Newsletter October 09

Helen offers advice on how to beat the blues.
Read the story here.

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Helen's article on being resilient at work

Helen talks about Coaching in the Yorkshire Press.

Helen's article for the Associate for Coaching

Helen quoted while she was doing associate work with Unicus Coaching & Development

October News

This month’s topic is Effectiveness reminding me of the great phrase often used in NLP circles “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” or as Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results“. This month we’ll explore personal and team effectiveness – of course, if everything is working really well already then don’t change anything!

Thanks for the feedback on last month’s questions on Leadership, I hope these will continue to act as a check list for you. I’ve actually expanded a few of the Leadership questions from the newsletter on the website, to promote further thinking. Many thanks to Terry who alerted me to the fact that many of the questions were more ‘closed’ than usual.

Featured Topic: Team Effectiveness

Team Effectiveness

Effectiveness is not the same as busyness. In fact unfocused busyness is not good for business!

An effective team is one that is focused on the things that really matter, using individual and team strengths, learning from its mistakes and having a bit of fun in the process.

The following questions are designed to enable you to explore how you can be more effective in your team roles and how you can take shared accountability for the success of the teams you are part of.

What are you like when you are at your most effective?
How effective is the team at the moment?
Do you understand the role that you play on the team? If not, how can you get clarity?
What are the team priorities for the next few months?
What are your stakeholders' or customers' priorities?
Can you describe what success will be like for the team?
Are you fully committed to the team? If not, what is stopping your commitment?
Are you able to make the time for your team commitments? If not, who can help you do this?
Do you liaise with your team members outside of the formal meetings?
How well do you know each team member and their particular strengths?
How well do your colleagues know you, your background and strengths?
Who do you know least in the team? Can you make time to get to know them better?
How would you rate your listening skills? What can you do to be even more engaged at meetings?
Do your colleagues listen to your point of view? What can you do to vary your communication style to suit your audience?
Are you prepared to admit your mistakes, encouraging others to do the same?
How can you encourage the team to adopt a continuous improvement approach?
How can you inject a little fun into team interactions?
What would make the team even more effective?
What is within your control to influence?
What one thing can you commit to doing for the good of the team?

We are passionate about improving personal and team effectiveness through 1:1 coaching, team development and tailored workshops so if you'd like to explore this topic further please let us know. We are particularly excited about our new Team Effectiveness workshop approach that is run over one or two days. For more information on the two day workshop themes click here.

Activities last month

Team Effectiveness

We ran a successful team event last month focused on empowerment, trust and communication. Unfortunately, the weather prevented us from going outside for the team games but we managed to improvise with ropes and blind folds inside! We also developed a great new Facebook exercise which is super for developing trust and learning about each other.

Please contact us if you’d like to know more.

Being Effective Booklet

I’m very excited to announce that my next booklet, ‘Being Effective’, ISBN: 978-0-9563907-1-4, is in the final stage of preparation for publishing. I absolutely love the process of creating these books and working with Ian who creates the pictures I imagine.I’ll be able to give you a picture of the cover next month – I haven’t seen the final version yet. I hope you enjoy it as much as my ‘Being Resilient’ booklet which I’m delighted to say has now sold 340 copies. Do let us know if you’d like a copy of either booklet at £5.75 each or £5 for more than 50 copies.

What is coming next month?

Next month our featured topic will be Confidence.

Until then,

Warm wishes

Helen