All posts by Dorothy Nesbit

Coaching? I’d recommend it to anyone

Clients and testimonials, ,

Sometimes, I like to “claim” a client. This is a process whereby I let someone know I think they’d benefit from coaching and that, if ever they decide to pursue it, I’d love to be their coach – or to help them to find the coach who’s right for them.

Sometimes, too, I offer a scholarship to young people with high potential – the future leader, for example, whose employing organisation has not yet spotted their potential or (because of my personal interest and engagement in music and the performing arts) the talented performer or future star.

The testimonial below comes from one such client – someone I “claimed” as a client and who took up my offer of a coaching scholarship. Oftentimes, high performance comes at a personal cost so I am struck by the benefits to my client in his work from learning to look after himself.

Coaching was Dorothy’s idea – it wasn’t something I’d thought of doing. I’ve experienced coaching as personal to me – learning about myself and what I enjoy. It’s been a way of learning how to live in a way that suits me – learning what I want and how to get it.

Before we started working together I was doing my work as well as I knew how but I wasn’t looking after myself and I was experiencing some stress. I wasn’t willing to take risks and I didn’t have the confidence and energy to change.

Coaching has opened up a new way of thinking for me. Now I’m checking in with myself regularly and acting on my own feedback. I’m more relaxed and happy and my confidence levels are higher. I’m working more and better as a result.

As my coach, Dorothy created trust from the beginning and maintained her commitment to confidentiality which was important to me. I get a strong sense of her dedication – her willingness to contribute her time and expertise to help. I also found it quite liberating to be left to set the agenda and to judge the outcome myself. There was no judgment – I’ve never experienced anything like that before.

Would I recommend coaching? Yes, I’d recommend it to anyone. I thought it was for certain people with certain problems but now I realise it’s for anyone.

Protecting your name on-line

Coaching

Today I take one more action from the list of recommendations I took away from my conversation a few weeks back with my friend Kenny Tranquille. As if being a talented coach and nutritionist is not enough, Kenny has taken on the role of my E-mentor.

Like many people, my business interests are simple at first glance (coaching senior leaders) and more diverse on close inspection. My business website represents one view of my interests and still, perhaps there’s a place for a site which represents the greater diversity of my business and personal interests.

There’s another question, too. How is my name protected on the internet? One way to do this is to register my name as a domain name. None of my many namesakes have done this yet so I go for the most universal domain name I can and register www.dorothynesbit.com with my internet provider.

I am raring to go – the most basic package allows me to create a one-page website and I am looking forward to doing this very soon. Still, I have to wait for my confirmation e-mail which is due to reach me within the next 24 hours.

I’ll keep you posted.

How is coaching faring during the recession?

Coaching

The Training Journal Daily Digest has come up trumps again. Responding to a posting requesting recommendations for some executive coaches I offer to share details of trusted colleagues – it’s not the done thing to recommend oneself on the Digest and still, I’m always delighted to put people in touch with skilled and able coaches. Minutes later, one of my colleagues on the Digest lets me know she’s put my name forward.

Oh! And what’s more, one of my former Hay colleagues lets me know he’s recommended me as a coach to senior leaders in his own business. I experience feelings of great delight at these “seeds sown”. Much of my work comes to me via these kinds of referrals and whether or not these particular seeds turn into coaching assignments, they contribute to an abundance of possibilities and make it more likely that I can contribute my skills to help individuals and organisations to build leadership capability.

But how is coaching faring during the recession? This a question that is visting one of my colleagues today. She writes:

Dorothy, over the past few days, I’ve learnt that several services and colleagues in my three worlds are running into difficulties. It seems as if it is getting ever harder to secure referrals, to find paying clients, or to fill workshops.

Just as a ‘reality check’: have you noticed trends in this direction in your coaching circles? On the one hand, these developments come as no surprise to me. On the other hand, I wonder whether those of us who hold strong positive beliefs can manage to “surf through this era on an entirely different wave”… I hope from my heart that the latter is the case.

In my own practice, one client organisation stopped its executive coaching across the world last year in response to the crisis in the finance sector. Currently, another client is taking a break pending his new budgetary period and has made it clear that he’d prefer to continue our work together. Whilst small businesses like my own tend to experience both ups and downs these examples are clearly related to our current economic climate.

Oh, the paradox! If ever our leaders need coaching it’s now! For the levels of uncertainty that come with our current economic climate are such that “drawing on experience” – even experience of past recessions – is not enough. And yet it’s at this time that organisations are most likely to tighten their belts and reduce their investment in coaching and other development programmes.

I take time to explore a link provided by another colleague to an article about coaching in Personnel Today. Two things stand out. The first is the recommendation to invest in coaching leaders ahead of any other group – after all, in times of change, it’s our leaders who lead the change. I also notice that recent research by the CIPD suggests that coaching is proving to be one of the great survivors of the recession.

I hope so. Of course, coaching makes a significant contribution to my income. Far more than this, coaching has a major role to play in developing leadership capability and this, in turn, makes it more likely that our leaders will create intelligent and highly effective organisations.

I wonder, what do you think?

Coaching supervision: when anticlimax is the key measure of success

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Sometimes, the value of coaching supervision lies in its power to disarm anxieties ahead of time. This means that a key measure of the effectiveness of supervision can be the sense of anticlimax that comes when one’s worst fears fail to materialise. Meeting by phone for a supervisory session with Neil Williams I decide to share my anxieties about one particular client as part of my preparation for our forthcoming coaching session.

For me, coaching is a bit like exercise: the more regular and sustained your coaching programme, the more you will experience the benefits. So when one client postpones a session I wonder if the benefits that come from regularity and momentum will be lost. An added anxiety is the presence of a third party in the background – my client’s sponsoring manager. Is my client managing the expectations of his sponsoring manager? I don’t know.

Neil’s initial questions focus on the possibility that my client lacks commitment to his coaching. Even though I’ve already considered this possibility it’s good to voice what I know – that my client has shown great commitment during our sessions. There’s no question in my mind: commitment isn’t the issue. I’m also aware of the practical reasons for the delay.

Exploring these questions helps me to sharpen my focus. The issue is not so much “how did we get here?” (where “here” begins to look like a pattern of increasingly long gaps between sessions). Rather, the question is, having got here, how do we move forward in ways which best support my client’s progress and learning? As we explore the options, I take some ideas from Neil’s input and also add some ideas of my own. I leave our conversation with confidence and some concrete next steps which I act on immediately.

And what of my next coaching session with my client and even the one beyond? As so often happens with coaching my client brings an agenda that neither of us could have foreseen just a few weeks earlier. Our work proceeds with no impact that I can discern from the delay between sessions, though we do schedule a session a little sooner next time. Meantime, my client also has feedback from his sponsoring manager who volunteers positive feedback about my client’s progress and specifically mentions the impact of coaching.

My supervision, as so often happens, leaves me with the question: did I even need to worry in the first place? This is not to underplay the value of supervision but rather to underline it. For when I take time out for coaching supervision I am equipping myself to remove barriers to our coaching, to be fully present to my client and to provide the level of coaching support to which I aspire.

Scheduling postings

Coaching

Well, a small thing has been making a huge difference to my blogging in recent days.

My e-mentor, Kenny Tranquille, highlighted an unexplored link on my blog: post options. It has enabled me to start to schedule postings. So, when I have time, I can write two or three postings and schedule them to appear whenever I want.

So, in case you think I’ve been busy all the way through the summer, you might like to know that I’m away right now – back from my holiday on Tuesday 1st September.

LinkedIn – for the dummies amongst us

Coaching,

It’s no surprise to most people that many of us fear the activity we call “networking”. Perhaps one reason for this is that we take a very narrow view of it: isn’t networking when you go round a room of strangers trying to meet people who might buy what you have to sell? And isn’t it a pretty horrid experience to have stilted conversations with all sorts of people who don’t want to be sold to?

Today I speak with Jonathan Kemp of SmartWisdom, whom I met via my old friend the Training Journal Daily Digest. Jonathan asked me if we could talk about blogs and I’m delighted to help. No selling here – just two colleagues helping each other out. What’s more, as Jonathan updates me on the progress of his work, I realise I know people who may benefit from learning about Jonathan’s work. He agrees to send information I can forward.

We talk about my own progress in building an online presence. Jonathan tells me that when he first signed up to LinkedIn he bought several books to help him make the most of it and recommends LinkedIn for Dummies by Joel Elad. I decide to order a copy and I’m looking forward to browsing this book and to enjoying whatever gems it offers.

For me, this is “networking” at its best. I enjoy the pleasure of supporting Jonathan and take away a few gems myself. Perhaps my friends and contacts will benefit from an introduction to Jonathan’s work – and if they don’t, that’s fine, too. And I take away a few gems that support me. Even Joel Elad gets a sale.

Who knows, maybe you get to benefit, too.

Thinking about leadership

Developing as a leader

Today I take a moment to track down the article Leadership That Gets Results, written by Daniel Goleman more years ago than I care to remember and published by the Harvard Business Review. The article summarises the research that underpins Goleman’s book The New Leaders.

Sometimes technology doesn’t deliver with the ease intended. When my order doesn’t register, I am directed to contact customer services – except that there’s no link on the same page for customer services. I decide to do it the old-fashioned way and fish out a slightly battered copy for my client.

Still, I get a welcoming e-mail from Harvard which points to their blog: Looking for savvy commentary, engaging analysis, and the latest thinking on management from around the globe? Follow our lineup of Voices that includes Scott Anthony, Peter Bregman, Clayton Christensen, Tom Davenport, Tammy Erickson, Stew Friedman, Marshall Goldsmith, John Quelch, Bill Taylor, Michael Watkins, and more at: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org

I decide to make a note – and to share with the readers of my blog.

Naymz – another online opportunity

Coaching

Today I investigate Naymz, another opportunity to make information available online.

This is not a five minute job! I complete a profile and add links to my LinkedIn account, my blog, my Twitter account – oh! and not to mention my company website. It takes 40 minutes or so.

One feature makes life easy: it takes next to nothing to send out invitations to those people with whom I am already linked in. Another defeats me – at least for now: having added all the links I mention above, how do I go the next step and create the link necessary to show my recent Twitter activity on my profile page? I decide to leave this one – at least for now.

Making the most of your e-mail signature

Coaching

Well, now that I’ve signed up to Twitter and learned to create a hyperlink, surely it’s time to make the most of my e-mail signature as a way to let everyone know. Come to that, I’ve been blogging for over a year now and have yet to highlight this at the bottom of my e-mails.

Today I add two hyperlinks to my e-mail signature so that people can see I am on Twitter and have a blog. And by the use of the hyperlink I have made it easy for people to go directly to each one.

This experience is a reminder of the way technology is the great enabler. It took me five minutes to edit my e-mail signature and having done that, this information will automatically appear at the bottom of every e-mail I send out.

Writing this blog posting – which I hope will benefit others who, like me, are seeking to create a visible online presence – did not take much longer.

Humanity – an alternative view

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There is a field out beyond right and wrong. I will meet you there.

Rumi

It’s no surprise that the Sunday papers are full today of discussion about the release of Libyan prisoner Al-Magrahi from Scotland’s jails. Whether rightly or wrongly, Al-Magrahi was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing some twenty years ago in which 270 people – passengers on the plane that crashed and residents of Lockerbie – died.

Foreign Secretary David Milliband spoke on Radio 4 during the week and seemed to be claiming a humanitarian stance when he said:

“The sight of a mass murderer getting a hero’s welcome in Tripoli is deeply upsetting, deeply distressing, above all for the 270 families who grieve every day for the loss of their loved ones 21 years ago but also for anyone who has an ounce of humanity in them”.

When it comes to anyone with an ounce of humanity in them, my money is on Scotland’s Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. His words gave me great hope for a world which is truly based on humanitarian values:

“In Scotland, we are a people who pride ourselves on our humanity. It is viewed as a defining characteristic. The perpetration of an atrocity and outrage cannot and should not be the basis for losing sight of who we are, the values we seek to uphold, and the faith and beliefs by which we seek to live.

“Mr Al-Magrahi did not show his victims comfort or compassion. They were not allowed to return to the bosom of their families to live out their lives, let alone their dying days. No compassion was shown by him to them. But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days.

“Compassion and mercy are about upholding the beliefs we seek to live by, remaining true to our values as a people, no matter the severity of the provocation or the atrocity perpetrated.

“For these reasons alone it is my decision that Mr Al-Magrahi be released on compassionate grounds and allowed to return to Libya to die”

Colonel Gaddafi’s son Seif Al-Islam Gaddafi responded to this decision by describing it as “a courageous and unforgettable stance from the British and Scottish governments“. I leave the final word, though, with Marshall Rosenberg, who said:

“We think need revenge but what we really need is empathy for our pain”