Back to Derbyshire – Resilience

Well…after a few more networking activities down in London with the Ogunte network for women in social enterprise roles and with my old colleagues network ParslowNet, I have made it back up north for what appears to be a bit of an Indian summer. Glorious sunshine has poured in through my windows for the last 3 days and I have spent much of that time in front of my PC setting up and learning how to use Skype (I’m getting pretty techno-advanced these days!), coaching and being coached by the people on my NLP course, reading evermore about dialogue and filling in the gaps by finally getting around to learning Italian. Clearly there has been a weekend as well

Last week was very intense on the networking front and it has taken some time to get up to speed on all the actions falling out of that work. I now have two exciting meetings set up next week to discuss new business ideas and the beginnings of a plan for a training programme design perhaps for a public audience rather than corporate clients forming in my mind. The huge amount of coaching I received and delivered last week helped me to crystallise in my mind some of my own thoughts about business development and new business creativity and I am learning to give myself sufficient space to allow ideas to form and sufficient connections with others to allow them to grow. This is not an easy process for me. I am not renowned for my patience with my own sense of underperformance or for my preparedness to ask for and accept help and I still find both these activities difficult to endure – but I am learning and the feedback loop suggests that the benefits are mutually felt. Andrew Shatte and Karen Reivich in their book “The Resilience Factor” talk about about the practice of “Reaching Out” being a key element in building your long term capacity to weather life’s storms – taking calculated risks and reaching out to new opportunities and relationships. Well….time for me to practice what I preach and do just that…

Asking for help…

Yes I know….everyone struggles with first admitting they need a hand and second asking for one. As a coach, consultant and expert on self motivation, personal development, change and resilience, it is all too easy for me to believe that having the full tool kit means I am able to fix the bus myself, get all the passengers back on it and keep on driving without ever losing a moment of sleep. Not true. Even coaches need coaching and today I had my first formal coaching session in a long time. Now forgive me for saying this as it will sound blatantly self serving, but I call it the first formal coaching session because I actually paid for it! Working in this field means that whether you like it or not, most networking lunches, courses and even social occasions end up with not a small amount of unprompted, pro bono coaching. However, its been a long time since I formally contracted for some support…and it feels very different indeed. The exchange of cold hard cash suddenly encourages the coachee to take the whole thing a little more seriously, to perhaps value the advice more, and for me at least, to feel more motivated to actually do what I commit to do in the sessions. Why is this I wonder? Despite years of occupational psychologists’ research into the loose and complex relationships between financial reward and motivation…why is it still that commitment comes at a price?