| Business challenges - and how to solve them |
|
These days one thing we can rely on is that we don’t know what is around the corner. Whether it’s the impact of the credit crunch, a takeover or merger, cost cutting or expansion into new business areas, these changes bring uncertainty and we wonder what the impact will be for our business and for us personally. In our busy, busy lives, boundaries become blurred. Between work and home for example, with the internet and access from anywhere to our work emails, mobile phones and blackberries - unless you have a strategy in place for managing them effectively. At work we face new challenges to keep up with the competition, deliver new products or services or the same ones in different, more cost effective ways. Perhaps we need to resolve conflict or use influence and persuasion to get things done, rather than ‘command and control’, which may feel more comfortable with. For leaders in today’s organisations, whose responsibility it is to show the way, facing these or other challenges can feel a daunting experience and a lonely place to be. What is available to enable you to stay on top of the business challenges you are facing? Loved ones, friends and colleagues offer advice – their stuff, not yours, and not always what you want, though it may be interesting to hear what they have to say. Many organisations are introducing coaching for their leaders to enable them to resolve challenges and enhance their performance. Coaching is results focussed – it gives you space and time to be listened to, to explore issues in depth and to be challenged and asked powerful questions which create new thinking, options and clarity of purpose. The philosophy behind coaching is that YOU have the answer; you just need the means to access it, which coaching provides. One professional body, the International Coach Federation, states ‘as a result of coaching clients set better goals, take more action, make better decisions and more fully use their natural strengths’. What challenges are you currently facing? And how are you seeking to resolve them? What is not resolving them costing you and your business? Coaching is a powerful experience, so why not give it a try? |
