It’s official!! I am an award winning coach!
I haven’t entered awards before and the Woman Who Solopreneur Awards was no easy one to start with as I was nominated for the inspirational category! How do we define what is inspirational? Other women in my category had had life changing events and had overcome adversity and all had very successful businesses. These women are worthy winners and surely any of us inspire others at some point in our lives. Working Mums and Dads who juggle their successful careers whilst ensuring their families are happy, entrepreneurs whose mindsets and creativity inspire others to come out of their comfort zone, children who go through hardships with a resilience us adults find hard to comprehend let alone replicate!
How can we be the judge of who we inspire? The judges found it so tough during the selection process that we were asked to supply a video about who we had inspired! That was so uncomfortable as really we can only judge who we have inspired by hearing it from others. Do you notice how you inspire others? It may be the junior associate who wants to be as eloquent or challenging in meetings as you are, maybe your boss who admires how you have such great work-life balance, maybe your son or daughter who laugh at your bad jokes but secretly hope they will have the same relationship with their own child.
Quite often we focus on the negatives, and imposter phenomenon really does reside in minds of those who do not take note of the good they do. Dr Terri Simpkin is the founder of www.braverstrongersmarter.com and helps us to understand imposter phenomenon better! We brush compliments aside thinking the person is “just being nice” and recognise the strengths in others without taking the time to see our own. One of my favourite roles as a coach is to help people see the truth. When they have the thought “I don’t have what it takes” for example, and I help them discover evidence to the contrary then for once these senior leaders are happy to prove themselves wrong! CBT is just one of many ways in which I do this and methods such as this that I have learned since retraining in 2014 to become an executive coach enabled me to win this award. Used correctly, these tools equip people to see for themselves what they are capable of and this is inspiring!
I was way out of my comfort zone applying for the award following my nomination but as I often quote, didn’t the water bug have to leave the cosy river bed to become a dragonfly?
If you want to know how you inspire others, start taking notice of the three Cs, three ways to know you are on the right track:
- Compliments- don’t brush them off and undervalue the opinion of the person complimenting you, it is rude to them and especially to you!
- Conversations- Notice how sharing your own stories of challenge inspires others. Listen out for the tiniest pieces of evidence that you are inspiring and note them down.
- Connections- Behaviour breeds behaviour. It is no accident if you have amazing friends, you must be doing something right! Look at the people you are connecting with and how much they inspire you. If they don’t, then make way for new ones!
For more information on how we can support your highly valued partners and executives, please contact Rebecca on +44 (0)1926 485 465 or +44 (0)7930 147799.