One at a time, please.

One of my coaching client discussed with me that he want to find a way to make real progress.

He told me he want to go through a shift in his thought process to make things happen to produce results.

He made an interesting statement – “I need to learn to get stuff out of my head and into the real world. My head is merely serving as an idea warehouse without any delivery schedule to real world.”

Wow, amazing. I was impressed by his openness and frankness.

Many of us are going through this phenomenon, but how many of us are able to recognize it? If at all we recognize, how many of us are truly making efforts to find a way out of it?

For me it was an interesting case study. Although we went through longer sessions to make it happen, I would like to share key takeaway points on which our coaching session was pivoted.

As a coach I told my client that let your need to work upon you and let it create a contemplated response and the deepest level of awareness within you.

The deep space thus created because of your awareness would then make you realise that your solution would be to attempt one task at a time.

Focus on one task, one idea, at a time.

Slow down on your thought process to have a better focus on one idea.

Go deeper and approach ‘each thing’ with more consideration and commitment.

Calm down your idea generating machine and take control over the excitement that everything is do-able.

Convince yourself that you would bring one thing to life at a time.

 

I told my client not to take idea excitement as a failure– but rather consider it as an evidence of your more committed self. Learn to give time to come to fruition, knowing that every idea would take its own time to eventually emerge into the world.

 

And that’s how it is done !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just managing is not going to be enough.

You know you need to coach your team. May be you need to coach every member of the team.

Because, if they perform well, you perform well.

 

If you aren’t currently measured on your “ability to coach and

develop others” in your current organization, pl. be informed that is  likely to change soon.

 

Coaching from an outside expert is going to remain for some more time, but invariably, organizations are looking for on-the-job coaching, especially from their managers and senior managers.

 

And you, the manager, is going to play the key role.

 

The problem with our current system is that managers are being held accountable for developing others, but few are in fact, taught effective ways to coach.

 

They ultimately end up giving performance reviews, conducting meetings and preparing do’s and don’ts list for their immediate sub-ordinates. Nowhere coaching is prescribed.

 

Managing alone will not be enough!

 

Get those ideas out of your head.

That book you read, the effect is hanging around your mind for a week.

That movie you watched is still getting replayed in your mind

That song that’s been buzzing around in your head since last week.

That business idea that you’ve been mulling over for the last few months, but couldn’t focus on to yet.

That matter that you’ve been thinking to share with your kids, but haven’t shared.

Those suggestions that you’ve always wanted to share with your boss at work, but you couldn’t do yet.

That travel plan you have been making since the last couple of years, couldn’t put in to practice yet.

That small piece of creativity that may just require a little bit refinement for you to become an amazing artist.

Get those ideas out of your head and put them on a piece of paper.

Allow it to take shape

See if they work. Does not matter if they don’t.

At least put them into action. Make an attempt to turn them into reality.

Grab the chance to change the world.

Be the change to change the world for better!

Fight one more round.

Recently I have come across beautiful lines by James J. Corbett who became the first boxing heavyweight world champion.

He won the championship by knock-out in the 21st round.

This is what he had to say on the art of being a champion:

“Fight one more round.

When your feet are so tired that you have to shuffle back to the center of the ring, 

Fight one more round.

When your arms as so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard,

Fight one more round.

When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired that you wish your opponent would crack you on the jaw and put you to sleep,

Fight one more round,

Remembering that the man who always fights one more round is never whipped.”

Very inspiring and encouraging lines he has quoted.

What we can take a message as - what our circumstances are or what obstacles we are facing, but let us fight one more round.

We may feel like giving up, but let us fight one more round.

We may feel defeated, but let us fight one more round.

Fit in our minds that we are not beaten yet. We can go again.

We can fight one more round before we fall dead.

 

 

A bit of adversity in life is okay.

It’s always our wishful thinking to have an easy-going life, but it’s good to have a bit of adversity.

It helps to forge our character.

It makes us stronger.

It makes us more resilient.

It gives us greater courage to encounter our future challenges.

It increases our capacity to handle the worst.

It also teaches us the most valuable life lessons.

It keeps us modest and humble.

It reminds us to remain grateful for whatever we have.

It prepares us for the next level of life challenges.

And overcoming those challenges teaches us that our fears are not real.

So welcome adversity and lean into the challenges that life has put forth before you.

Adversity makes us realize that nothing worth doing ever came easily.

It’s not worth wasting our life on the trivial and unimportant matter.

So if the adversity that comes your way, don’t whine about it or wish it away.  Smile, face up to it, use it to your advantage.

Here, what I referred to as adversity is not a traumatic incidence, what I mean is the day to day life hurdles.

The idea behind the post is to inspire everyone to become strong to handle life challenges, which every one of us encounters in one or the other form.

Burn Out at work place.

Are you experiencing ‘Burn Out’ at your workplace?

Burn out is a common term recently being used and discussed by employees and a lot of theories are floating around what is Burn Out and how it can be prevented.

Eight out of ten employees are complaining burn out on their job, at least some point of times they are facing in their career.

What Burn out is in fact?

Burn Out is chronic workplace stress that can’t be successfully managed by a person himself.

What are the signs of Burn Out?

·         Feeling of dropping of energy level or feel the exhaustion from work.

·         Feeling a mental distance from work. Or feeling negativity or cynicism about your work.

·         Reducing of Professional efficacy.

The pattern of Burn out:

·         Always feeling

·         Very often feeling

·         Sometimes

·         Rarely

·         Never

What are the major reasons for burn out?

1.    Unmanageable workload

2.    Unreasonable time pressure

3.    Lack of support from seniors or from the management

4.    Unclear communication from the management

5.    Unfair treatment at work.

How to get over the Burnout?

·         Take small breaks in between on your normal working day to remove monotony.

·         Keep your digital devices away or stay away from your phone at least 3 to 4 hours at a stretch.

·         Try to do something interesting activity and get engaged in, if you are not working.

·         Periodically take long weekends and try to relax mentally to unwind work-related matters.

·         Search meaning why your work matter so much to you over your personal matters.

·         Finally, make sure that it’s really Burn out and not anything else.

 

 

 

what is most importnant to you in your life?

During one of the coaching conversation, I asked one of my clients, ‘What’s most important to you in life?’

For a while, there was silence. My client tried to gather the things and was rearranging the words.

Honestly, we don’t ask ourselves this question very often. However, the beautiful thing about this is that everyone can be unique in their response!

Some would say family is the most important, some would say, love, some would call success in life very important, some would rightly point out health important, some would point out financial security and safety, and so on.

Let us understand what all these things have in common though, is that they are ‘values.’

It means, our values are the most important things to us in our lives.

Our values guide our every decision and therefore we are where we are. If we’re not clear about what is truly important to us we will not be able to take decisions.

If you ever felt difficulty in making a decision in a particular situation, it is because you weren’t clear on what you valued more in that particular situation.

All decisions really come down to values clarification.

When you know what’s important to you, making a decision is quite simple.

Remember that your values- whatever they are- creating your path by guiding you to make certain decisions and take certain actions consistently.

Not using our internal compass intelligently always leads to frustration, disappointment, lack of fulfillment in our life.

On the other hand, when you do use this internal compass intelligently and consciously you will experience a sense of certainty, and feel truly happy and fulfilled in our lives in the long term.

You are your Brand.

Before your clients buy coaching as a product. They buy ‘YOU’.

Your personality.

Your experience.

The unique qualities (in the client’s eyes), only you possess.

Conventionally we are familiar with term “branding” related to a corporate logo with a tagline that is slowly disappearing and what remains as a brand is just being YOU.

Your Authentic Voice

How you speak and how you write speaks a lot about you. Even how you act on camera or in an audio interview or in your own podcast, has the power to instantly connect you to your audience.

Sometimes your voice and your speaking style becomes a more important aspect of your personality and has the power to attract a specific audience.

In recent years, a few high profile coaches and product sellers have become celebrities of a sort, largely because of their presentation skills and their impactful voice and delivery style.

Your story

Your story—which you might be feeling boring and uneventful, sometimes works as a powerful tool that can help to solidify your brand and attract just the right kind of audience for you.

Your story need not have to be dramatic, and you certainly don’t have to share everything, but whatever you share it does have to be yours.

Be your true self, and you’ll have the right audience.

You become their self-selection, and that’s how your perfect client will find you.

 

Leadership at the bottom.

Leadership begins at the bottom.

When we get to low and can't go further lower, eventually you hit a bottom, and hitting bottoms - personally and professionally- is treated to be very important.

It is said that everything gets rearranged at the bottom: your hopes, your dreams, your memories, your prejudices, your likes and dislikes, and most importantly your ego. 

You are quite lonely at the bottom.

But actually, you are not. 

You are with your two beacon light.

When you are in the depth of your bottom, your truest nature, along with all its complexities, and contradictions, is revealed and comes in front of you and you are left to wrestle with yourself.

It's at this absolute rock bottom you learn who really you are, and what you're truly made up of and what your substance is.

Complimentary coaching sessions

Are you a coach offering complimentary Coaching sessions?

Here are a few points on how to offer successful complementary coaching sessions and make your clients interested in your coaching.

v  Keep the focus on the client, not on yourself. Your nerves are all excited and you desire to offer a lot in your session but these are all about you. But, Coaching is all about “them.”

v  Don’t try to quick fix the client’s problem. Instead, focus on expanding the client's possibilities. Every great coach knows very well that Coaching is not about solving the client’s problem.

v  Focus on building the potential relationship. Help the client to feel what's possible for him through coaching.

v  Don’t try to impress but try to give the client experience. The experience about themselves, coaching relationship values, and the potential outcomes they can derive, working with you.

v  Take notes of all the information your client is sending you. Don’t try to analyze it at that moment. Don’t judge right or wrong. Just try to recognize a good client fit.

v  If you and the client become a great fit, you can invite them for Coaching.

As a coach remember four words during your first complimentary coaching session::

Focus, Experience, Notes, Invite.

 

These are my basic elements of a complimentary coaching session.

There are many more elements in addition to the above. You must practice mastering this process.

 

Without the ability to concrete coach-client relationships, you will not become a professional coachpreneur. 

 

 

 

 

Money-back guarantee.

Last week, one gentleman called me up and was showing interest in Life coaching and expressed his willingness to take a few sessions with me.

Until then, everything was fine and we exchange greetings mutually. Before we could end our conversation, he just paused for a while and asked me “whether I offer a money-back warranty?”

I also took a pause and replied to him, “No, I don’t. But, I offer value Back guarantee.”

On the client’s part, the question was quite normal and nothing wrong in it.

But it made me think, has he ever heard from some Coaches that they offer a money-back guarantee?

Something to ponder upon.

Maybe some coaches must be offering money-back guarantees to make it easier to close sales.

Their thinking would be that few people ever ask for their money back, so you'll have a better chance to increase your coaching sales. 

In my opinion, that approach makes sense if you're selling commodity products.

Coaching is something where you are pouring your heart and soul into a coach-client relationship that leads to extraordinary results for your coaching clients.

As I mentioned earlier, I call a Value-Back guarantee.

If a client isn't completely satisfied, they're encouraged to tell me, and together we'll re-design a plan for them to get the value they invested for.

In this case, both the coach and the client win. 

Additionally, coach can request client to write few words on Coach website in Testimonials or in Feedback or referrals which would help the coach to increase his sales rather than offering any other guarantee.

There is always a better tomorrow!

The sun doesn’t always shine,

It does not mean that the Sun is not present.

It will come out eventually and shine once again.

Flowers are not always in full bloom.

But, we have to wait for spring to return.

Not every innovation that you try will click.

But, if you pursue with dedication eventually you’ll get it right.

You will not reap the fruits of every good deed you do.

But, one day people understand your worth.

Today, it’s not your day.

Never mind, there is always a better tomorrow!

 

I am afraid to pursue my dream to become a coach because it may not work-out for me.

Before I started pursuing my dreams to become a coach, there was a period when I got worried What if it did not work out?

I also thought. 

·        Why should I switch over from a highly successful career to an altogether new field?

·        Whether my failure in coaching would appear as if my entire career as a failure?

·        What if people remember my latest failure and not the other achievements of my career?

Indeed, these thoughts have retarded my pace. I got caught into a serious dilemma. I knew it well that no one would bail me out from this, it’s me who needs to come out by myself.

I decided to put things more systematically. By properly planning and chalking out the strategy along with necessary actions, there was no reason that I would fail.

Even if I were to fail, I knew I haven’t traveled too far to the point of no return that I can’t come back to my own professional world where I belong. Once again, I would pursue my dream of becoming a coach and just do the exercise over and over until I succeed.

It didn’t take me long before I realized that my fear was out of place.

This was a big aha moment for me because from that I was able to pursue my dream without any fear or dilemma.

To be very honest, failure is over-glorified in today’s world.

People fail all the time, in everything- big or small, you meet with failures more easily than success. There’s no need to make a big hoo-ha about it. Failure is a natural process, it comes naturally, treats it in a natural way.

In fact, what’s more important is the actions you take when things don’t go your way.

How can you learn from your failures?

How can you turn your failures into success?

These are the questions you need to ask yourself as you pursue your dreams.

It’s important to embrace these beliefs instead:

·         “My dreams are mine for me to take it.”

·         “Whatever I can conceive, I can achieve.”

I can’t ask for what I want. I am afraid I may get rejected.

I remember how I started giving motivational speeches in my initial years of executive coaching.

To get the word spread about my coaching, I reached out to different organizations and pitched to them. 

I did a number of cold calls, email campaigns, and at times even do a cold walk-in to check if I am lucky enough!

Initially, I kept the track of the number of organizations I contacted, but later I have stopped keeping record but roughly it would have been around 50.

Out of those, most never responded is a reality.

The ones I cold-called or cold-contacted, either randomly or through some references, have brushed me aside politely and told me to email them my coaching details.

“Email please” was synonymous with “Sorry, we don’t need it now.”

On an absolute honest admission, for every outreach attempt I have made, I faced more than 95% rejection, either in the form of no-response or an outright ‘NO’.

Despite what was happening as I described above, I never let these rejections stop me from doing my efforts.

I kept on reminding myself, in life, people face rejection all the time.

Rather than getting dejected from rejection, I encouraged myself to learn to handle it.

Rejection is just a process that lets you know that you’re nudging in the wrong direction you need to adjust your strategy and the direction.

If we shy away from trying or barging into open-door just because you don’t want to face rejection, you’ll only deprive yourself of possible opportunities.

I strongly believe that the universe wants to give you what you want, provided you are ready to grab even the half chance.

I have learned to embrace these beliefs instead:

·         “Rejection is part and parcel of my life. Every ‘no’ will lead me closer to a ‘yes.'”

·         “My best learning during this rejection time was “You need to ask in order to receive.”

Limiting Belief: “I can’t be my real self. I am afraid I’ll be judged.”

I often watch videos of successful people on YouTube because I wish to learn more about them, get inspired by their talk, and absorb their wisdom.

A number of times I have noticed, no matter how inspiring the person you may be, there will always be detractors who try to pull you down or tear you apart.

Whenever I read those absurd comments, it helps me realize that people are always going to judge you no matter how great a person you are.

You can never please everyone because everyone is different in terms of culture, background, maturity, and perception aspects.

So, when everyone is different, why trying to please people?

You are better off being yourself.

You are perfectly okay owning your true self.

In fact, you certainly need to please yourself to live a fulfilling life.

We need to embrace these beliefs:

·         “I am not here to please people in my life.”

“I want to be myself. There is nobody like me.”

The worth of impossible dreams.

A photographer named Thomas Hawk, his aim is to publish a library of 1,000,000 finished, processed photographs before he dies.

That’s an ambitious goal!

There are a few arguments that go against having an ambitious goal.

Experts advise against having goals that are out of reach as they give us an excuse for not even trying. 

The terms SMART Goal you would know that the “A” stands for attainable.

Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound Goal.

There’s a good reason for people like Thomas Hawk who could easily say that 1 million photos are outrageous and I feel it is not attainable, better to give up.

But people like him are charged and fired by the audacity of the goal. 

They are drawn by the challenge and moved by a factor of the ‘impossibility’ of the goal.

Even if they wouldn’t reach their goal, they would display spectacular efforts and try.

There is worth in aspiring for the impossible!!

The Four-Minute-Mile was impossible once.

Usain Bolt’s 100-meter record was impossible once.

Traveling into space was an impossible dream.

Climbing Mount Everest was impossible once.

Traveling to Mars was an impossible dream.

Taking control of HIV/AIDS was an impossible mission.

Eradicating polio from India was like an impossible dream.

And still, all these things happened because people have willingly chosen to set ridiculously courageous goals for themselves.

If ‘they’ can ‘you’ can too!

What’s your impossible dream?

It can be owning your own home? Starting a business? Publishing your book? Taking a world tour?

Sky-diving? Scuba diving?

We have to redefine the Possibility and allow ourselves to have this courageous dream to fulfill.

Don’t bother about others, what they will think. Ignore them.

Even if you don’t quite reach your dream, the efforts and the experience of the ride worth trying!