Expand Your Potential - Claire Palmer Coaching

Expand Your Potential from Claire Palmer Coaching

Claire Palmer
Executive and Personal Coach

Claire@cpcoaching.co.uk
+44 (0)1403 270108
www.cpcoaching.co.uk

Claire is an experienced, independently credentialed executive coach. She works with inspirational leaders who want to 'fine-tune' their leadership whilst remaining authentic and clients who are in transition whether that's a role, career or life change.

Taking a holistic approach to coaching, Claire's style is a special blend of 'lightness and focus'. She is professional and results-orientated whilst being pragmatic, supportive, intuitive, enthusiastic and positive. She is there for the immediate issues whilst always keeping in mind the bigger vision for her clients.

Coaching Services

Your own confidential strategic partner - Executive Coaching
'Fine tuning' your leadership - Leadership Coaching
New role or other life change - Transition Coaching
The ideal career - Career Coaching
Know more about yourself - Assessments & Tools
Coach Development - Supervision/Mentoring

Coaching Credentials

ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC)
Graduate of CoachU (the largest global coach training institution)
Post-graduate diploma in 'Advanced Executive Coaching' with the Academy of Executive Coaching, London, UK
President of UK International Coach Federation (ICF) 2006-07, past board member 2003-06
Co-chair of the ICF Global Regulatory Committee 2007
Member of Strategic Steering Group for Coaching Supervision project

"As a Managing Director you are often “alone” on the top with your ideas, concerns, and challenges in your business environment as well as in your organisation. Claire has an amazing talent of understanding the very specific in a given situation, thus being able to coach and guide you in the direction which afterwards can appear obvious – but before coaching not reachable. Each coaching session is a step forward in business as it is for your personal development!"
—UK Country Manager, Global Pharmaceutical Company

September 2010

In This Issue
Regardless of your role in your company, assuming leadership confers benefits to all. Read on for how you can become a better leader and inspire all members of your team to step up. As you read through the ezine, please don't hesitate to call if I can help.

Leadership as a Choice
Beyond the Box
Relevant Reading
Today's Quote

Leadership as a Choice

Great leadership doesn't require a diploma or a degree. It's not reserved for some elite group of people.

Leadership can be something for everyone to embrace, from administrative assistant to janitor to manager to CEO. Sometimes all it requires is a shift in mindset: interpreting frustrations at work as opportunities instead of barriers.

Maybe it's time for all of us to step up, to take action and become a leader and, with the support of other great leaders, help make the company (and yourself) succeed.

What Does Good Leadership Look Like?
Leadership is about so much more than strategy, operations and marketing. It's about discovering and understanding each team member's potential (as well as your own) and finding ways to tap into that resource, something many managers neglect to do.

From presidents to generals to sports coaches, the best leaders are often the ones who look outside their own field of endeavour to discover how true, universally successful leaders think. For example, take John Quincy Adams who said:

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

Or Lao Tzu who suggested:

A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

Few employees would argue about the merits of such leadership styles—with the emphasis on encouraging and channelling subordinates' intelligence and passion into the job. But for employers, those styles could also yield positive results. The 2007-2008 Towers-Perrin Global Workforce Study found that if managers recognized employees' untapped energy and ambition and then channelled it, they would increase employee engagement, defined as an employee's willingness to go the extra mile. And that engagement is golden. The study found that companies with the highest percentage of engaged workers also had the highest increased operating income and earnings per share. So by inspiring your staff, you're potentially boosting the bottom line.

How to Inspire Leadership
If you're an employee, how do you step into a leadership role? If you're a leader, how do you encourage staff to step up?

Here are some suggestions:

Trust. Leaders need to create it and employees need to, well, trust. If your words and actions are just lip service, employees will know and steer clear. Avoiding flavor-of-the-month buzz words can go a long way to proving you are genuine.

Understanding. Employee empowerment is not an event, it's a philosophy with specific strategies that allow staff to make decisions that directly affect their job. Employers need to be in it for the long term and employees need to consider how their decisions may affect the company.

Clear boundaries. When the leader is away, what decisions can staff make? Remember, assigning responsibility without authority can be a leadership killer. Make sure everyone knows who is leading whom. If you're an employee, make sure you get clear direction before assuming responsibility.

Encouragement. Second guessing the decisions of staff that have been given the authority to make those decisions undermines the entire process. Will mistakes be made? Of course. But shoot down an employee and see if anyone ever steps up with a critical idea or decision that takes the company's success to the next level.

Empowering employees is a powerful way to motivate staff. It allows them to get passionate about challenges and inspires them to step up with new ideas. It's a win-win situation. Left uninterrupted, this cycle repeats, encouraging passionate and skilled people to step up and make decisions about how to best serve customers or clients, which ultimately benefits the bottom line.

The following questions are designed to broaden perspectives, to open vistas, to widen the lens. There is no one right way to approach them. You can journal about them, talk to friends, create art, ponder them while driving, work out to them--whatever helps you explore "outside the box."

Imagine yourself taking on more of a leadership role at work. What are you doing? How do you feel?
If you're a manager, what could you do to encourage leadership in all the members of your team?
In a sentence, describe what makes a good leader. Have you described yourself?

Announcements

Do you want to take your leadership to the next level but you can't think how to go about it?

Can't figure out why all your achievements are going un-noticed yet you want to do more?

Or you feel demotivated and unfulfilled but you have no idea how to break out and change things?

I now have a couple of spaces available for one-to-one career development coaching.

'Claire's outstanding ability to get crystal clear on what's critical, her flexible approach and her depth of experience means she enables you to develop outstanding leadership skills and be successful and fulfilled in your working life.'

Contact me NOW to find out what's possible and for more information.

About Claire Palmer Coaching
My mission is to "Deepen Your Awareness, Expand Your Potential, Achieve Results". I enable my clients to realize and achieve what's so important for them. The work is geared to each person so it's specifically tailored to you, using tools and assessments where we think they can add value.

I work with leaders who want to 'fine-tune' their style to achieve success. I work with executives who value a confidential sounding board. I work with people who are moving into a new role, new career or life change. My clients can be the chair of the school PTA, senior leaders in organisations, or a young person. Just call or email me if you'd like an informal discussion about what's possible or a complementary coaching session.

Relevant Reading

Just Ask Leadership: Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions, by Gary B. Cohen

How to Sell When Nobody's Buying (And How to Sell Even More When They Are), by Dave Lakhani

The Talent Advantage: How to Attract and Retain the Best and Brightest, by Alan Weiss and Nancy MacKay

Today's Quote

"Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in his justice."
~George Goethals, engineer and general (1858 - 1928)