Impact Coach Success Articles and Publications

Project 2

Feedback & Evaluation; 06-08-2013

Impact Coach will be publishing articles relating to how coaching and coaching principles can be leveraged for increased motivation, sustained development, success in business and greater significance. Feel free to read and interact with the Impact Coach Community by leaving a comment below, or by visiting the Community Page.

News & Publications

One of the greatest benefits of coaching is that it gets us to reflect on and critically evaluate our current realities, be it our work performance, entrepreneurial projects, or our personal growth.

Questions like, "What would you do differently if you could do this again?", or "What progress can we celebrate here?", or "What do you still need to work on?" help gets the coachee (the person who is receiving coaching), to think outside the box of past and current limitations.

It is good practice to get feedback from your team and employees from time to time. The reality is that if we want feedback we will have to ask for it. Another principle managers and directors need to acknowledge is that unless we establish healthy processes for getting feedback it will generally be unhealthy. It often happens that senior leaders and teams develop blind spots, and coaching brings reality back into focus. Read more>>>

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Leaders need to learn the skill and art of communication. All effective communication starts with the ability to really listen to people, and to "hear" them.

For the following examples of such questions to help us "hear" people I am indebted to Tony Stoltzfus (Tony is a coach trainer and writer of coaching materials of note.)

For feedback on meetings you may ask the following:

"On a scale of one to ten, how helpful was this discussion for you? What would have made it even better?
In sorting out agendas and true priorities when dealing with people, task teams, and projects you may ask the following direct questions:"Are we working on what's most important to you?"
In doing reality checks with those we meet and collaborate with we may give them the opportunity to be really honest with us and ask a question like:"What's the emotional state when you leave our sessions and meetings? Are you energised, overwhelmed, hopeful, discouraged, or what?"

Off course in being this honest with ourselves and others there needs to be a healthy culture of honour and respect. I remember being very impressed when reading the following statement from Dan Sullivan (Dan Sullivan is the original business coach in America) that goes like this, "Unless we really first get really honest with ourselves about the situation at hand there will be no progress". This is quite striking coming from a person of his stature. Read more>>>

Project 4

Effective Feedback; 06-08-2013

Energy and Change; 12-08-2013

Understanding change process, and how the discipline of coaching supports change will take a lot of guessing out of how coaching works and what benefits it brings to any process where change is desired.

Coaching is a proven process since it offers a support structure that adds additional energy and motivation for the client's change goal. In coaching we refer to this as SEA - Support, Encouragement and Healthy Accountability. This SEA aspect is unique to the coaching process and is the key reason why individuals who undergo coaching can do more than they can on their own. Individuals fail not for lack of trying, but because they run out of "motivational steam" for the desired change. Change requires habit change that can take up to 90 or 120 days to be established. It is during this interim stage that people fall back into old habits and unproductive patterns. This is where coaching support and accountability keeps one strong to see the change goals through.

This principle applies to all areas of life from our business to personal lives. Understanding the relational resources that is made available to us through caoching will enable us to atay motivated for longer as we tackle those tough issues that require work and improvement. Read more>>>

December Planning; 10-12-2013

Depending on your industry December and early January is traditionally holiday times, but also the time many of us take stock of the year that has passed, and plan for the year to come. As you engage in this process of review a couple of questions to ask yourself are the following…

What am I really committed towards doing, or achieving, building and establishing over the next 12 months? Being honest with yourself about this should give you vision and desire for those things most dear to you.
What has been the focus of the past 12 months of my life, and most importantly what should the focus be for the next season of activity and achievement?
Which are the things I am really passionate about? What cant’ I wait to get around to? What excites me no end?
Which are my greatest abilities, skills and talents?

The answer to these questions will be like a roadmap helping you plot your course for the next 12 months towards greater satisfaction, fulfilment and achievement. Just remember that merely answering the above questions without committing to real actions and concrete steps will not get you very far. Bright ideas need to be anchored in our dairies or they quickly fade away. Another adage says that great ideas are like "pan-fires", they need to be carried out imediately.

Additional resources in helping you set sail for an extraordinary year ahead is Strength Finder by Tom Rath, and also the Career Direct Assessment for career pathing and clarity. I trust you’ll have a great holiday.

A Crash Course on Customer Service; 12-12-2013

The TEN most important words in customer service.

10 "I apologise for our mistake. Let me make it right."

9 "Thank you for your business. Please come back again."

8 "I'm not sure but I will find out."

7 "What else can I do for you."

6 "What is most convenient for you."

5 "How may I serve you."

4 "How did we do."

3 "Glad you're here."

2 "Thank you."

1 "Yes."

People generally do not care how much you know, (what you sell, or the kind of service you provide) untill they know how much you care!

Employee Engagement Solutions; 15-01-2014

Employee Engagement Solutions - How would you like to have engaged employees who:

Find fulfillment, enthusiasm and passion in their work
Show more attention to detail
Developm a sense of pride and ownership in their work
Pitch-in in areas outside of their own responsibilities
Stay within the organisation; thereby reducing turnover and costs
Help attract other quality employees

Who wouldn't say yes to the above question? Achieving the above is surprisingly easy, if you're willing to commit to this process. Patrick Lencioni shares ideas in his book called "The Three Signs of a Miserable Job", that sheds ligh on dealing with an unhappy workforce. He shares an easy doable strategy for creating an engaged and fulfilled work force that will give you a very unfair advantage in the competive world of work today.

Company morale, very often is a reflecting of the relational health aspect and reveals a lot about the working culture. Coaching seeks to get below the mere performance level and seeks to transform the work culture whereby amazing results are created towards performance, productivity and profitability increases. For more on this process contact Impact Coach for a consultation. Remebre that our work lives is not something to be merely endured, but it should be a grand adventure to be lived and relished.

Clarifying Vision By Answering 4 Easy questions; 16-01-2014

How Answering 4 Easy Questions Can Help You difine Your Vision - How would you like your business to have a clear and focussed vision? An on-line business colaborater introduced me to 4 meaningful questions for helping difine personal life vision. I have taken the liberty to slightly adjust these questions to apply them to a business context as well. For more on life focus visit BillZipp.com

The 4 Easy Questions are as follows:

What kind of business will you be?
What kind of relationships will you have?
What will characterise the kind of work you do?
How will you give back?

These questions may seem deceptively easy to answer, but have an amazing ability to catalize and draw out our thoughts. Firstly when coaching clients I ask them how they will position their business in the competitive environment. For example the strategy of low margins but hight turnover might apply. Clients are also asked to answer the question of how they will differentiate themselves from their close competitors. Transformational coaching has as its goal to help clients difine and find a balanced vision for life and work.

Secondly clients are asked to reflect and evaluate on the relational aspect of life and business. Ultimately business is people dealing with people, their needs, aspirations and expectations. It is also said that all problems ultimately boil down to relationship problems. So you need to ask yourself what kind of relationships you want to have with your clients, guests if you're in hospitality, your vendors and suppliers, internal members of staff, industry partners, and also within your management team.

Thirdly clients are asked to consider what they want to characterise the kind of work that they and their companies do. This aspect touches on your services and products. Will they be of quality? What about your work ethic? How will the values that you and your staff hold dear impact on your daily tasks at work. What about the standards you accept and ethical behaviours while you persue increased profits and higher productivity in the competitive envoronments of today?

Lastly we need to ask ourselves how are we going to give back to those less fortunate than ourselves? This shouldn't be something we do for approval or opinions - no rather these things should be contributions we make to better those around us and society. These actions should resonates in our hearts. Charity starts at home they say, and also at work. Have you ever thought how you could support a fellow colegue in fulfilling their dreams? We really have become so isolated in our work situations that we hardly know our co-workers and their family set-up any more. Your department could also adopt a project close to their hearts outside of the immediate business concerns. An engaged passionate and interested work force really are a delight to work with.

Companies who take time to difine themselves like this develop an amazing energy and momentum that will astound their competion. I call this the Remarkable Advantage. To be truly successful amidst the chaos of modern life we need a coherent vision that allows our daily activities to flow from this vision we have for our lives and work. The secret is that this is where truly remarkable performances, achievements and productivity and profitability stems from. People who are passionate and purposefull create amazing results that will astound even their critics. Companies like this will have the ability to chart their own course to succcess, as opposed to just "being busy" and left to the wind and waves of circumstance to drive you.

For more information of how you can gain clarity and remarkable advantage for yourself and your management team contact Impact Coach today for a discussion of your needs.