Alexandra Karlovic

New Year Resolutions

Developping a coaching attitude is not only about coaching others ... It is also about coaching yourself ... One of the easiest self coaching tools to use is setting goals for oneself and measuring them regularly !

Interestingly enough this is something that a lot of people do ... it is called New Year Resolutions ...  Unfortunately most of the time those are great intentions, eventually put down on paper but as time goes by, those so called resolutions are measured end of December right before drafting new ones for the following year.

That is what coaching is about ...

Marcel Proust said: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

Are you getting caught up in your own story?

Something unfair happens to us, that is how we feel about it, and we need to share it ...

We talk to a friend, a colleague and we tell the story with a pinch of interpretation and then we probably tell it once more. Then, for an office issue for instance, we talk about it again with our boss, with our colleagues and counterparts, and we might even bring it up in a meeting.

And the beat just goes on and on and we get caught up in our story. It even becomes a confort zone and that is when you indulge in your story: you eventually blame others or circumstances ...

How do you get out of it? Ask yourself a better question and get into action. If the action you have undertaken doesn't work, try another one until you get out of your story and into your life. Think of what you can do, what you have the control over and where you can make a difference and never settle until your are satisfied.

So, which story did you get caught in and what have you already done about it to change it?

Training today with Jean-Pierre Békier !!

and now some time for me to be trained :-) Two days with Jean Pierre Békier and I am sure so many things to learn. Looking forward to this growing process and the impact it will certainely have on me today and in the following weeks.

Remember, the change happens often afterwards you have been at a training, give yourself time to integrate the new information and process it.

Have a great day !

What is your next goal?

It is all about closing the Gap really isn’t it? Where are you? Where do you want to be? And then, only then, how do you get there?

I have noticed in my coaching sessions and trainings that people often think first of how they are going to get somewhere, they foresee all sorts of obstacles but they rarely know where they want to go and what is the purpose behind it.

This is true for any goal, even in relationships! We have a tendency to think about everything that could go wrong. And then often we get caught up in not doing anything. A lot safer, but so much less fulfilling. We then live a life of reaction. It is all about taking decisions, isn’t it? And I would add not being concerned about making the right decision but just live the moment and learn from it. If that’s not the right direction, at least you will know and you’ll move forward in a more suitable direction for you.

Celebrate your victories, as small as they may seem !

I have been coaching all day a group of managers, one to one, on their action plan. It is a plan that supports them in developing their skills/competences. The idea being of course that they become a better manager once they have mastered those skills.

The skills/competences have been identified following a training, and often an assessment (Quinn, MBTI  …)

The last slot of their action plan is called “Celebration”. In other words how do you celebrate when you have mastered a new skill? How do you celebrate your success? Besides starting their sentences with “if” (I strongly recommend you start those with “when” not leaving any other alternative for your brain), I was blown away to notice that this was the toughest part of their action plan.

Interestingly enough they came up easily with the following sentence: it is part of my job! On the other hand when they do something wrong, boy are they good at underlining it !

Celebrate your successes! If you don’t, who will? Treat yourself to something you wouldn’t do on a regular basis, something nice that makes you feel good.  And celebrate your team’s successes! Be creative,don't just go for a drink, do something fun. Juice yourself and juice them! It will reinforce your self-esteem and keep you and your team motivated.

Goodnight and good luck !

Did you say manager coach ?

Besides coaching being fashionable, you also hear on a regular basis that a good manager is a manager coach. When you deepen the subject you realize that some authors, trainers, schools have clearly put some limits but it is not always the case and this expression can be quite misleading.

I personally prefer to talk of a manager with a coaching attitude rather than a manager coach. Let’s make things clear, a manager cannot be a coach and there is a very simple reason for that:

Did you ask yourself ?

How do you speak to yourself? Are you gentle with yourself or are you tough? Pay attention to how you speak to yourself, you would be surprised to discover how disempowering those inner monologues can be.

When you do something “wrong”, what do you tell yourself? What questions do you ask yourself? If you pay attention closely you will notice that we do indeed ask ourselves many questions, such as: why did I do that? Who’s to blame? Why me? Why am I not succeeding? What is wrong with me?

Well, how do those questions make you feel? Do you feel resourceful afterwards? I don’t think so. The questions we ask ourselves have a great impact on how we feel and how we can focus on better results. Better questions will lead to better solutions.

Ask yourself: what can I learn from that? How can I do better next time? What are my choices? What are the facts?

Have a look at the choice map from Marilee Adams from the Inquiring institute and change your life by changing your questions.

Have a great day!

Oh, so you are a coach ?

“Oh so you’re a coach? Very fashionable nowadays, everybody is a coach! ”, “I have coached that friend on his job interview”, “my manager is coaching me on this project”, “we have a coach in the company”, “bahhh coaching is for people who can’t get their act together!” …

If you haven’t heard these statements, I have, and more than once. Coaching seems to be indeed a very fashionable activity to give and to get, everybody talks about it but rarely do people know what coaching really means.