Pam Madden - Thinking Coaching

Professional 1:1 coaching and mentoring. If you are interested in CPD or Continuous Professional Development and have a Personal Development Plan for work then this blog is for you.

We all have professional development needs whatever stage we are at in our career. Addressed, we will continue to develop and grow in our professional life. Some of these needs can be addressed by a course or reading. Increasingly, professionals are looking for a tailored one to one approach and this is where professional coaching and mentoring comes in.

I thought that I would write about the 3 most common development needs that clients have been using me for as their coach and mentor.

1. Confidence and resilience bouncing back from difficulties. Belief in your ability to achieve a specific outcome. For example, I am working with a client who wants to trust herself to answer tricky client questions rather than needing reassurance and deferring to senior colleagues. The work we are doing started with her practising state management tools until these became a habit or unconscious competence. Now we are working on response strategies and options rather than a reactive "I don't know. I will get X (senior colleague) to call you." To develop her resilience we are literally developing her mind and body strength in a few ways so that she is ready to act in the busiest of times and trickiest of scenarios. We are also using NLP or Neuro-Linguistic-Programming for belief change work.

2. Developing presence. Here I am working with clients on a number of areas including body language, tonality especially word emphasis and avoiding monotone delivery, impactful behaviour and presentation. Clients enjoy resetting or establishing their brand and practising ways to encourage interest from key stakeholders. The key thing here is for it to work as well as being authentic and comfortable for you.

3. Being strategic and decisive. In this area we start with defining what this looks like and the behaviours involved. For example, not micromanaging and planning ahead. We also practice using a number of strategic frameworks and decision making tools.

The point is that we all need to be honest with ourselves and talk about where we are falling short of our potential. By getting real and identifying our development areas specifically, we can address them and get better results. Having discussed this with a number of clients we all agree that when we do this we are honouring ourselves, having self-respect and staying away from the sloppy end of the spectrum!