Cocktails and Coaching

Recently I phoned a colleague to ask one small question... And before I knew it we were on the phone for 90 minutes! It's amazing how powerful it can be to just ask someone (if really care about the answer) "How are you?" …. One thing that came out of this conversation (and many others I've had over the years), is how much time and effort we tend to put into work and how we want to be thought of as a high performer, but there are also so many other elements in our lives that we perhaps don't focus on… If you put all your effort into just one aspect of your life and something outside of your control massively impacts it then you could be left feeling empty. Is it better therefore to invest your time into a number of different areas of your life, so that if one element is impacted, it's not the end of the world as you have other areas to prop you up? So what are the different areas? The way I look at it is through these 8 areas, the first 5 are quit...

I was on my first panel at an event recently and I was asked "What advice would you give your younger self?"   It really made me think… At first I interpreted it as - what do I wish I'd done differently . But I am a firm believer about not having regrets and I have the positive mindset that everything happens for a reason.   So I then switched the question in my head to "What advice was I once given that I really listened to"   I often seek advice from other people and I soak up lots of different perspectives on how to do things… But the one piece of advice I was given many years ago that I love was "Only follow advice that is true to you, and feels right to you"   The reason I loved this advice is because I'm quite an open person, so it's really important to me that people don't question whether they can trust me or if I'm genuine or not. So if I follow other people's advice it's really important that it's a...

Imagine you had a problem that you wanted to solve , change or focus on, and I told you that after answering just 5 or 6 questions you could walk away with a clear action plan having committed to what you would do today, to make a difference!   Well, today I wanted to bring to life the GROW model which does exactly that… Unfortunately I can't claim it as my own! But I do use it all the time… It's a great tool to help shape the conversations that you have with your team or mentees. Or you can use it to help figure stuff out for yourself…   One of my team saw these questioned and joked that it forms the basis of every conversation they have with me! (You're welcome!!!!) But I love the idea that you can go from being really unclear about something, and by just answering a few questions suddenly you're really clear about what you need to do and how to do it!   So, step one, is think of something you're not happy with or want to change or solve… This co...