Can you change or what holds you back?

Sometimes we get to that point we need to something differently. But after all we do not even make a single step. What is missing to do the necessary steps forward? Have you realized that you are not in the right job? Have you got tired and burned out? Are you submissive? Or when you stand up for your rights you always find yourself in a trouble damaging the relations? Is your concentration level low? Do you  often make mistakes? Is the stress continously digesting your health status? Do you fail to keep deadlines? Are you able to make the right priorities? Have you got disappointed in others what you got back in return for your support? And so on, and so on....for hours I could still list the reasons which make us realize we have to do something differently, we need to stop a behaviour or start a new one.. Here are 9 factors which influence the changing process from John Franklin:

Recognizing the essential topics and goals to change

Believing that making the change is possible

Having the ability to set concrete and realistic goals

Accepting the personal reliability for change

Self-understanding, insight

Willingness to face with problems and look into them

Willingness to undertake the difficulties and anguishes

Ability to build strong relations

Self-control to hold on even after failures and  setbacks

Are you able to meet the listed success factors? Which one do you have difficulties with? Do you think you can step forward? Source: What makes the change, John Franklin PhD (2003) 

Written by Krisztina Kárpáti-Kincses, Business Coach, Resilience Trainer

(Chris)

How strong influencer are you?

Source of photo:pexels.com

Is there anything limiting you to be a strong influencer?

You might think that your personality is not typically like big influencer’s as Steve Jobs or you are not charismatic enough to stand up for your arguments.

You might have doubts whether at work your role is high enough in the hierarchy to have the power of your words. Few questions help you reflect on your influencing tactics?

- Do you use mostly facts and figures to back up your statements?

- Do you remain confident even if others debate your opinion?

- Do you highlight both negative and positive consequences of your idea?

- Do you build up a logical and structured approach to convince others? - Are you capable to find the right information what you need from the most reliable sources?

If you want to deep dive into this topic and make the first steps ahead, then contact us!

Karpati-Kincses Krisztina, business coach

Chris

http://bemybusinesscoach.net/Krisztina-Karpati-Kincses-Business-Coach-Resilience-Trainer-HR-Professional-17/

"Manager as a coach "

"Manager as a coach "

Can we coaach People without People?

Create a relative calm in the midst of everyday chaos!

We need energy, we need relative calm & balance to be effective. But we are  always „bombed” with information, questions, advises, potential conflict-triggers, etc. from any directions both in work and in privat life. We need then be able to create our dynamically balanced world…

Let you read a beautiful short story:

„The picture of peace…

There was once a king who offered a prize to the artist who could paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all of the pictures. After much deliberation he was down to the last two . He had to choose between them.

One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for the peaceful mountains that towered around it. Overhead, fluffy white clouds floated in a blue sky. Everyone who saw this picture said that it was the perfect picture of peace.

The second picture had mountains too. These mountains were rugged and bare. Above was and angry gray sky from which rain fell. Lighting flashed. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not appear to be a peaceful place at all. But, when the king looked closely, he saw that behind the waterfall was a tiny bush growing in the rock. Inside the bush, a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest. She was the perfect picture of peace.

The king chose the second picture. „Because,” he explained, „peace is not only in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work.

Peace is in the midst of things as they are, when there is calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace.””

(Lisa Bloom, herself being also an excellent storyteller is quoting this little story what she had heard from Suzy Wolf storyteller… - from Lisa’s book of the „Cinderella and the Coach”)

Work-life balance, dynamic harmony… If you are waiting for everything to finally settle down in order that you could have harmony in your life, well, your life might be too short…

That’s the reason that you’d better search for a dynamic harmony „in the midst of things as they are…”.

And that is one of the possible goals for searching a coach who will support you to start to find your special personal harmony-matrix…

„A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…” – as Lao Tse said.

Who knows, perhaps this first tiny step will be to find your coach.

Miklos Szilagyi

Nick

Harmony in business performance and work-life balance can be created working with our highly-experienced coaches.

Our coaches are here to influence soft skills of managers, to get hard business achievements through their improved empowerment, communication and confidence.

A systematic method which helped in retaining the new generations

What is lean management? It is a systematic method for waste minimization (“Muda”) within a manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity. Lean also takes into account waste created through overburden (“Muri”) and waste created through unevenness in work loads (“Mura”) – says wikipedia.

Nevertheless lean management’s philosophy is  about fully empowered people, based on continuous learning, teaching, development and process improvement - and these are just in line with the growing expectations of the recently approaching generation Z!

What are the expectations of the new generation, called Gen Z, the second wave of Millenials, who were born from around 1996 and recently are just graduated from the different universities?

·         They require, appreciate frequent feedback, daily (if possible), and positive (if possible).

·         They are motivated if the activity they perform is a challenging and interesting experience, they want to find the joy at work.

·         They can be attracted and retained at work if the feel the meaning of life, or at least the meaning of their work.

·         They are looking for work relations, which are based on partnership, respect and trust.

·         They like interactivity in communication and the can be addressed with brief, consise and visualised messages.

Nevertheless in most cases they do not find these all, therefore most of the employers face extremely high attrition rates as a quite new phenomenon. Banks or shared service centers work hard to cut the recent 30% (per annum) people turnover targeting to drop it to 8-10%, with no result at all.

What is the reason behind the recent high attrition rates? How the new generations (who are highly educated, extremely creative, innovative and tech-savvy) can be attracted and retained?

One of the answers can be given with the tools of a well-designed Lean Management. Why?

·         Because the focus of Lean is to empower people, maximizing their useful capacities, minimizing loss of time, energy and materials.

·         Because Lean is about brief, clear, short and concise communication, using One-Pagers instead of long and boring e-mails, presentations and word documents.

·         Because lean is about continuous improvement proposals (Kai Zen) which can revive and reshake the fantasy of the young generations!

In fact the new era, called Industry 4.0, requiring Leadership 4.0 will need very new approach from the managers and leaders soon.

When the new, innovative technical solutions are to be brought by the new generation, there is no more room to give direct instructions, because the technical and operative competence of the managers will never any more be in line with the competences of those who have to deliver the solutions.

This gap can be filled in with a very new leadership aproach – by managers who behave more like coaches, and less, like bosses.

„To lean or not to lean” – that is the question now!

This can be the winning slogan of the success in management, to attract, motivate and retain the new generation of employees.

 Let ’s explore the endless opportunities in lean management by Managers who behave like Coaches!

Bee

Beata Schaffer

http://be-my-coach.eu/our-coaches

Harmony in business performance and work-life balance can be created working with our highly-experienced coaches at http://be-my-coach.eu/

Our coaches are here to influence soft skills of managers, to get hard business achievements through their improved empowerment, communication and confidence.

4 Solutions to Forget Forgetfulness Do You Forget Important Things

(Photo by nappy from Pexels)

Meetings, discussions, which are likely to be fixed on an agenda or memo.

Nevertheless, those memos usually don’t fix responsibilities and deadlines.

Then what happens frequently? Everyone goes back to work and the agreed arrangements and tasks are somehow forgotten. Not from malice, things and to-dos simply have such a nature.

They like to be hidden, behind the big brothers, the so-called Important and/or Urgent Tasks. And those Big Brothers pull themselves out as good brothers, hiding the little ones.

Then we try to recall hopelessly, why the discussion was there we were left, and how are we going to do it, and what a hell is the job to be done?

Later on, if the head of the discussion asks about these tasks sooner or later, the team can be swirling, pounding, shaking, explaining, and firefighting.

Modern technology offers a numerous solutions, thousands of applications, apps, and artificial intelligence solutions. But we still may forget what we wrote and where is the post-it we wrote about what we wrote in the app.

And this can be done endlessly. We keep records to keep track of records, and it seems to be no solution. But for you who are the leader in the given area, you have to find something against forgetfulness.

There is no uniform solution which fits for everyone. There are people who believe in the old-school methods - preparing reminders, things-to-do list, or using personal assistants.

Some people are juggling timepieces excellently, and some trust in their IQ.

And some of them really never forget anything and deliver their tasks on time.

However, most of us struggle simultaneously to manage the business, to lead our people, and to live our lives including friends, family members, sports and hobbies.

Sooner or later we realize that our memory capacity is not infinite, we simply cannot remember everything. We can’t stay focused, our capacity is limited.

There are some techniques that can help keep things in mind:

1. Make a priority list on the wall that you see every day. This can be a flipchart table or an A3-size list that you can look at. It will let you know what’s on the agenda, and help you stay focused on topics you want to move forward. Focus on the 3-4 major subjects.

2. Appoint a person who is responsible for preparing a reminder for meetings, checking open tasks, and coordinating with topic leaders - as a kind of project leader. Look at the tasks briefly and essentially with them weekly.

3. Sit down with people and align them your expectations - encourage them to be proactive, following the tasks you have assigned to them. Agree on how often you expect them to report on the progress and milestones, keeping them responsible.

4. Take the time to regenerate yourself, so that your overloaded brain can relax somewhat.Throw away the unnecessary subjects and try to concentrate on the really important elements. Use the creativity, ideas and suggestions of your staff. Organize the tasks systematically.

Andy

Andrea Farkashegyi

http://be-my-coach.eu/our-coaches

Harmony in business performance and work-life balance can be created working with our highly-experienced coaches at http://be-my-coach.eu/

Our coaches are here to influence soft skills of managers, to get hard business achievements through their improved empowerment, communication and confidence.

Photo by nappy from Pexel

There is a solution: how to be more effective

Some days ago I had been watching the premiere of a movie in the cinema. Why did I decide to do so?

Because of the great names, because of the big stars who played the roles. Dit it ever happen to you that famous movie stars have been able to attract you to dedicate your expensive time?

It happened to me, but unfortunately, I wasted two hours from my life.In fact, I was just watching this film to share my opinion about the director and the actors. Every piece of the film had got very bad critics. Surely it may have happened to you also How this story comes to our blogs of a leadership development and coaching?

 There are several factors to influence customer (and movie visitors) satisfaction.

High-quality filmmaking and a success in business do not really differ. In both cases, there are several requirements to be in set in the right constellation to get together to make the best of it.

Definition of the concept and the desired goals, involvement of the  appropriate experts, and the committment to achieve them are very important. These are the crucial conditions satisfy our customers and make them happy to return. Such conditions are also required to produce a good film.

All activities are interconnected, but the leaders’ activity is crucial

In order to align expectations it is crucial to define SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound) criteria for setting your goal. Our coaches will help you to imagine ideal future situation with specific and measurable goals.

Wherever you want to be successful in any area, the first step is the exact goal-setting. Goal setting means that you can define exactly your satisfaction criteria, the timeframe when you want to achieve it,  and the resources available. If you can determine even the most important milestones, and you know what is the first step you deliver do from the next day, then your goal-setting is done well.

The ability to motivate is the main tool for leaders. Effective leaders know how to create an inspirational atmosphere to enhance individual and team performance. Modern motivation theories do not focus on benefits and prestige but on the community, affiliation, attention, care and recognition of performance.

But let’s go back to the movie

The visitors of the film are the filmmakers' clients, or they are  the so-called stakeholders. Through the film production we are all clients and stakeholders.

The product is the film, expressing and influencing opinions, effecting nothing but customer satisfaction.

Translate it into the language of your business: a dissatisfied customer does not buy more from us and even shares his friends the bad experience. Let's try to find out what the customer thinks of our product and service, how satisfied are you, where you expect more from our product and service.

For a business, customer satisfaction must always be the key issue.

A film director when he is a beginner, making his first film certainly does not know all the tricks ant tips of film making.

If one consider that the tasks exceed his strengths, can ask for  mentoring, consult with experts, and delegate some tasks for people who know more about the details.

Most often the mentor may come from the organization to help the integration of the new leader or newcomers and to develop talented young people. The mentors can share their experience and organizational knowledge.

There is a crucial role of  the leader – clarity of his thoughts and communication are the key to the success.

 There are some movies that are succesful even with a weak content, but excellent casting, and there are some films that are brilliant with just a brilliant script.

 We can only make our best in the most of inspirational, engaging environment, which is depend on leaders.

Andy

Andrea Farkashegyi

http://be-my-coach.eu/our-coaches

 Harmony in business performance and work-life balance can be created working with our highly-experienced coaches at http://be-my-coach.eu/

Our coaches are here to influence soft skills of managers, to get hard business achievements through their improved empowerment, communication and confidence.

Who are the Cross-functional leaders?

Cross-functional leadership is being responsible for the accomplishment of a common goal by individuals. Where do you meet such leaders in the daily life? They are most of the cases Project Managers, appointed to lead a project internally or externally. Why their situation is so much specific? Because they have no hierachical powerover individuals they work together. The project members are often experts in fields that the Project Leader has never mastered before. It can happen that members are on the same level of hierarchy than the Cross-functional leader. What are usually those issues they need support to cope with? They struggle with managing the project to meet the scope deadline because of different priorities of other areas where project members also contribute. Therefore they often need to manage tensions and conflicts.Cross-functional leaders need to influence their colleagues without power. During the whole project cross-functional leaders have to negotiate with all stakeholders to accomplish the common goal within the given conditions. Handling the operation of the project in matrix-like structure, dealing with top-down and cross-functional hierarchic relaionships. Need support in any of the issues, turn to us.

Krisztina Kárpáti-Kincses (Chris)

Dream job or nightmare?

More than a year ago I had a coaching client who was ambitious to find a super interesting job, full of challenges, in line with his competences, but still with personal growth opportunities.

After few months he managed to go through the steps of interviews and got a job he thought - that time -would be a dream job.

He was extremely excited and ready to jump into the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) with strong IT experience in different fields of IT management, having relevant leadership experience as well.

The situation turned out exciting when he was introduced to the team as Project Manager during the first 2 weeks. That was a bit strange for him, but he knew that partly he was required by the job description to lead international and in-house  projects as well.

Weeks passed by and he tried to pick up all company specific knowledge to get a full overview of IT operations, which is essential to lead the IT team. To his surprise he always bumped into resistance from the colleagues to get a more thorough overview of IT individuals’ daily tasks. Especially there was a Senior Software Developer  (later used as SSD) who had been working for the company for more than 15 years and made himself unavoidable in the most crucial IT processes not handing over information and skills to the rest of the developer team.  I guess you -as reader of the article - are not surprised to hear that typically he was the first one constantly complaining how overloaded he was, so he kept postponing induction meetings with my client until 1 month passed by.

That was the time when my client decided he would like to discuss the situation with the Managing Director of the company, which happened few days later. The MD said that my client should not push the SSD, he had serious deadlines with the highest priority. The MD also added that my client should reach the full honor of the team all by himself showing his strong technical competences as CTO.

To cut the story short, my client acted in his role; invited colleagues into a meeting to proceed with few responsibilities and building up the missing  IT functions. His initiative ended up to a big conflict with few subordinates who did not understand why he wanted to intervene to their jobs as Project Manager. This made it clear for him that he was communicated to be a PM rather than CTO by the Managing Director. Later it turned out that the MD had no intention to back him up to clear up the situation, but left him in a stressful status seemingly not having clear picture what information his colleagues had about the IT roles.

After taking into consideration all possible alternatives of handling this situation he decided to reveal the original assignment given by the contract with the SSD showing the reasons of all his actions made so far.

The SSD was surprised, started to act as a leader with other colleagues of the IT team despite he always wanted to avoid a leader role before. He went  to the MD telling that he would resign if he got a direct boss at all. Then the MD decided to cancel the position and made my client redundant.

The whole story was full of uncleared information, surprises, deeply rooted personal interests and needs thus totally flooded by emotions. Probably I don’t have to list all those barriers, which created a situation full with tensions. Just to mention few, which others can also face while starting at a new workplace:

1. The SSD who has never handed over information to others in order to make his role essential; and who got used to already so much to the freedom of working by his own, protecting the existing organizational situation; creating a trap and unquestionable power and dependency to the company.

2. The MD who did not communicate clearly the role of the new entrant in order to avoid internal conflicts, and even later he was not willing to stand up for his own original idea thus leaving the new employee without support. He was too weak to indorse his will against the rebelling senior colleague and left without tools to handle the situation.

With sharing this situation my intention was to raise few questions of leadership. It can happen also with you that you might face with tough challenges to cope with, you do all your efforts, but when it turns out that the organization and few relevant co-workers have conflicting values than yours, you might better leave and restart finding a job you could do with a smile day by day instead of constant uncertainty. So did my client, he decided to look ahead and after few month he found a job he was satisfied with.

With my client in the beginning we worked on clearing up his ambitions and career goals, strengths and successes he can show off. Then after starting the job the coaching sessions where about how he could create honor and sympathy of colleagues, analyzing situations, but more importantly putting the focus more on possible actions he could take. He regularly made self-reflection what went well and what should be developed and learnt, and gradually got more and more conscious about his own needs and assertive rights. (He approved to use his case for this article.) Krisztina Kárpáti-Kincses (Chris)

People rarely achieve success in activities they don’t enjoy              

(Photo by nappy from Pexels)

Would you like to oversleep for awhile? Should you do activities you don’t like, or don’t you have enough mental energy to get up? Sometimes even the weather is depressive. But you must be great to overcome yourself! We have to go to work even when our cart does not want it. We can dream about how good it would be to live our lives in the eternal summer, but in vain. We have to work. Our job and our managers are waiting. Even the managers can feel the lack of motivation from their colleagues. But they have to find out how anxiety can be dissolved. How they create a balance between work and private life that creates work efficiency?

As an employee, you may work like hell, but still, do not feel success and satisfaction? Are you enthusiastic about your work, which is never over? Are you lost, when you do not spend your time with your work, but with your hobbies or relaxation?

The ability to inspire and motivate is the most important tool for leaders, to dissolve anxiety and stress.

Effective leaders know how to create an inspirational atmosphere to enhance individual and team performances. Most of the cases motivation focuses on benefits and prestige, but social attachment, attention, feedback, care and recognition of performance are the most motivating tools of development. After a storm comes a calm As a leader, how can you get your colleagues to enjoy their work? Is there a way to create an anxiety-free work? Some tips to give a good sense of leadership to your employees. 1. Morning dancing or gymnastics: many places it is done by colleagues. Invite them to the largest meeting room, turn on a good spinning music and ask them to go for a loosehead/arm/waist circumference, maybe a five to six-minute, office-wearable muscle relaxant, with a fussy motion. The purpose is to smile and move. 2. Invite them for a common meal: in most places, the canteen is the central gathering place. Take some healthy snacks in the morning (fruit, dried fruit seeds, whatever simple breakfast you can figure out). Let’s tell our colleagues that we want to roll their day. Get together for 10 to 15 minutes, have a drink, teas, talk about the weekend - they already feel the care they are going to be grateful for taking the lead in stress relief. 3. Talk to colleagues: Most bosses rush during the day or behind a closed door. On such a day when we are not too effective, let’s go to our colleagues’ table, ask them what they are, what’s going on in their life, ask them what their daily lives are like, what’s their plans for the weekend, and so on. Colleagues appreciate the attention and if they succeed in remembering something good in the conversation they will feel better. 4. Let’s help our staff in their work: if there is something ahead, we may have just forgotten how to do that, we should sit in our staff for a half an hour. During this, you can talk, ask, see that your work is important to them, and strengthen their engagement. It is important for the staff that they know that you value your work, you are attentive to your state of mind, support them to feel good in their lives. Andy Andrea Farkashegyi

4 Solutions to Forget Forgetfulness Do You Forget Important Things

(Photo by nappy from Pexels)

Meetings, discussions, which are likely to be fixed on an agenda or memo.

Nevertheless, those memos usually don't fix responsibilities and deadlines.

Then what happens frequently? Everyone goes back to work and the agreed arrangements and tasks are somehow forgotten. Not from malice, things and to-dos simply have such a nature.

They like to be hidden, behind the big brothers, the so-called Important and/or Urgent Tasks. And those Big Brothers pull themselves out as good brothers, hiding the little ones.

Then we try to recall hopelessly, why the discussion was there we were left, and how are we going to do it, and what a hell is the job to be done?

Later on, if the head of the discussion asks about these tasks sooner or later, the team can be swirling, pounding, shaking, explaining, and firefighting.

Modern technology offers a numerous solutions, thousands of applications, apps, and artificial intelligence solutions. But we still may forget what we wrote and where is the post-it we wrote about what we wrote in the app.

And this can be done endlessly. We keep records to keep track of records, and it seems to be no solution. But for you who are the leader in the given area, you have to find something against forgetfulness.

There is no uniform solution which fits for everyone. There are people who believe in the old-school methods - preparing reminders, things-to-do list, or using personal assistants.

Some people are juggling timepieces excellently, and some trust in their IQ.

And some of them really never forget anything and deliver their tasks on time.

However, most of us struggle simultaneously to manage the business, to lead our people, and to live our lives including friends, family members, sports and hobbies.

Sooner or later we realize that our memory capacity is not infinite, we simply cannot remember everything. We can’t stay focused, our capacity is limited.

 There are some techniques that can help keep things in mind:

1. Make a priority list on the wall that you see every day. This can be a flipchart table or an A3-size list that you can look at. It will let you know what's on the agenda, and help you stay focused on topics you want to move forward. Focus on the 3-4 major subjects.

2. Appoint a person who is responsible for preparing a reminder for meetings, checking open tasks, and coordinating with topic leaders - as a kind of project leader. Look at the tasks briefly and essentially with them weekly.

3. Sit down with people and align them your expectations - encourage them to be proactive, following the tasks you have assigned to them. Agree on how often you expect them to report on the progress and milestones, keeping them responsible.

4. Take the time to regenerate yourself, so that your overloaded brain can relax somewhat.Throw away the unnecessary subjects and try to concentrate on the really important elements. Use the creativity, ideas and suggestions of your staff. Organize the tasks systematically.

 Andy

Andrea Farkashegyi

http://be-my-coach.eu/our-coaches

 Harmony in business performance and work-life balance can be created working with our highly-experienced coaches at http://be-my-coach.eu/

Our coaches are here to influence soft skills of managers, to get hard business achievements through their improved empowerment, communication and confidence.

A systematic method which helped in retaining the new generations

What is lean management? It is a systematic method for waste minimization ("Muda") within a manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity. Lean also takes into account waste created through overburden ("Muri") and waste created through unevenness in work loads ("Mura") – says wikipedia.

Nevertheless lean management’s philosophy is  about fully empowered people, based on continuous learning, teaching, development and process improvement - and these are just in line with the growing expectations of the recently approaching generation Z!

What are the expectations of the new generation, called Gen Z, the second wave of Millenials, who were born from around 1996 and recently are just graduated from the different universities?

·         They require, appreciate frequent feedback, daily (if possible), and positive (if possible).

·         They are motivated if the activity they perform is a challenging and interesting experience, they want to find the joy at work.

·         They can be attracted and retained at work if the feel the meaning of life, or at least the meaning of their work.

·         They are looking for work relations, which are based on partnership, respect and trust.

·         They like interactivity in communication and the can be addressed with brief, consise and visualised messages.

Nevertheless in most cases they do not find these all, therefore most of the employers face extremely high attrition rates as a quite new phenomenon. Banks or shared service centers work hard to cut the recent 30% (per annum) people turnover targeting to drop it to 8-10%, with no result at all.

 What is the reason behind the recent high attrition rates? How the new generations (who are highly educated, extremely creative, innovative and tech-savvy) can be attracted and retained?

One of the answers can be given with the tools of a well-designed Lean Management. Why?

·         Because the focus of Lean is to empower people, maximizing their useful capacities, minimizing loss of time, energy and materials.

·         Because Lean is about brief, clear, short and concise communication, using One-Pagers instead of long and boring e-mails, presentations and word documents.

·         Because lean is about continuous improvement proposals (Kai Zen) which can revive and reshake the fantasy of the young generations!

In fact the new era, called Industry 4.0, requiring Leadership 4.0 will need very new approach from the managers and leaders soon.

When the new, innovative technical solutions are to be brought by the new generation, there is no more room to give direct instructions, because the technical and operative competence of the managers will never any more be in line with the competences of those who have to deliver the solutions.

This gap can be filled in with a very new leadership aproach – by managers who behave more like coaches, and less, like bosses.

„To lean or not to lean” – that is the question now!

This can be the winning slogan of the success in management, to attract, motivate and retain the new generation of employees.

 Let ’s explore the endless opportunities in lean management by Managers who behave like Coaches!

Bee

Beata Schaffer

http://be-my-coach.eu/our-coaches

Harmony in business performance and work-life balance can be created working with our highly-experienced coaches at http://be-my-coach.eu/

Our coaches are here to influence soft skills of managers, to get hard business achievements through their improved empowerment, communication and confidence.

15 Minutes Key to Success: Measure Your Self-Awareness & Authenticity!

“15 minutes to fill in, in comfort, sitting at my computer and then I just received a book of 76 pages with the results… And is it valid for 99%?! How great this is! I was really surprised, even stunned… how is it possible?!”

– it was told me on the phone by an executive the other day when we had just started the feedback session. That type of detailed feedback session is a must in the case of Innermetrix ADV personal profile report results, to help understand the fine details of the results.

Well, 15 minutes is perhaps a world record, we advise normally 20 to 25 minutes for the online fill-in but to make it quick, from the guts, is, in reality, a good move while it ensures the best possible authentic results…

 “We make the not-seeable measurable…” - says our motto and the Certified Innermetrix Consultants experience the truth of this at the feedback sessions. The clients are each time in that extent surprised by the power of the tool-kit.

What the fine world! With this personal profile about

-              behavioural patterns (how the others are seeing the client),

-              motivation profile and

-              natural talents about how the client is thinking, and deciding in life equipped with a versatile ally in his/her quest for work, a better relationship, better life.

 It can be used in everyday life, in work (in the improved relationship with my superiors, peers & reports). And yes, you can use it in private life too, you will better understand yourself, your relationship, your wife/husband & children and relatives. It helps you advance in your career, chose your work, better understand what is for you in life.

 Against the common belief, there are no personal strengths and weaknesses, there are only possibilities, talents and non-talents. Which one you develop, you will have strengths or weaknesses… Innermetrix ADV riport helps you identify your talents and non-talents, and it is then your turn to use them appropriately, to chose what to develop, what type of activities/work to chose to accommodate, to be able to ample use your talents.

 In a big study (“What’s your genius?”) the authors of the tool-kit at the beginning made a survey in the world of very successful people (almost 200,000 of them). The authors searched the common personality traits what every one of them possessed. Only two were identifiable: self-awareness & authenticity. To be more self-aware, you must know yourself, you must know your talents and non-talents. To be more authentic you should develop your talents into strengths and use them abundantly, i.e. chose your activity where these strengths are making the difference.

 This tool-kit is based on very established scientifically tested and verified principles. There are three components to describe a personality in the working: what are your natural thinking/deciding talents, what motivates you to use them and what is the way you live and express them. Your complete profile. It’s valid for long years, therefore it is a valuable investment to make. And if you do it for a group of people who are working or living together (in work, in the family, in an association, etc), the reward is even higher both for the individuals and for the group. It boosts cooperation, trust, better relationship and consequently better individual & group results.

 At the end of the feedback session, each client is receiving (even can do it for him-/herself) a so-called talent-statement what summarizes in a very personal way the detailed results. And you can show it on the interview when you are asked about your strengths, voilà, here is my talent-statement. And if they ask you, from where it is, you just say: “From a very authentic, scientifically tested & proved source, from my Innermetrix ADV report…”

 Nick

Miklos Szilagyi

http://be-my-coach.eu/our-coaches

Harmony in business performance and work-life balance can be created working with our highly-experienced coaches at http://be-my-coach.eu/

Our coaches are here to influence soft skills of managers, to get hard business achievements through their improved empowerment, communication and confidence.

Create a relative calm in the midst of everyday chaos!

 We need energy, we need relative calm & balance to be effective. But we are  always „bombed” with information, questions, advises, potential conflict-triggers, etc. from any directions both in work and in privat life. We need then be able to create our dynamically balanced world...

 Let you read a beautiful short story:

„The picture of peace...

There was once a king who offered a prize to the artist who could paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all of the pictures. After much deliberation he was down to the last two . He had to choose between them.

One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for the peaceful mountains that towered around it. Overhead, fluffy white clouds floated in a blue sky. Everyone who saw this picture said that it was the perfect picture of peace.

The second picture had mountains too. These mountains were rugged and bare. Above was and angry gray sky from which rain fell. Lighting flashed. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not appear to be a peaceful place at all. But, when the king looked closely, he saw that behind the waterfall was a tiny bush growing in the rock. Inside the bush, a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest. She was the perfect picture of peace.

The king chose the second picture. „Because,” he explained, „peace is not only in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work.

Peace is in the midst of things as they are, when there is calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace.””

(Lisa Bloom, herself being also an excellent storyteller is quoting this little story what she had heard from Suzy Wolf storyteller... - from Lisa's book of the „Cinderella and the Coach”)

Work-life balance, dynamic harmony... If you are waiting for everything to finally settle down in order that you could have harmony in your life, well, your life might be too short...

That’s the reason that you’d better search for a dynamic harmony „in the midst of things as they are...”.

And that is one of the possible goals for searching a coach who will support you to start to find your special personal harmony-matrix... 

„A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...” – as Lao Tse said.

Who knows, perhaps this first tiny step will be to find your coach.

Miklos Szilagyi

Nick

Harmony in business performance and work-life balance can be created working with our highly-experienced coaches.

Our coaches are here to influence soft skills of managers, to get hard business achievements through their improved empowerment, communication and confidence.

Dream job or nightmare?

More than a year ago I had a coaching client who was ambitious to find a super interesting job, full of challenges, in line with his competences, but still with personal growth opportunities.

After few months he managed to go through the steps of interviews and got a job he thought - that time -would be a dream job.

He was extremely excited and ready to jump into the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) with strong IT experience in different fields of IT management, having relevant leadership experience as well.

The situation turned out exciting when he was introduced to the team as Project Manager during the first 2 weeks. That was a bit strange for him, but he knew that partly he was required by the job description to lead international and in-house  projects as well.

Weeks passed by and he tried to pick up all company specific knowledge to get a full overview of IT operations, which is essential to lead the IT team. To his surprise he always bumped into resistance from the colleagues to get a more thorough overview of IT individuals’ daily tasks. Especially there was a Senior Software Developer  (later used as SSD) who had been working for the company for more than 15 years and made himself unavoidable in the most crucial IT processes not handing over information and skills to the rest of the developer team.  I guess you -as reader of the article - are not surprised to hear that typically he was the first one constantly complaining how overloaded he was, so he kept postponing induction meetings with my client until 1 month passed by.

That was the time when my client decided he would like to discuss the situation with the Managing Director of the company, which happened few days later. The MD said that my client should not push the SSD, he had serious deadlines with the highest priority. The MD also added that my client should reach the full honor of the team all by himself showing his strong technical competences as CTO.

To cut the story short, my client acted in his role; invited colleagues into a meeting to proceed with few responsibilities and building up the missing  IT functions. His initiative ended up to a big conflict with few subordinates who did not understand why he wanted to intervene to their jobs as Project Manager. This made it clear for him that he was communicated to be a PM rather than CTO by the Managing Director. Later it turned out that the MD had no intention to back him up to clear up the situation, but left him in a stressful status seemingly not having clear picture what information his colleagues had about the IT roles.

After taking into consideration all possible alternatives of handling this situation he decided to reveal the original assignment given by the contract with the SSD showing the reasons of all his actions made so far.

The SSD was surprised, started to act as a leader with other colleagues of the IT team despite he always wanted to avoid a leader role before. He went  to the MD telling that he would resign if he got a direct boss at all. Then the MD decided to cancel the position and made my client redundant.

The whole story was full of uncleared information, surprises, deeply rooted personal interests and needs thus totally flooded by emotions. Probably I don’t have to list all those barriers, which created a situation full with tensions. Just to mention few, which others can also face while starting at a new workplace:

1. The SSD who has never handed over information to others in order to make his role essential; and who got used to already so much to the freedom of working by his own, protecting the existing organizational situation; creating a trap and unquestionable power and dependency to the company.

2. The MD who did not communicate clearly the role of the new entrant in order to avoid internal conflicts, and even later he was not willing to stand up for his own original idea thus leaving the new employee without support. He was too weak to indorse his will against the rebelling senior colleague and left without tools to handle the situation.

With sharing this situation my intention was to raise few questions of leadership. It can happen also with you that you might face with tough challenges to cope with, you do all your efforts, but when it turns out that the organization and few relevant co-workers have conflicting values than yours, you might better leave and restart finding a job you could do with a smile day by day instead of constant uncertainty. So did my client, he decided to look ahead and after few month he found a job he was satisfied with.

With my client in the beginning we worked on clearing up his ambitions and career goals, strengths and successes he can show off. Then after starting the job the coaching sessions where about how he could create honor and sympathy of colleagues, analyzing situations, but more importantly putting the focus more on possible actions he could take. He regularly made self-reflection what went well and what should be developed and learnt, and gradually got more and more conscious about his own needs and assertive rights. (He approved to use his case for this article.) Krisztina Kárpáti-Kincses (Chris)

4 Tiny Daily Tricks so that Your Job Should not be a Burial!

 (Picture: pixabay.com)

Refresh your creative self! We all want to find the meaning of life and follow our inner drive, even if working from nine to five every day. Let’s wake up, we are adults now, but it is not the end of life, it is just the beginning of our nice life story!

Shall we forget those nice times from childhood, playing endlessly on the ground, even without toys or games? Every piece around us offered a new discovery, a new challenge, and forgetting the pains of the world we could find our flow and joy.

Most often people do their routine work every day in the office. Even if they meet new clients or new challenges every day, at certain point anyone can feel the detachment from the work, when facing repeating difficulties of the daily work’s routine.

Shall we forget those nice times from childhood, playing endlessly on the ground, even without toys or games? Every piece around us offered a new discovery, a new challenge, and forgetting the pains of the world we could find our flow and joy.

Do you remember those magical times in your childhood when you could lose yourself in your imagination?

You could become anything and anyone, and life was full of infinite possibilities and exciting potential.

How could you escape now for a while from the treadmill of the daily work, without losing your momentum to grow towards the one, you deserve to become?

While we are adults, we should not let our thinking get into a rut, and allow our beliefs to become fixed and inflexible. Also, our childhood dreams are not to be buried!

Life is too short to compromise with the given situation!

Let’s share with you some tips and tricks to get closer your purpose at work:

1.        Try out something new every week!

E.g. Follow new ways of transportation to get to the office. Walk a relatively short distance instead of using a stuffed bus, full of dull and angry passengers.

2.        Find new people around you in the office, who can inspire you. Come closer to your intuition and get acquainted with new colleagues from other departments.

E.g. Build some partnership with the ones who are out of the network of your division. Cross-department connections may accelerate the speed of trust and information flow in the business.

3.        Besides your family or pet photos to create a peaceful atmosphere at your desk, bring a new, surprising piece of art to rediscover and share something new about your personality and interests.

E.g. Bring a portrait or reproduction, colourful landscape or any other non-business artwork and place it around your desk for several days.

4.        Take a creative intuition walk around the office at lunch break.

E.g. Decide to focus your attention exclusively on nature, exclude any noise of the city, through of the kind of a meditative plight. It will last few seconds at the beginning, but time to time you can extend, and feel like refreshed, with new ideas.

Why not decide today, to try to reawaken your creativity, and find your inner purpose to live your own life?

Dust your wings off, stretch them, and access the full-hearted joy that comes from remembering from your childhood, that nothing is impossible!

 Beata Schaffer

Bee