BUSINESS SENSE: Self-reflection, self-coaching (From The Northern Echo)

BUSINESS SENSE: Self-reflection, self-coaching

8:25am Friday 29th August 2008

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WHERE do you want your business to be in a year?

In five or In ten?

What are your wider goals and dreams?

What is working and what is not?

The answers to these questions will be different for each person and every business, but not everyone will take the time to explore and selfreflect.

People wanting to excel often turn to a mentor or coach to guide and train them, in the same way that our Olympic athletes use a coach to fine tune their performance.

The investment in our athletes over the past ten years seems to be paying off.

How often do you get your head up out of your business to take a real look at yourself and what is working and what is not?

When I get bogged down in the business I lose perspective and change can seem impossible.

Sometimes it’s as simple as looking at the issues from a different angle.

Sometimes it helps me to ask one of my team feed back to me what they are hearing and seeing.

First we need to identify the desired outcomes. The chances of getting where we want to will then be directly linked to our ability to untangle the things that snare us and step gracefully over what might have been stumbling blocks.

These could be limiting beliefs laid down in early childhood and not reexamined.

They could be attitudes that impact our choices.

They could be behaviours or absence of good practices, or simply the way we are viewing things.

The good news is that all the above are well within your control if you know how to tackle them.

And if you don’t there are plenty of good coaches who would be glad to guide you.

As the fifth Century BC philosopher Heraclitus wrote: “The only constant is change.”

Issy Crocker

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