Tag Archives: about your coach

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.

Being a great leader starts with being yourself

Coaching, Developing as a leader, ,

Recently, I amended the brief description that sits under the heading “about me” at the top of my blog to read:

Being a great leader starts with being yourself. I am a holistic coach to senior leaders. I help men and women in senior leadership positions find and walk their true paths in line with natural laws – what works.

This statement reflects my growing understanding of my niche – those clients with whom I most enjoy working, those clients with whom I do my best work.

Perhaps there’s a paradox that sits underneath this statement.  On the one hand, I have been involved over the years in a great deal of research into what makes for the most outstanding leaders.  This research, which had been reflected by Goleman in his books The New Leaders and Working with Emotional Intelligence suggests that there is a common recipe for all leaders and, within organisations, a variation on this recipe which is distinct for a particular organisation.  A common criticism made of this work is that this suggests the “cookie cutter” leader – and we can all see that leaders vary enormously in their personal style and effectiveness.
 
On the other hand, it’s my view that the path to personal effectiveness – mastery – as a leader is a highly personal path which varies enormously from person to person.  It involves understanding and accepting oneself as well as making adjustments to improve effectiveness.  The changes we make don’t stick unless they are congruent and aligned to who we are and to what we want.  This is why I enjoy my work so much – because I take great pleasure in supporting the path of the individual towards his or her personal recipe for success.
 
There is another paradox here.  Oftentimes, when organisations are involved in discussing the competencies they most yearn to see in their leaders there is one that comes up again and again, labelled as “integrity” or “honesty”.  At the same time, many people walk through their careers in the belief that they need to “play the part” in order to succeed.  At best, this reflects insight into what does and doesn’t work in a particular organisation and an informed choice to work in ways that are effective.  At worst it is the stuff of deep personal stress as we worry that we will not be fully accepted in the workplace unless we play our part well. 
 
And the bottom line is this:  no matter how hard we try, we don’t get to hide.  Our true self creeps out around the edges.  If we have a level of self mastery this can be a great gift to self and others because we all have skills, competencies and other attributes that are of great value in the world of work if only we can find and claim our rightful place.  On the other hand, as long as we are trying to be someone we are not we may struggle to succeed, for the effort of maintaining the facade is great and ultimately ineffective.  It’s just as well that the journey to authenticity and self mastery, whilst challenging and at times painful on the one hand, is also liberating for ourselves and for those we lead on the other – a “win, win” all round.
 
I wonder, to what extent would you describe yourself as bringing your best self to work?  As authentic?  As knowing what works?  A “mark out of ten” will give you a crude measure of your own authenticity in the workplace. 
 
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.  

Defining my niche

Coaching,

Have I shared with you that I have been working this year with Kathy Mallary, a coach who specialises in helping coaches to market their services?  Kathy has been putting me through my paces in recent months as I seek to define my niche.

Another way of putting this – and perhaps a bit more appealing for those of us who enjoy saying it as it is – is that Kathy has been helping me to understand what’s true about those people I most enjoy working with so that I can speak to them (you) in particular through my blog, newsletter and other marketing.  In time, I’d like to think that everything I write (my “marketing”) is a gift to those people I most enjoy working with and whether or not they choose to work with me.  This way I get the “triple whammy” of (a) knowing that when people are looking for the kind of services I most enjoy providing they’ll know to contact me, (b) knowing that my readers will point people in my direction who might be interested in what I have to say and (c) knowing that there are plenty of people who will never become my clients who still enjoy and benefit from reading me.

Now, along the way, I’ve discovered something about myself and my approach to marketing that has been passing under the radar – almost.  I’ve discovered that there’s been a gap between the language I speak when I’m talking about coaching with commissioning managers in organisations and the language I speak with my clients in the privacy of our one-to-one coaching relationships.  It as if, for me, the best kept secret about corporate or executive coaching is that whilst the organisation benefits – and that’s why coaching is worth investing in on behalf of the organisation – the person seeking coaching (or “coachee” or “coaching client”) benefits tenfold.

Kathy has encouraged me to “come out” and cry this from the roof tops.  So I have been putting together a statement of my niche and getting ready to make this the focus of many, many postings in the future.  If you’d like a sneaky peek, why not come back tomorrow?

Searching for my coaching “genius”

Coaching

Working with Kathy Mallary to explore my target market as a coach I am grappling with a number of questions including the question: what is my genius? This comes up, too, in my work with my coach, Lynne Fairchild. These are some of the thoughts arising following a conversation with Lynne:



Perhaps my genius lies in the area of alignment:

  • When my clients are at odds with themselves, in inner conflict, trying to reconcile needs that seem at odds;
  • When clients at work are in some way out of alignment: when they experience the expectations placed on them as out of alignment with some aspect of themselves – their values, sense of self etc.; when they are successful in their work and yet yearning for more joy or noticing something calling them in another direction; when their self image is two steps behind their latest promotion; when “what is” and “what should be” seem worlds apart…
  • When something is out of alignment at home: when the dream of happy-ever-after romance is out of synch with the reality of daily life with their partner; when the cost of spending time with old friends, family or, or, or… seems too high; when the dream home comes with a nightmare mortgage payment…

These are areas in which I am perceptive and engaged.

This is not about career coaching in the traditional sense but about clients’ alignment to and embodiment of their inner wisdom. It is an “inside out” coaching which takes in all of Robert Dilts’ “logical levels” – clients’ “who am I?” (identity), values and beliefs, capabilities, behaviour, environment – in the wider context of family and organisation.

I notice I am drawn to work with talented people who want to bring their genius to bear in the world. These are people who recognise and want to respond to some kind of inner calling that takes them beyond their current situation to answer the question: what is it that is calling me? These are people who, in treading this path, have to engage with and move beyond their inner and outer constraints. These include the constraints of culture – “the way we do things round here”. This is a path for the courageous few: what M. Scott Peck describes as the road less travelled.

Travelling this road often takes people beyond the confines of the paradigms in which they are raised or within which they work in order to find their own answers. For these people it is not enough to be successful within the paradigm assigned to them – these are the people who see the limitations of our current cultural norms and who reach out in search of their own path. In this sense alignment comes from within and spreads outward – these are people who begin by finding their inner sense of alignment and move on to seek out and create opportunities to which they are fully aligned – organisations to work with, leadership approaches which match their heartfelt values, a place in the world which reflects their sense of purpose. In this sense my clients are often leaders whether or not they have a recognised “line management” or leadership role. They lead by example. They create culture as much as they sit within a culture – they are the shifters and shapers.


These are people who are able both to live their lives and to step back and examine the lives they are living – to take a meta-perspective in life;

These are the people who, by making choices at a meta-level, can pursue a path with conviction and continue to pursue that path even when the terrain is rough and challenging;

These are the people who chose a way of being in the world and in this way bring greater meaning to their lives;

These are the people who, from their sense of conviction and by pursuing a path, develop a mastery in time of their chosen way of being in the world.

Having worked over the years with many people in leadership positions I wonder if my true clients are leaders who are on this journey, whether leadership is a subset of this area of alignment, if…, if…, if… This question remains open – at least for now.



To niche or not to niche?

Coaching,

Frankly, my journey as a coach has been one of deep personal exploration for me, as well as for my clients, so that my first eight years as Director of Learning for Life (Consulting) has been as much about my own journey as it has been about the lives and work of my clients. It has been a time of examining my values and making adjustments to increasingly live and work in line with my values. It has been a time of examining old beliefs, letting go of some in favour of new beliefs which support me as someone who is authentic, resourceful and whole. Many times it has brought me to new thresholds which are waiting to be crossed if I am to be true to myself and to make my contribution in the world.

This year, a few well-targeted questions from the wonderful coach Hilary Cochrane made me put aside plans I had made and to reconfigure the year ahead, signing up with Kathy Mallary in the US to examine my marketing at the same time as signing up with Carolyn Free Pearce as my coaching supervisor and continuing my work with my coach of five years, Lynne Fairchild. What a great team!

Even with this superb team, the work that awaits me is well and truly my own and I have quickly started to bump up against and explore some of my own limitations as I examine the mother of all marketing questions: what is my niche? It’s one thing, for example, to say working with senior leaders and I say it with ease. At the same time, which leaders? And what is it about those leaders that marks me out as a coach (and which, come to speak of it, attracts people who are not leaders to seek me out)?

In recent days I have reached out to others to invite them to share their own experiences of identifying their own niche, sharing my question (‘to niche, or not to niche?’) with a number of groups to which I belong. I have been grateful for the depth and variety of answers which help me to test my own thinking.

At the same time, questions from each member of my team are bringing me right back home. What if, asked Kathy last week, your true genius is in the area of wholeness and integration? I recognise this immediately, recognising how much I have sought in my own life to reconcile the irreconcilable and how often I work with clients to go beyond inner conflict to help them understand and respond to underlying needs. Today, Carolyn has thrown in the question of authenticity and integrity and this, too, resonates with me, recognising as I do my own path to authentic self-expression as well as my conviction that my clients will give their best performance as well as achieve their deepest satisfaction when they are able to be themselves. As a coach I enjoy working in deep partnership with my clients and over long periods in ways which many coaches are not.

Somehow, none of this is new and all of this is new. As I wonder what it means to have these themes of wholeness, integration and authenticity as a point of departure for my niche (rather than leadership and emotional intelligence) I recognise both that I am coming home and that I am treading a new and uncertain path. It is a path which requires faith – the trust and conviction that if I share my strengths my true clients will find me.

To write this posting is to step over the threshold and go public, even whilst recognising that I am only just beginning to answer the question: what is my niche? In my own way and in my own professional sphere, this is my ‘coming out’.

Coaching: the best kind of labour of love

Coaching,

It’s the end of a busy week. I have been coaching, as ever. I am in the midst of preparing an assessment report. I have just returned to the office, ready to go through a number of e-mails that have reached me before I sign off at the end of the working week and sign onto the weekend.

This week has also been a week of “chemistry meetings”. This is the process by which a person seeking coaching and their potential coach(es) meet to establish whether or not they are well matched to work together. Typical questions that are on the table during these meetings are “what areas do you want to address through coaching?” “what outcomes would you like from your coaching?” and “what would you like from your coach?” As well as testing whether or not coach and person seeking coaching are well matched, these meetings can help the person seeking coaching to deepen his or her understanding of what he or she is looking for.

Whilst it’s often the coach’s role to hold up a mirror to a client and invite self reflection, in one meeting it’s my turn. The person with whom I’m meeting – potentially my coaching client – tells me that she has the sense that I really enjoy coaching and highlights the passion with which I speak about it.

Even as she asks the question I feel a physical response as tears rise. The truth is, I still find it amazing that I am paid – and handsomely – to do something I love so much.

The gratitude I feel lingers with me as the weekend approaches.

Dorothy Nesbit on Twitter

Coaching,

That’s it! I’ve done it! I am now on Twitter as DorothyNesbit and I’ve posted my first update. You can find me at http://twitter.com/DorothyNesbit.

In time, I plan to link Twitter to my blog, Facebook etc. to make for easy updating. And in truth, I still have a great deal to learn about how to make the most of it.

For now, though, it’s one step at a time! I can speak with Kenny*, my friend, nutritionist and fellow coach – oh! and e-mentor! – tomorrow knowing that I’ve done my homework and signed up on Twitter.

*That’s Kenny Tranquille – look him up on google. I’m always delighted to point people in his direction.

Dorothy Nesbit: meet your coach

Coaching
This is the second of two coaching profiles that I often use. Originally I put together the profile below for an event which took place on board ship. This is reflected in the use of metaphor:

What makes the difference between those who sail ahead in life and those who find themselves labouring in the backwaters?
What more becomes possible and with what ease when we know where we are heading?
How can people create a sustainable and enriching journey towards happiness and success?

Background

During a career spanning twenty years Dorothy has navigated these and other key questions. Her journey to date has taken her through training and consulting to Executive Coaching, where she now helps senior leaders and their organisations to chart a course to personal, professional and organisational success.

Coaching Approach

Bringing warmth, compassion and humour as well as directness, honesty and challenge to her coaching, Dorothy is on course to realise her own dream of becoming a Master Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation. Widely known for her integrity as a fellow traveller she forges powerful coaching partnerships to support clients in making the journey they dream of.

About Dorothy

In her own life, Dorothy places a high priority on living in the fullness of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, seeking to create relationships – with herself and others – in which everyone thrives. As well as enjoying her career, friends and family she loves to sing and has been a member of the London Symphony Chorus since 1986.

Dorothy worked with The Work Foundation and the Hay Group before founding Learning for Life (Consulting) in 2002. She is a certified NLP Coach, member of the International Coach Federation and Fellow of the RSA.

To discuss coaching with Dorothy

To discuss how working with Dorothy in coaching partnership might benefit you or others in your organisation please contact me, Dorothy Nesbit, directly on 0774 789 8450 or by e-mail at dorothy@learningforlifeconsulting.co.uk.

Dorothy Nesbit, Coaching Biography

Coaching

I have been sending out invitations for a series of coaching groups together with my coaching profile and testimonial. Never – until today – have I thought to post my coaching profile on my blog.

In truth, I have two. The one below is the more formal of the two, which I use with most of my corporate clients:

Dorothy is an Executive Coach with twenty years’ experience in developing leadership at individual and organisational level through leadership research, executive assessment, leadership development and 1:1 Executive Coaching.

Dorothy has consulted widely across sectors in the UK and Europe including the finance, insurance, pharmaceutical, professional and education sectors.

Dorothy began coaching early in her career, both as a coach to leaders participating in leadership development programmes and as a coach and mentor to professional colleagues. In 2004 she completed a professional coach training certified by the International Coaching Federation and now places Executive Coaching at the centre of her work.

Dorothy works with high-potential leaders – from first-time leaders through to directors – who are interested to release their own potential and that of the organisation they manage. Typically Dorothy helps clients to:

· Establish a clear vision, overall direction and concrete goals for self, team or organisation;
· Build the climate for high personal, team or organisational performance;
· Create a unique success recipe for their own personal and leadership effectiveness;
· Create improved strategies for intra- and interpersonal communication;
· Develop and implement strategies for sustained high performance.

Dorothy begins by helping clients to establish clear goals for coaching and to support them as they take steps to realise their goals. Like gardening or exercise, Executive Coaching yields its best results when the investment in coaching is regular and Dorothy typically meets with clients for an hour a week or fortnight over a three-, six- or twelve-month period. Her clients highlight the way she balances challenge with support to create the climate in coaching for accelerated progress and results. Occasionally, Dorothy uses 360 degree and competency feedback to support coaching and is certified to use the Hay Group Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI).

Dorothy has an MA (Cantab), is a certified NLP Coach and member of the International Coach Federation and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Making friends with power

Coaching, Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , , ,

It’s a funny thing, power. David McClelland, in his extensive study of human motivation (summarised in the book of the same name) identified power as one of three primary areas of unconscious motivation.

Mention power in many circles, even circles of power and influence, and you’ll find, frankly, that it gets a bad press. It’s easy to see why this might be true, when we have such a long history in the human race of exercising power over others in ways which meet the needs of one person or group at the expense of the needs of another.

Through my studies of nonviolent communication, I have come to a different understanding of power. For whilst we can exercise power over others we can also exercise power with others. We do this when we act from the belief that our needs – everybody’s needs – are important. This belief provides a basis for seeking to find ways to connect with, honour and meet our needs. This same belief provides a basis for helping others to do the same.

A first step on the road to nonviolence is to fully inhabit our own needs – to connect with them, bathe in them, experience the living energy of those needs. Perhaps it’s worth highlighting that when we are truly connected to our needs our primary focus is on our needs. The question of how we might meet them and who might help us in this endeavour becomes secondary. There are so many ways in which different needs can be met.

Now, in my work as a consultant and, more recently, in my work as a coach, I have for some years been helping leaders as they grapple with questions of power. Still, ten days after spending a day with consultant and NVC trainer Gina Lawrie, something she said and has said before is landing with me with a new energy and I recognise just how much I want to embrace the power of my needs fully and in this way to inhabit and live from my full power. Only days after sharing my values on my blog I realise it’s time to revise them and add another. I’m not yet sure I have the words right and still they are good enough for now. I decide that one of my values, a way of honouring and serving life is:

Fully inhabiting and living from my power.