Category Archives: Coaching

At the end of the year

Coaching

It is a tradition, at the end of the year, to look back on the year just gone and to look forward to the year ahead. For some, the famous “New Year’s Resolutions” are flights of fancy, quickly forgotten because they were never the object of our full commitment in the first place. For others, taking time to look back and then to look forward holds a sacred place in our lives. For any readers who would like to observe this ritual and to maximise its contribution to their lives, this blog posting offers questions for you to reflect on as you look back on the year now passing.

I invite you to make time and space to reflect on 2010. This is an opportunity to celebrate and mourn: to celebrate the people, experiences, learning and achievements that have met your needs and enriched your life; to mourn those times when your needs have not been met as a result of your own actions, the actions of others and events beyond your control. This is a time to notice what you want to take with you and what you want to leave behind. This is a time to put aside doing in order to be present and curious, a time to invite new wisdom and insights.

As you reflect on the questions below – or choose other questions that beckon to you at this time – allow yourself to be guided by your own inner wisdom and spirit, noticing the pictures you see, the words and phrases offered by your unconscious mind and the sensations you feel as you reflect.

  • As you look back at the year just passing, what stands out? What feelings come up for you as you survey the year?
  • What has been your experience of the year? Has life been easy or a struggle? Have you experienced progress and success?  Or failure, inhibition and “stuckness”? How has it been for you to experience the year in this way?
  • Who have you been this year? Have you been authentic and true – with yourself, with others? Have you been divided within yourself? Or even hiding behind some constructed mask?
  • How has your experience of yourself affected your communication and relationships with others? When have you been conscious of your needs and the needs of others? When have you been unconscious – lost in the doing, for example? How has it been for you to live your life this way?
  • When have your needs been met and how? How has it been for you to have your needs met in these ways? When have your needs been unmet? How have you experienced your unmet needs?
  • What are the riches of this year that you would like to take forward into the year to come? What experiences do you want to celebrate? What new learning and insights have enriched your life?
  • What is it time to let go of and leave behind so that your forward path can be more rich and fulfilling? Who do you need to forgive, for example? What beliefs have had their day? What actions do you need to take to complete this process of letting go?

And as you reflect on these questions, what other questions are coming up for you? What else is needed so that you can honour the year just passing and clear the way to move on?

Unleashing innate leadership potential through powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships

Coaching, Developing as a leader, , ,

As Christmas approaches, I am looking forward to taking a break.  My conversations with clients about diaries have almost gone past the stage in which the question “shall we meet before or after Christmas?” is asked.

There are many things I shall look back on in 2010 – and many things I am looking forward to in 2011.  This includes looking back on the work I have done this year to clarify my offering to clients.  My aim has been to make it increasingly easy for those people and organisations to find me to whom I am best suited to contribute.

Most recently I have been preparing an update of my profile on LinkedIn.  This is what I have included – so far:

Dorothy Nesbit

Leadership Coach, unleashing innate leadership potential through powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships.

Summary

Are you a successful senior leader who’s striving to fulfil your potential? Do you want dramatically to increase your contribution to your organisation?

It’s lonely at the top. Everyone looks to you for the answers and your actions are under scrutiny from every direction. At times, wracked with self doubt, you are your own worst critic. Wearing the “mask” of leadership, trying to keep up with your own view of what it takes to be a great leader – it’s hard work and exhausting.

A passionate leadership coach, I love to team up with talented and successful executives to liberate their innate potential and achieve more with less effort. My clients build powerful and authentic relationships with themselves and with others as a springboard for increasing their contribution to their organisation.

If you recognise the need to adjust your approach and you need help with the “how”, I’m your coach.

My signature coaching approach will leave you:

• With clarity and confidence about the role you want to play;
• Equipped to play your role with growing ease, authenticity and self-mastery;
• Inspired and motivated to deliver improved business outcomes.

My approach is uniquely effective because I grow and develop powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships, unleashing and cultivating innate leadership potential.

I wonder, as you read this description, what do you learn about the people with whom I most enjoy working in coaching partnership?





Peeling away the layers of my “genius”

Coaching,

Recently I wrote about the challenge (one that we all face) of living from my genius.  There is a paradox in this, for we always bring our genius – it’s who we are.  At the same time, if we are unaware of our genius, we are at risk of living in first gear, a pale shadow of our true selves.  If your “job purpose” is to live from your genius, it really helps to know what it is.

This week, I took away a big “aha!” from my Genius Jam teleconference with colleagues who, like me, are working with Kathy Mallary to examine and improve our marketing and the way we attract and serve our true clients.  My big “aha!” (which also had the familiarity of the known – so it was actually a ‘small, big “aha!'”) has helped me understand my genius a little better.

I already understood that a key question for me is “am I living authentically?” When I am, I know that I am having conversations with people (I call these “real conversations”) in which I speak my truth knowing that it doesn’t matter what their response is. Looking back through the filing cabinet of my experiences I know that these conversations give me what I need to move forward and especially to know, do I want to hang out with this person or not?

Today I realise that it is when I am having these conversations that I am stepping into and living from my power. Even as I write I feel the full power of this – or should I say empowerment.  It is not a “power over” anyone else. Rather, it is an invitation to people to live powerfully with me in the world – you could say it is an invitation to “power with”. This concept is pretty key to my understanding of nonviolent communication (ref. Marshall Rosenberg) so there’s no surprise that both are compelling to me.

There’s something about this insight which is both new and not new.  And still, it’s enough to help me to sink a little deeper into my true genius.  If you like, it’s enough to help me embody my true genius – just that little bit more.

Writing about authenticity

Coaching

It’s Friday evening and I’m having supper with Morton Patterson at the Spice of Life – a rare treat.  We are talking about business matters and I tell Morton about the work I am doing with Kathy Mallary to refine and improve my marketing.


Morton asks me where I’ve got to with that.  I tell him about the work I’m doing on referrals – mapping the processes by which I can act to increase the likelihood that people (my clients, colleagues and others) will refer people to me who are well qualified as potential clients.  I also tell him about some of the messages that I am beginning to define for my marketing – most recently what Kathy calls my unique selling point (or USP).


It’s no surprise to me when Morton asks what I see as my USP and I am happy to tell him:  my approach is uniquely effective because I cultivate leadership potential with compassion and rigour, nurturing authenticity, ease and high performance.  He’s quick to ask me where authenticity shows up on my blog, telling me:  “You behave authentically, everything about you demonstrates that;  it is in your e-mails, your manner and communication but your writing does not convey that clearly”.  As I ponder, I realise that my emphasis has been on modelling authenticity in my writing rather than on writing about authenticity.


I make a note to write more on this topic and find myself pondering the questions that need to be asked.  What is authenticity?  What is it not?  What role does authenticity play in leadership?  How does behaving with authenticity change the experience of the leader?  And of those s/he leads?  What are the benefits of authenticity?  What are the challenges?  How do you connect with, nurture and develop your authentic self?


These are the questions I thought of.  What questions would you add?

PS  You’ll find Morton at www.mortonpatterson.com.  Do take a look when you have a moment.

Dorothy Nesbit: About the Author

Coaching

I am thrilled to be writing an article for Coaching at Work magazine, which will be published just in time for International Coaching Week, in February next year.

As part of writing, I have been looking at what other authors say about themselves and in how many words.  Thirty looks like the limit.  I thought I’d share my first attempt with you here on the blog.  How does it land with you?

Dorothy Nesbit, executive coach, cultivates leadership potential with a trademark rigour and compassion, nurturing authenticity, ease and outstanding performance. She is a certified NLP Coach and practitioner of Nonviolent Communication.

http://www.learningforlifeconsulting.co.uk/
http://dorothynesbit.blogspot.com/

Completing my coaching with Lynne

Coaching, ,

Monday, 25th October 2010.  We didn’t set out to do it this way when we scheduled our last appointment and still, later, my coach, Lynne Fairchild, realises this date is exactly five years from the day we first spoke.

During those five years, Lynne and I have spoken three times a month and our coaching has covered every area of my life.  Since I started running my own business in 2002 and started working with Lynne in 2005 she has been a significant source of support for me as I explore what it means to own and run a business – and to have a life in which work and non-work are in some kind of balance.

This year I have chosen to work with Kathy Mallary, who specialises in helping coaches to market their businesses, and this has provided an impetus to draw my work with Lynne to a close.  I am full of gratitude as I think of the work we have done together.  During this time, I have become increasingly self assured, understanding my aims and values and taking steps torwards leading an ever more authentic life.  I have also discovered just how much I enjoy working in a committed coaching relationship and this has served me well with my clients, too:  a number of clients have worked with me over time and I look forward to more and more such relationships.

As an aside, Lynne and I have not (yet) met face to face because of the geographical distance between us.  I am based in London and Lynne is based in the US.  I hear eminent coaches in the UK talk about how coaching is most effective when it’s carried out face to face and I wonder – I confess – if consciously or unconsciously they say this to protect their businesses from the exchange rates which – when it comes to telephone coaching – favour coaches abroad.  In our final (“completion”) session Lynne gives recognition to my willingness to go deep in our work together and without holding back.  It seems to me that working by phone has supported this depth rather than detracted from it.

What do you say when you say goodbye after five years of working together?  In truth, after five years of working together much of what needs to be said has been said already.  We have acknowledged each other so many times.  We know that our deep mutual regard will outlive our coaching relationship.  We know that the completion of our coaching is the beginning of our post-coaching relationship.  I know that I feel confident – no, glad – to continue to refer people to Lynne.

In the run up to our completion I think of our work as like planting a tree.  I know that the tree is planted and has taken firm roots.  I know that there are things outside of our work together that have contributed to the well-being of this metaphorical tree.  I know it will continue to grow long after our work is completed.  And for this I am, quite simply, deeply grateful.  

Being the change: the challenge of owning my “genius”

Coaching, ,

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?”
Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us;  it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson
A Return to Love

On Monday I wrote about the challenges of being the change you want to see in the world.  I didn’t expect to return so soon to this subject to highlight another challenge – the challenge of owning my “genius”.  I take this term genius from Gay Hendricks’ book The Big Leap, a book which invites readers to step beyond their “zone of excellence” and embrace their true genius.

Marianne Williamson’s famous passage, from her book A Return to Love which quotes in turn from the book A Course In Miracles from the Foundation for Inner Peace, points squarely to this challenge and to its implications.  Society’s call to modesty often holds us back and at the same time to hold back is to embrace the law of unintended consequences.  As a coach with a passion to help people to embrace and inhabit their full potential I feel the challenge of choosing between society’s call and my own authenticity in modelling to my clients what I yearn for them to be able to do for themselves.

Today, Kathy Mallary, my coach (with special skills in the area of marketing for coaches) has been holding my feet to the fire, challenging me not only to write a statement of my genius (using the questions Gay Hendricks offers in his book) but also to place myself firmly in the centre.  This is what I came up with (how does it land with you?):

 My Genius




I’m at my best when I’m growing and developing powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships with myself and between myself and others.

When I’m at my best, the exact thing I’m doing is seeing beyond my current limitations to be present to my full potential so that I can develop a trust or knowing that I have a place in the world – a place of true belonging, a place in which my true self is truly a gift to the world. I am also identifying and taking meaningful practical actions towards living in and from my place of true belonging.

When I’m doing this, the thing I most love about it is seeing things falling into place (my own sense of self, new insights into my true path etc.) and experiencing – seeing and feeling – the sense of peace and harmony that comes from this: within myself, within others, and in the relationships between myself and others. This is life within nature’s true and harmonious laws – no “forcing” needed. As I blossom everyone and everything around me also blossoms.

Dorothy Nesbit
October 2010

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.

If you want things to change, start by accepting the way things are

Coaching,

It’s Monday evening and I am on the “Genius Jam” call with my fellow coaches and members of Kathy Mallary’s Empowerment Club.  The club’s focus is our marketing.  Monday’s call, though, is about something wider – how are we contributing to our own progress and success?

I am curious when Kathy says to one of my colleagues:  “If you want things to change, you need to start by accepting the way things are”.  The fact that this resonates with me tells me I need to sit up and listen.

I sit and listen.  One of my colleagues likes to work with women at a time when they realise that, in order to move forward, they need to step fully into being who they truly are.  I recognise how much this applies to men and women alike.  So much of our education shapes us to seek out other’s expectations of us and to try to meet them.  This process continues in the workplace.  Lurking beneath this way of thinking is the idea that we have to be someone else – someone other than who we are – if we are to succeed.  This is an “I am not OK” or “I am not enough” position.

Along the way, many of us also feel the need to be authentic in our lives, so that we can feel torn between two worlds.  The mythical “midlife crisis” denotes the time when we can no longer sustain a way of being that keeps us so alienated from ourselves, or even a way of being in which we show one face to the world whilst also nurturing our true selves behind closed doors.  Sooner or later we want to “come out”.  This is not to say that the choice to come out in this way leads us through a door and straight to an authentic self.  For many – most?  all? – people, this is a step-by-step process of learning and discovery.

So, I ask myself, why did Kathy’s assertion resonate so strongly today with me?  I choose to see it as an important marker.  Of course, if you want to plan a journey from A to B you need to know where A is as well as B (though this is clearly true).  This is one reason why, if you want things to change you have to accept the way things are.  More than this, though, I ask myself, am I accepting myself as I truly am?

Our call finishes at 8pm so I cut myself some slack and decide to sleep on it.  No doubt this is a question to which I shall return.

 

Dorothy Nesbit: meet your coach

Coaching

Every now and then I take time to update my coaching profile.  This is as much about my aim to communicate clearly to current and potential clients as it is about any changes in what I offer.  I want people to know who I am, who I work best with, and how my work adds value. 

Having been through a process of revision, I notice how pleased I am – as if I have added new colour to my profile through the process of revising it.  I can see myself more clearly in this picture and I hope you can, too.

I welcome your feedback – anything you’d like to add via the comments option.  And of course, if you’d like to work with me or know someone for whom the description below just hits the spot, please contact me directly:

Have you noticed how some leaders work harder than they need to to produce outstanding results? Perhaps they have what it takes to succeed – if only they knew it. Perhaps they lack awareness of their skills or could achieve so much more by developing further. Perhaps they are trying hard to be “a leader” when, in truth, they could achieve so much more by connecting with and being their authentic selves.

As a coach, I have helped coaching clients:

• To understand what they really want from their work, igniting their motivation for their current job or helping them to understand their need to find a job in which they can excel;
• To grow in confidence and skill as a leader so that they understand what they have that gives them a place in their organisation’s future and are confident to execute their leadership role;
• To recognise, develop and leverage their skills, helping them to achieve improved outcomes with increased confidence, reduced stress and less effort;
• To increase their contribution to their organisation, to improve business outcomes and to achieve rapid promotion;
• To face unexpected challenges with confidence and clarity of purpose, leading to outcomes that exceed all expectations.

My clients value the way I balance challenge with support to create the climate in coaching for accelerated progress and results. You can read client testimonials and learn more about me by visiting my profile at LinkedIn or my blog at http://dorothynesbit.blogspot.com.

What’s my background? Since 1988, I have been developing leadership at individual and organisational level, through leadership research, executive assessment, leadership development and 1:1 Executive Coaching. I have consulted widely across sectors in the UK and Europe including the finance, insurance, pharmaceutical, professional and education sectors.

With a passion for supporting others’ development, I began coaching a long time before I’d heard the word “coach”. Since 2004, I have placed coaching at the heart of my work, completing a professional coach training certified by the International Coaching Federation and working as a coach to high-potential leaders – from first-time leaders through to directors and CEOs – who are interested to release their own potential and that of the organisation they manage.

I have an MA (Cantab), I am a certified NLP Coach and member of the International Coach Federation and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

LinkedIn: still keeping in touch

About Dorothy, Coaching

Time moves on.  In August of last year I reported 49 connections on LinkedIn and still growing.  As I write today the number has gone up to 180.

This is an interesting number.  On the one hand, there is a good number of people I know with whom I am not (yet) LinkedIn.  On the other hand, I am starting to have invitations to LinkIn from people who have enjoyed my postings on the groups to which I belong and I don’t yet know quite how to respond.

One thing I have enjoyed is connecting via LinkedIn with people I have known personally.  Meeting in this way enriches my understanding of them, helping me to see them in the round – something I cherish.  Xavier Dujoncquoy is one of these.  Xavier used to stay with my family as a young man and joined us on Saturday to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday.  Here’s Xavier speaking about his memories of those days – and my mother listening.

It was a wonderful day.