Tag Archives: creating an online presence

LinkedIn and the on-line network

Coaching

In August 2009 I wrote a posting entitled, LinkedIn:  growing my connections.  At the time I had 49 connections on LinkedIn.

I tend to be a bit of a slow starter when it comes to new technology and I’m still not sure when and why to LinkIn.  I’m delighted to be connected with people I’ve met along the way and with whom I’ve enjoyed working or playing.  Some people ask to connect whom I don’t know and I’m currently pursuing a policy of saying yes and seeing what this leads to.  Only last week, I asked someone who’d asked me to connect if he would kindly stop sending me generalised marketing e-mails via Linkedin to support me in managing my time.  He said yes – consider it done.  Had he said no, or ignored my e-mail and continued sending, I could have broken the link.

I’ve only broken the link once.  It was a link to someone who writes on a forum that I, too, have been writing on for a number of years.  He wrote something about me on the forum I didn’t enjoy and I invited him to dialogue around it.  He never responded.  Two other members of the forum also followed up by telling me all the things they most dislike about me and I took time with them – again, to invite dialogue with the aim of building a better mutual understanding.  I thought about his original posting and his absence of response when I followed up and asked myself, is this someone who is wanting to build a mutually rewarding relationship?  And was it working for me?  When I decided that, no, it wasn’t working for me, I knew it was time to sever the connection on LinkedIn and to let him know that I was up for connecting again – after reaching a better understanding.

Anyway, all this is leading to saying that when I wrote in 2009 I made a note to check how many connections I have a year down the line.  I’ve been a little slow to check the numbers, which today stand at 379.  I am more interested in the quality of those connections than I am in the numbers, so I continue to experiment and explore.

For the total *twitters* amongst you

Coaching

I confess, I’m really not au fait with twitter.  You may be reading this posting because you’ve signed up to me on twitter. (Thinks:  should I include my twitter name.  Decides, no).  I know I’m not alone.

Still, every now and again I see a resource and want – at the very least – to bookmark it or file it here on my blog.  Mark Shaw’s Twenty Minute Twitter Workout is one such resource.

Useful to you?

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?





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.

“Executive” and “Life” Coaching: Finding your place in the marketplace

Coaching, ,
This posting is written by a coach for other coaches, drawing on the input of colleagues who have insight into what it takes to market ourselves effectively.
Let’s just recognise that “Executive” and “Life” Coaching are labels.  On the one hand, there may or may not be critical differences between the two (for more on this you may like to read my postings “Executive” and “Life” Coaching:  How are they similar? and “Executive” and “Life” Coaching:  How are they different?).  On the other hand, their primary role as labels is to help clients and coaches to find each other who are well suited to work together in a productive coaching partnership.  I am grateful to colleagues for pointing this out and for highlighting that these and other labels are not important to people who know the coach:  rather, labels act as the sign that helps people who don’t yet know you to recognise you as the right coach for them.
A key implication of this is that you need to understand how your perfect client thinks at the point when he or she is looking for a coach.  This is different from the question of what ground you may cover together in the course of your coaching partnership which may take you both by surprise.  This includes understanding the key issues that your clients may be looking to address through coaching and the key outcomes they may be seeking – in marketing speak the “benefits” they may be seeking.  This is not about the kind of undercover marketing that is still popular in the mass market but about a genuine understanding of your clients.
A second key implication is that you need to be able to speak to potential clients in their own language:  as one colleague put it, “in the language that our target clients can hear, understand and desire”.  To quote a colleague this implies that as coaches preparing to market our services we need to “get clear on what the heart of our offer is.  Then get ourselves out of the way of what we think our clients want and are looking for – and listen”.  When we meet the kind of people we most yearn to coach what do they say to us and in what language?  This is the language our marketing needs to use.
I could say so much more, based on the rich input of colleagues from a variety of sources, even whilst recognising that I am an apprentice in the field of marketing.  For now I am simply going to express my thanks to colleagues from the Coaching at Work group on LinkedIn and to fellow students on Kathy Mallary’s sales and marketing programme, Empowerment 2010.

Managing your mailing lists

Coaching

Have you noticed how many more organisations are harvesting e-mails from websites and using them to send unsolicited mail? Most days at the moment I spend time unsubscribing from a newsletter that I didn’t elect to join.

MAPS have some clear guidelines for managing e-mail list which are worth reviewing if you are sending out a newsletter or any other kind of e-mail circulation. You’ll find these guidelines at http://www.mail-abuse.com/an_listmgntgdlines.html. MAPS is a major anti-spam blacklist service.

Connecting – via the written word

Clients and testimonials, Coaching, , , ,

Recently I have wondered whether to put my name forward to join the published list of NVC (that’s nonviolent communication) trainers in the UK. I am not a certified trainer and don’t plan to become one – at least for now. And still, I’d enjoy having some coaching clients coming my way who are interested to develop a compassionate (‘nonviolent’) approach. Equally, since I work extensively with clients in corporations, I’d enjoy having someone – an HR Director, perhaps – contact me one day and ask to talk about the use of nonviolent communication in organisations.

What better way, I thought, than to seek the view of people who are already listed? So I put out an invitation to my colleagues to share their thoughts. One e-mail touched me deeply – I had the sense of being seen at my very best. It also reminded me of the power of social media, coming as it did from someone I have yet to meet and whose impressions of me come largely via the written word. With her kind permission, I share it with you.

This e-mail came to me from Jo McHale, whose business (at http://www.talking-truly.com/) focuses on converting conflict into connection. Here’s what she wrote:

Dear Dorothy

We haven’t met yet – and I trust we will before long – yet I feel moved to respond to your e-mail about joining the NVC-UK trainers list.

I have read your contributions to the NVC-UK group’s discussions. I have heard your voice on the conference call. I have read your response to a thread on the LinkedIn Coaching At Work group in which you commented on something Bill Tate wrote (Bill is my partner). I’ve also read your website/blog. And let’s not forget I first encountered you in the UKHRD Forum [now the Training Journal Daily Digest].

From each of these I have a sense of someone who is grounded, compassionate, passionate, thoughtful and wise. I find it easy to listen to what you say with an open mind and open heart, and to trust the place you’re speaking from.

It would indeed gladden my heart if you were to join the list. My understanding of the procedure is that you need the endorsement of three (not sure of the number of) people who know you and are prepared to ‘speak’ on your behalf. If my words contribute to this, I’m very happy for them to be used.

In anticipation of future connections,

Jo

Jo McHale

LinkedIn and the power of intention

Coaching

The new year has started – may it be a good one for you!

This week I have been catching up with all sorts of Christmas messages in amongst my client and other commitments. Amongst them I enjoy an invitation from Sara Milne Rowe to “Link In”. Sara and I met via our professional coach training and we both had the great pleasure before Christmas of joining Roger Schwarz and his colleagues for a week-long training in the Skilled Facilitator Approach. No doubt I’ll be writing more about this programme in the days and weeks ahead.

After accepting Sara’s invitation I check my progress in Linking In. When I set my intention last year to start connecting with people via LinkedIn I was already connected with 49 people. Today the number stands at precisely 100. I haven’t set out to send out invitations “en masse”. Rather, I have gone for the slow drip, drip of checking: “are we connected?” Over time, the numbers are building.

Of course, the question remains, why connect? This is also a question I am enjoying exploring. For the time being, I am appreciating the opportunity to read people’s updates – what are people up to? And of course, it’s also fascinating to discover what a small world we live in as I discover who else knows the people with whom I am connected.

Linking my blog to LinkedIn

Coaching

Now, I am slowly learning a few things about LinkedIn.

Firstly, I am paying attention to the regular status updates that reach me – not too often to be annoying! It’s been a real pleasure to send congratulations to friends and colleagues for their new jobs.

Recently I noticed that one of my clients posts his reading on LinkedIn. As an avid reader, I’ve started to do that, too.

Then I noticed that LinkedIn have introduced a new possibility for adding my blog. What I didn’t realise to begin with is that my blog postings automatically appear as my “status update”. This means they’re visible to anyone who looks at my profile. And I’m guessing they’re also visible to anyone who gets those regular status updates in their in-tray.

Yesterday it was really cool to get an e-mail which started: “I saw your blog posting via your status update on LinkedIn and I thought I’d just…”

I notice I’m starting to “get” the value of LinkedIn and to build my contacts up. Currently, I’m connected to 91 people. And since I’m now proactively sending out invitations this is building over time – something for me to pay attention when I have a few minutes to spare.

Coaches in dialogue

Coaching,

Regular readers of my blog know that I am a member of the Training Journal Daily Digest and get many benefits from my participation in this daily discussion forum. Sometimes though, I do feel a little lonely – a coach amongst trainers. I have yet to find a forum for coaches that is as active and informative as the TJDD.

Recently I signed up for a LinkedIn group for coaches set up by the CIPD publication Coaching At Work. As well as giving me the opportunity to dialogue with colleagues this is also helping me to raise my visibility with colleagues in the profession. It’s early days and still, I’d like to think this group could become the coaches’ equivalent of the TJDD.

I’m wondering, what else is out there? I’d love to hear how other coaches. How do you connect with your colleagues in the profession? And how do you maintain dialogue?