. In our attempt to feel safe, we buried our true Self and created the false self – the ego, our wounded self. The ego self then went about learning how to feel safe through trying to control others and outcomes. The ego believes that having control over how people see us and feel about us, as well as over the outcome of things, will give us the safety we seek.

Read more »

Why a Coach is NOT a Consultant

Often while talking to people about my coaching practice I get asked what the difference is between a coach and a consultant. Many people believe they are either the same thing or very similar. This is untrue. There are many distinct differences between someone who coaches and someone who consults.

First lets start with a definition of both.

Coaching is an interactive relationship with an individual or team that inspires people to identify and accomplish their personal and professional goals faster then they could on their own. Coaches do this in a variety of ways, some of which include:

• Personalize teaching
• Provocative conversation and questioning
• Expanding awareness
• Designing environments
• Co-creating solutions

Consulting is about giving direct answers to specific questions or problems. A consultant provides professional advice and services that he or she develops.

So, what are some examples of differences between coaching and consulting? Read more »

Personal development is the pursuit of developing,  honing  and mastering the skills that help us become the best that we can, with all that we have. It is led by the individual, in contrast to employee development, which is initiated by an employing organization and is a capacity-building process aimed at enhancing self-awareness, self-confidence, and emotional competence. Personal development is a path that you take to better your family situation, career, spirituality, emotional health, and every other aspect of your life.

That’s why I believe that it is more important these days than at any other previous time in history. For some, personal development is also a matter of moving beyond past failures and misfortune to see what is possible in the future. However, the responsibility for personal development is ultimately your own. One way of looking at personal development is to see how well your inner world of thoughts and emotions matches up with your external expression and behaviour.

This site will help you make conscious decisions about your personal development and help you to courageously follow through.

In respect of your career, the concept of personal development is seen as important by most employers, with emphasis placed on continuous learning, increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Employees are often expected to show personal commitment to their continuous professional development (CPD), actively seeking out information, training and events that will keep their skills and knowledge up-to-date.

Equally, those who want to develop themselves in some way, but cannot identify a particular direction, will also benefit from this sort of modern integrated personal development. The reason for this is that in terms of learning, training and development, what’s good for people is good for the organizations in which they work. Use these tools and processes to ensure that essential work-related skills, techniques, and knowledge are trained, but remember after this to concentrate most of your ‘training’ efforts and resources on enabling and facilitating meaningful learning and personal development for people.

Follow this link for more details about Personal Development Tools

Gaining Coaching Skills

Introduction

The question for leaders in organizations today is how do we go about unleashing motivation, facilitating idea creation, promoting information flow and go beyond being Number One? How do we distance ourselves from our competitors? We cannot relax and take our success for granted. Our competitors are fierce and anxious to take back market share, produce the next blockbuster product, or invent some new technology to better serve customers.

One of our greatest competitive advantages is our people and culture. If we can continue to teach, inspire, and select the best, we can continue to be a premier organization in the world. We will continue to be first in bringing value added and quality enhancing products to people around the world. We will also continue to be the employer of choice. In order to achieve this goal, managers can subscribe to many leadership theories and concepts. Some of these theories provide only a general awareness of successful leadership techniques. Some are too complex and academic to be useful in the real world. Today’s manager needs tools that are specific, detailed, and practical that will enable managers to:

• help team members achieve their highest potential
• motivate team members to contribute their best effort
• maintain core values and standards of conduct
• manage performance and results
• promote innovation and help others think “outside the box”
• create a culture of continuous improvement
• build productive and valued relationships with customers
• tap into each employee’s reservoir of experience, talent, and creativity
• achieve maximum teamwork, inclusion, and communication across functions

Leaders today want practical and uncomplicated solutions that they can apply immediately. Read more »

Life Coaching for Success and Fulfillment

We live in a world of rapid change and uncertainty. Nothing is as it was even ten years ago. This means there is major pressure on all of us to change, everything is speeded up; we have to learn fast or risk being left behind. All areas of life are affected. Relationships lack commitment, health can no longer be taken for granted, financial security can disappear over night. Careers are insecure, global security is challenged and stress is at an all time high. We have more choices in life than ever before. So how do we find stability and manage choice in this fast changing world?

I believe each and every one of us is here for a Divine Purpose. The Creator has a divine plan for your life. A tiny drop of water may seem lost in the vastness of the ocean, but it still has an essential role. We can forget our Divine Purpose in the midst of the changes and challenges life presents, but we still have a divine role to play in the theatre of life. ‘The Creator has given you great potential what are you doing with yours?’ this is a question I often ask myself and my clients.

Life Coaching is a powerful means of organising your life and reaching your potential. A rapidly growing world requires new solutions. Life Coaching can help you re-connect with your Divine Purpose and assist you in making choices that bring stability, success and fulfilment to your life. Often we say we have priorities yet we don’t know what they are and therefore can’t stick to them.

During an initial consultation I learned that Paul’s priorities were spirituality and family. Using Life Coaching skills we quickly found out that although spiritual life and family were most important, more time and energy were in fact spent away from his family working in a stressful job that he no longer found satisfying. The stress of course came home with Paul, making him not a very nice person to be around. Paul often arrived home after his children were in bed and was so tired himself he simply ate his meal and fell asleep in the chair. I introduced Life Coaching strategies to help Paul turn his life around. It meant taking risks and asking Paul to trust in his Divine Purpose. We spend time working on a life plan and Paul developed the courage to leave his job and move forward with his life. Two weeks after leaving work, Paul landed a dream job closer to home. He recommitted to his family and spiritual life and is now much happier, more fulfilled and a better husband and father. Read more »

Have you considered what difference hiring a personal Career Development Coach could make to your career? Or how much faster you might get back to work after being downsized?

What a Career Coach Will Do For You:

1. Help you to clarify your vision and career goals.

2. Support you when you need to talk to someone who isn’t too involved to just objectively support you.

3. Show you how to develop momentum and pick up enough forward motion to make things happen.

4. Help you stay focused on the things that matter and either delegate or dump the unimportant things.

5. Enable you to take an objective look at exactly what you have been doing or NOT doing.

6. Identify effective behaviour patterns that you can use to further your goals.

7. Hold you accountable for your goals and not accept excuses for why things don’t get done.

8. Show you how to accomplish more by being more productive.

9. Help you discover your unique abilities and what the ideal career is that will motivate you to get out of bed in the morning.

10. Help you to identify your core values and show you how to identify work that corresponds with your values and provides you with the kind of career of which you can be proud.

Top performers in all activities rely on their coaches to keep them at peak performance. Why should you be any different? Your career development is just as important to you as winning the 100m is to Usain Bolt, isn’t it? Read more »