Doesn't time fly

I've just realised that it is over a month since I lasted posted to my blog. No excuses, just busy I'm very glad to say. Serious bloggers will note that this is not really good enough and you should contibute something to you blog on a regular basis.


Earlier on today I came across this quote from the mountaineer, WH Murray and really think it is worth repeating its entirety

"Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.'"

I'm off on a family holiday for a couple of weeks. In the meantime why not visit our website www.enfysacumen.com. I'd love to hear from you when I return.

Retreat for Summer Miracles

Indians, we are told, do it more than any other nation. People with religious beliefs often do it once a year. Captains of industry do it less often. You can do it whenever you like.

For centuries, the practise of taking time out to do something different has been recognised as a sure-fire way of recharging your batteries, igniting your enthusiasm and solving problems. In commerce it is sometimes called a sabbatical, others may call it going on retreat, I’ve often called it an away-day.

We could all benefit from this simple procedure, couldn’t we? I’ll even go a step further. You don’t have to spend a week as a hermit on a mountain top. Just one day will release amazing benefits and the best part is that it doesn’t cost anything.

As a coach, I see that many of my clients benefit from this simple change to their routine. When you put a little distance between yourself and your routine challenges or issues, you see them in a different light and from a different perspective. You may even create a few miracles for yourself as a result. These will come as flashes of intuition that can lead you to take the action needed to resolve a problem.

Look at it this way, If you look at something, say an apple, and hold it close to your face so that it is touching your nose, you will see a very small part of it. Hold it at arms length and you will see the whole apple and its texture and colours. Look at it from the other end of the room and you won’t see the detail but you will see it in the perspective of its surroundings and in true proportion. It is the same with issues or problems. You add distance and see them from a new angle.

I know the weather out there this week might not seem like summer, but this is a great time of the year to do this. Simply set a weekday date in your diary right now, when you will take off to the countryside, the hills or the beach. Go by car, bike, train or on foot but go to somewhere that you have never been before and where you can be sure of some space alone. Set off early and plan to be out all day. Leave your mobile phone at home and travel light. Then just wander around for the day, thinking of nothing, focusing on the ‘now’ experience.

Many coaching clients are amazed how easy this is. They are ‘off the leash’ and just by being in a different place they find that their thoughts turn to solutions and answers rather than problems and challenges. You create in life what you think about.

So, make that date in your diary now. Look forward to it, keep it without guilt, enjoy it and return refreshed.

I am always happy to discuss this or other aspects of my approach to coaching, absolutely free of any cost or obligation. You can contact during usual office hours on 01633 769657 or by email.

If you do the same thing, in the same way, you will get the same results. Your away- day summer retreat may be the one enjoyable change that you need to create those spectacular ‘miracle’ results that you know you deserve.

12 Customer-centred tips – whatever your business

1 Serve others or yourself: your choice

We have a choice every day of serving or being self-serving. Too many leaders are self-serving. We need new role models for leadership.

2 What business are you really in?

The financial services industry should aim to be in the "peace of mind" business. Disney doesn’t say "We’re in the theme park business." They say ‘We are in the happiness business."

3 What are your values?

Only 10% of companies set values. Those that do tend to make two mistakes – too many values (research shows people can only handle three or four) – and failing to rank the values. Life is about value conflict.

4 Stop killing creativity

What kills creativity? In large organisations you have to prove that a new idea will become a £50 million business before you can launch it. Those kinds of projections don’t work. You don’t know if it’s going to be a £50m business. I don’t know. Nobody knows.

5 Stop accepting other people’s frameworks

Once you have learnt someone else’s framework, you are bound to think within it. Michael Porter and others will tell you your strategy is based on how you create value through your value chain. But, good strategists by-pass the value chain completely. Michael Dell’s business plan was rejected by his Professor because it defied Porter’s reliance on a value chain. So, Dell launched it anyway. Don’t use frameworks or case studies to learn. Think about the product, service or company five years from now and how it should be. That is where your strategy starts: it frees you from having a limiting framework.

6 Knowledge is obsolete. Sense is not.

It’s not the knowledge economy. The Japanese compulsory education system takes nine years, in which you have to memorise masses of knowledge. That knowledge can be condensed onto a pound coin. But, you can’t automate ‘That sounds right’ or ‘That feels right.’ Today, those two things are far more important than the ability to say ‘That’s the right answer.’"

7 Know what motivates people.

It’s different for different people – including yourself. Sir Steve Redgrave, the five-times Olympic Gold Medal winner summed it up: “Some people train to win. I used to train just not to lose. Know what your motivation is. That’s what will bring consistency of perfection.”

8 You can’t manage customers

I hate the use of the words Customer Management. It assumes we can do things with them. When we talk about Customer Relationship management or CRM, what is the assumption we make? That WE can manage the relationship, that the consumer is passive and a recipient.

9 You cannot market an experience

Just think of high net worth experiences for a moment – a meal in a top notch restaurant, an concert with your favourite band, choir or orchestra, an exotic holiday. The people who sell these things aren’t selling at the cost of provision, because you pay for the experience. You cannot market an experience, You co-create it. It’s contextual and depends on who you are with.

10 We misunderstand customer-centric

Prof CK Prahalad, the distinguished corporate strategist said "Becoming customer-centred does NOT mean the firm becomes more customer oriented. It means the consumer becomes part of the unit of analysis, becomes part of the value creation."

11 No more sectors

Stop thinking ‘sectors’. The consumers decide what sectors they are in, what their ‘portfolio’ is. For example, the individual consumer decides what their personal health portfolio of products and services is – their wellness portfolio – not Merck or Pfizer, who only have 10% of it. When you realise there are no sectors, you can create hybrids. Tesco and Asda are now in financial services. The traditional boundaries are irrelevant.

12 Failure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

“The secret of success is the capacity to survive failure,” said Noel Coward. Failure teaches you about life. My life is, at the moment, much sweeter for it. - Gerald Ratner

Why not let the Enfys Acumen help you develop your business or organisation, have a look at our website for more information about organisational development and executive or management coaching.

Getting out of the grip of busy-ness

Regular readers of this blog, will know that I am quite a keen gardener and I try to spend as much time as I can in my allotment. I often end a session spending a few minutes just sitting on a bench admiring the sunset, listening to the birds, contemplating my seedlings and what I can plant next and recently I watched a couple of bats zigzagging around me hunting for their evening meal, I am in heaven.

However, I am also reminded of how we all get caught up in the grip of “busy-ness.” The compulsion to complete things, meet deadlines, fit in just a bit more and then a bit extra.

This was a timely reminder for me that being “on the go” over a long period of time does take its toll. I am reminded of the stress I suffered before escaping the rat race to start my own organisational development and coaching practice and live my dream.

We are living in times where busy-ness has become the norm for most people - beyond a choice – almost a survival necessity. But where does it end?

Here are some thoughts, reflections and reminders for you:

1 Being constantly busy can rob us from focusing on what is truly important rather than what is urgent along with a consequent list of activities to tick off. Keep an eye on your more developmental and progressive, long-term goals and remember, sometimes “less is more.”

2 Important and nurturing relationships can be overlooked in favour of other more pressing work demands. The quality of those very relationships, which provide us with nourishment and care, can suffer.

3 As much as we may love doing what we do, we are much more than our jobs.

4 Take a few minutes and do a “busy-ness scan”. Where and how might you be over stressing yourself? Watch out for any body signals that need attention. Do not ignore the basics of good health and self-care. This is what will give you the longevity so you keep doing what you love doing..…longer!

5 Consciously schedule time to chill out for some serious rest, relaxation and fun. Down times are good for re-fueling your mind, body and soul. And yes – you may have to re-visit your priorities, time frames, delegation, and practice of saying NO. And as you do this, how about a “gratitude scan” for all that is still wondrous about your life?

So take a pause and get in touch with where you might be out of balance and take some positive and healthy steps to connect with the neglected you.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should keep doing it. If you would like some coaching in your life - management, executive, corporate / organisational or life coaching, why not contact the Enfys Acumen today.

Kicking bad habits into touch

Everybody has bad habits. Everybody – I do, you do, we all do!

Now granted, some people have less than others and some people's bad habits are more grating than those of others, but we all have them. What is great is that we don't have to! Imagine a life where you couldn't change? What kind of life would that be? But we can, so let's!

There are two kinds of bad habits: Those you know you have that others may or may not know about, and those you don't know you have but everybody else knows you have! For the sake of everybody involved we ought to get rid of them all, right?

So how can you get rid of some of your bad habits? The answers simple, but hard. Ask somebody to be brutally honest with you! You might think, "But I'll be embarrassed." Would you rather everyone talk behind your back? Get up the courage and ask. Ask somebody who loves you and has your best interest in mind. Be gracious and don't defend your self. Just accept it and work on it.

What about the ones we know about - which are all of them once your good friend tells you the ones you were missing? Those are the tough ones. How do I know they are tough? They must be tough if you know about them and yet you still have them! If they weren't tough, they would be OLD bad habits! Am I right?

So how do you break a bad habit? How do you kick it into touch out of your life? Here are a few things that must be a part of the plan in order to see that stuff gone forever!

1. You must want them to go. That's right, some people want them to stick around. We have all seen dads choose alcohol over their grandchildren. I’m sure you have seen smokers continue smoking while watching their parents die of emphysema. They don't want them to go. The first thing is to go deep into the recesses of your heart and ask, "Do I really want to give this up?"

2. You do? Good. Step two: Make up a list of all of the reasons you want to quit your bad habits. Make them positive. Make the list long! Start with the really powerful and dramatic if you need to. Now memorise them. Put them in your mind. You are making connections between stopping the bad behaviour with what good things you will get from doing so. If you want to lose weight, then picture yourself slim and looking good in those skinny people clothes! If you want to stop smoking, picture your wife actually kissing you rather than sending you to the bathroom to brush your teeth!

3. Choose. That is right. Once you have the information, this comes down to one thing: It is an act of the will. Choose to do it. Say to yourself throughout the day, "I am choosing to..." Eisenhower rightly said, "The history of free men is written not by chance but by choice, their choice." It is your choice. You can write your history.

4. Take action! Point four is tricky because there are two philosophies about this. One theory is that you must take massive action. You must go all or nothing. Using the weight loss example, this person would go spend hundreds of pounds to join a gym, rework their daily routine and hit the treadmill everyday for a year. They will get rid of all fat in the house. They go all out! That works for some. Others would burn out on that, feel like failures and be worse off than before. They should start out slow, taking baby steps, but working diligently toward a planned goal. This person would decide to start walking three days a week. They would decide to limit dessert to two nights a week, down from seven. See how this works? Either way is okay as long as you get to the goal eventually. Which one am I? The first two people to email me with the correct guess will win four free coaching sessions to help them succeed.

5. Tell somebody. This is your accountability partner. Tell them your goal and tell them your plan. Write it down for them and have them ask you on regular intervals about your progress. This will prove invaluable!

6. Recover from failure. Inevitably most people will have setbacks. The key is to have them be setbacks and not turnbacks! Pick yourself up and get going again. Some people may want to lose 3 stone in weight and after losing two they eat a slap up takeaway. Then they feel bad and give up. Don't! Reset your goal for another two weeks and get going again. Chalk it off to experience! Say to yourself, "Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn."

7. Reward yourself. That's right. You should regularly congratulate yourself by rewarding yourself with some gift to yourself. Start small with small victories and plan a big one when you are finally and for sure over the habit.

Is it that simple? Most of the time, no it is definitely not. Habits are hard to break. There are so many intangibles that it would be hard to cover them all. But this is a simple and workable plan that will help you make great strides if you apply the principles.

For more information about coaching from the Enfys Acumen, why not get in touch today.

Why coach? What's the return for investing valuable time in coaching?

Every organisation has its own approach to performance management and coaching, but more often or not coaching is something a line manager or supervisor does to a more junior member of staff.

At the Enfys Acumen we view coaching as an interactive process. Our approach to coaching helps individuals grow as professionals and contribute fully to the success of an organisation or business. Done well, it can turn performance management into a collaborative process that benefits everyone.

In today's environment of rapidly changing technology and evolving organisations, coaching can have a strategic impact. It ensures continuous learning and develops people to meet current and future needs. Coaching is an investment that you make in developing your key resource, people, for the long-term benefit of the organisation.

About 6 out of 10 (59%) organisations currently offer coaching to their managers and executives, according to a survey of more than 300 companies by Manchester, a human capital consulting firm. Another 20% of organisations said they plan to offer such coaching within the next year.

Here's why

Most organisations need to improve productivity to fuel growth and profitability. Productivity doesn't happen when people are only focusing on the financial or technical issues. They also must build the capacity of managers to help their employees with the intangible elements of human interaction - because the work gets done through personal relationships. The key to ROI is developing and sustaining individual and group behaviours through personal relationships to achieve the desired business results. Executive coaching encourages the organisational development to get this done.

The Enfys Acumen is leading the way with executive coaching and can work with all kinds of organisations and businesses to develop the capability of their staff. Ask us how we can support you to introduce coaching into your workplace.

What makes a successful leader?

No one questions that effective leadership determines the success of an organisation. Management that places a strong focus on high impact leadership can instil trust and passionate commitment to the organisation's goals, mission and vision, even during turbulent times. It is that commitment that drives profitability and success.

How does an organisation define "high impact leadership" today, and how is that different from management models of the past?

The biggest change and trend in leadership has been a shift from a "command and control" model where decisions and orders are dictated from the highest levels to a model that works to inspire and motivate people through empowerment and active participation in decision-making processes.

As a specialist in organisational development, one of the most common requests the Enfys Acumen receives is for assistance in creating a strategic leadership plan that will implement this new model, focusing on identifying and developing key internal talent and linked to succession planning. This is even more critical as organisations become leaner and there is greater reliance on teams.

If you think about of leadership characteristics, there is g an underlying assumption that the individual has to have a good understanding of the business and to have "business savvy."

People skills

Beyond this, however, some of the most important leadership characteristics are strong "people skills," ie ability to build relationships internally and externally, and agility in managing constant change. A strong leader is someone who can create and articulate a vision, but strongly linked to this skill to the ability to motivate people toward that vision.

The emphasis on "people skills" as a critical leadership competency is not surprising. Research into the art and science of effective leadership has consistently identified "people skills" as the critical variable underlying not only successful leaders but organisations that are successful long term.

Effective leadership

What constitutes an effective leader? An effective leader brings out the best in the organisation's people in terms of their aspirations, potential, performance and contribution. They encourage collegial, collaborative and supportive work styles and use this to build strong teams. Leaders seek and welcome feedback and are comfortable analysing both their successes as well as their failures.

Self-awareness

A key component in effective leadership is self-awareness, the ability to recognise and understand your moods, emotions and drives and in particular the impact these have on those around you and the work environment. Leaders who have good self-awareness present as self-confidant without being arrogant, can voice unpopular views and are decisive in the face of uncertainty.

Self-regulation

The second skill is self-regulation. This refers to the ability to manage one's potentially disruptive emotions and impulses effectively, to remain composed during challenging moments and to be able to think clearly and remain focused when under pressure.

The Enfys Acumen’s executive coaching roles bring out the critical importance of self-regulation. One of the more common reasons we are asked to provide individual coaching to an executive is because of overly aggressive behaviour, the "bull-in-a-china-shop syndrome." Typically the individual is technically brilliant, but they leave a human path-of-destruction everywhere they go.

Social skill

Another major leadership component is social skill, which is proficiency in managing relationships and building networks. This includes a number of skills such as the ability to influence and persuade others without coercion, to listen openly, to manage conflict effectively, to inspire and guide individuals as well as groups and being able to serve as a change catalyst.

A leader with good social skill is able to balance business issues with the creative side of the business when there are no longer unlimited resources available. As resources dwindle, maintaining motivation and focus becomes imperative.

Agility

In developing strong leadership skills with the people we work with, another key factor is agility, i.e., the ability to be flexible and adaptable in a constantly and rapidly changing environment. Many organisations are beginning to look at agility as a critical organisational skill, and differentiate this from older "change management" approaches.

In the older organisational models, change was talked about as going from Point A to Point B in a certain amount of time. Once you got to Point B the process was over and that is where you stayed. That model often doesn't work today as changes occur so fast that before you get to Point B, something is guiding you in a different direction Point C, and before you get to Point C it starts changing again.

Agile executives are ones that are able to quickly change their mindset and direction and not stay locked into ideas that forces are indicating are no longer relevant or important. Additionally, agile executives are ones that are flexible in their leadership style and know how to apply different leadership approaches to meet the unique demands of the individuals they manage or the situations they encounter.

The agile leader has to have the ability to lead others through constant change while keeping them motivated and focused. The most effective leaders use a collection of distinct styles--each in the right measure, at just the right time. Such skill is unique and very high-level; and while such agility is tough to put into action, it pays off in overall organisational performance. And the good news is, this high-level executive skill can be learned and the Enfys Acumen can help.

Leadership always starts at the top

The bottom line on effective leadership is that while there are certainly unique business skills, the core of leadership regarding people skills and motivating and inspiring others to a shared vision are the same in most industries. How that occurs or is supported is unique to each organisation and its culture. Regardless of the industry, however, leadership always starts at the top.

To develop leadership in your organisation or business, why not contact the Enfys Acumen today.

Spring Clean Your Life

Spring cleaning has its origins in ancient history. Back then, with no labour saving devices and no electricity, spring marked the start of the season when the weather allowed a complete cleaning of the cave or house.

Since then, the tradition has been maintained but now there is a new angle. It is called coaching and it is, in effect, spring cleaning for your life.

In my view and the view of the thousands of people who receive regular coaching sessions, coaching is one of the most effective ways of staying green and growing instead of becoming ripe and rotten. It is simply a way of looking at where you are now, where you want to be in the future and how you are going to get there.

As a trained, professional coach I help my clients to do just that in a series of one hour telephone conversations at weekly intervals. A few people are able to do this for themselves, but the vast majority find that having an outsider like me to keep them on course is a vital ingredient in their life spring cleaning.

Frankly, I am not interested in how they got to where they are now. The only place that they can start to change their life is here and now. So we focus totally on the future and the actions that will lead to the positive results that they desire.

In the same way that our homes can become musty during the winter months and often look in need of a new lick of paint, so our lives can become a bit tattered and full of mental junk that no longer serves us well.

We all, without exception, carry a load of excess baggage in the form of worry, guilt, fears and false beliefs or expectations. I am a great believer in the power of a positive mental attitude and very few of us ever achieve anything approaching our full potential.

In coaching, clients are shown how they can easily let go of all this baggage to create room in their lives for new and exciting challenges. Many of my clients are amazed at the positive impact that even a small change or shift in attitude can produce. This really is spring cleaning for the mind.

In the same way that the onset of spring is often the catalyst that triggers a burst of domestic action, so a coach can be the catalyst that allows amazing and positive changes to happen.

I am always happy to discuss this or other aspects of his approach to coaching, absolutely free of any cost or obligation. You can the Enfys Acumen at any time or by telephone during usual office hours on 01633 769352.

I am still surprised at how often my clients tell me that their emotional and mental spring cleaning is like a weight being lifted from their shoulders. The joy is that they do it all themselves, I am just there to show them how.

10 tips for developing better relationships

Twenty years ago I qualified as a teacher and my first position was in a residential school for boys who were labelled in those days as emotionally and behaviourally disturbed - an awful label I know and it certainly helped me to realise that labels are for jam jars not for people.

I entered the teaching profession with lots of values and a real vision to make an impact on developing young people. Although I'd had various holiday jobs over the years, this was my first experience of the real world of work. I think at the time I used to see the world through rose tinted specs, but over the next two years my worldview changed significantly and now I realise it wasn't necessarily for the better and has had a very negative effect on my professional life.

The term I started coincided with the appointment of a new headteacher, it was his first headship and even though I am sure he was a great teacher, he lacked a lot of skills in managing and motivating his staff team. I really learnt a lot about how not to manage and motivate people and some of the pitfalls in organisational development.

In the two years I worked at that school, I think I only went into the headteacher's office about three times, one of which was for the actual job interview. I never had any one-to-one support and the only feedback I ever got tended to be negative and involved a ticking off in front of the kids. I'm sure you can well imagine how that made me feel.

Although I enjoyed the teaching side of things I really hated the school environment and couldn't wait to get away from there at the end of the day. I'm sure I used to get on my housemates nerves moaning about my job and complaining or rather in line with my view of life at the time, I would be making excuses for my boss. After all it was his first management position, he was only developing his skills too!

One day things really hit home. I had gone home quite upset and started making excuses for the headteacher again when a friend really pulled me down to earth.

"Stop there!" she said "This man is your manager, he's doing the job because he demonstrated to someone he could do it , he is getting paid twice as much as you are, you deserve to be supported and developed in your role."

I thought right, I either stand up to him or get out of that environment as soon as I possibly can. I chose the latter and at the end of term I was gone, off to pastures new and out of the teaching profession completely. I was escaping or running away. What I resolved in my own mind however was that I would never again expect less than the best possible support from my line manager.

Now I have had several jobs since that first teaching job and have had some great managers and some downright awful ones. What I did however was set myself some very high expectations for the way I wanted to be managed and how I, in return, would manage my staff. When my manager or the people responsible for employing and supporting me didn't fulfil my expectations of them or if my staff didn't meet my standards and in my mind, refused to be motivated and led in the right direction, I would often get myself into a rut of depression and consequently the quality of my own work and impact would suffer. I would be on a downward spiral until I lifted myself out of the situation by moving on to employment elsewhere. Running away again.

Since starting the Enfys Acumen however, becoming my own boss and having no-one else to blame as it were, I have put a huge amount of effort into personal development and understand now that I had placed myself in a position that I was setting myself up failure. Nobody is perfect and managers and staff have a shared responsibility to the team-playing role.

I have written before about teams and how in a team you have some people you are completely comfortable with and others you don't necessarily want to have much to do with, but recognise they too have a crucial role to play. See my blog post on Teamwork and Bicycles.

The rest of this post gives 10 tips on developing better relationships. I wish I'd discovered them sooner. If you are in a role where other people aren't meeting your expectations, I'm sure you'll find them useful:

1. Remember that however unreasonable someone is acting, their behaviour is derived from a positive intention. When you act as if all behaviour has a positive intention behind it, through discovering it, your life will become more pleasant. An example: You meet an angry person and you think how childish and silly they are. But if you were to ask yourself, "what is the positive intention behind this persons angry behaviour?", you could come up with something useful that allows you to feel more comfortable. For instance people often act angry because behind this they believe it will protect them from harm.

2. When you find yourself feeling uncomfortable in an interaction get some perspective by disassociating. In your mind's eye see yourself and the other person interacting over there, rather like you would if you were to see a video film of the situation.

3. Step into their shoes. This is one of the most powerful methods for gaining wisdom about your relationships. To begin, you imagine communicating with the other person, noticing how they talk, observe their facial expressions and so on. You then step into their shoes and see through their eyes and hear through their ears. So of course you will be looking at yourself! Run through a conversation you've had before, that could have been better. Notice yourself and become aware of how seeing things from this other person's perspective gives you new insights into the relationship.

4. What assumptions are you making about the other person? Are you willing to challenge those assumptions? Pick one. What is the opposite of that? eg narrow minded/open minded.
Now imagine interacting with the person with this new attitude.

5. Step into the WE frame: Think about a person you want to get along with better. Disassociate: Picture both of you interacting in your minds eye. Now allow yourself to find a common purpose between the two of you. Of course if you can't come up with anything you can always fall back on the fact that you are just two human beings who are trying to experience more happiness.

6. Funify your boss (or that irritating colleague). Many people experience difficulties communicating with their boss. It's often due to being too serious. So here is a simple, quick way to inject the antidote: FUN! Okay, picture your boss or whoever. And then notice their facial features. What stands out? Is it their nose, their eyes, eye brows, chin? Now you simply exaggerate those features rather like a caricature cartoonist does. Exaggerate and funify it in such a way that it makes you laugh or at least feel better towards the relationship.

7. No Failure, only feedback (or learning experiences.) A really useful way to make beneficial changes is to view everything as a learning experience. So thinking about a relationship you find challenging, notice how you usually respond to the person and then ask yourself, "How else could I respond?" How many different ways could you respond in your interactions? Come up with at least 3 possibilities. This enables your mind to generate more flexibility of behaviour.

8. Often when we experience difficulties in our relationships it is due to focusing on faults. This distorts our perception of the overall relationship, which is really a mixture of good and bad qualities. To re-focus our attention on the bigger picture begin to remember qualities you admire in the other person. Come up with three, picture them, increase the size of the images and place them around an image of the faulty qualities of the person. And remember positive intention, take a look at Tip 1 again!

9. What would be the consequence of staying stuck in the same relationship dynamic with a particular person, say ten years from now?! The fact is if you want to experience better relationships YOU are going to have to change your viewpoints or attitude. It's okay, this can be fairly simple. Imagine stepping into the future ten years from now and look back at that relationship and notice that it has remained in the same stuck pattern year after year for ten years! Looking at it like this, acting as if it could really happen, allow your feelings to arise that make you say, "enough is enough I MUST change!"

10. Think of someone you would like to get along with better. Choose someone of medium level problematic-ness and then read the following questions slowly: Isn't it true that all of the problems that we experience when relating to others is due to OUR feelings? What if we were to change our feelings? This could make things easier couldn't it?

If you are stuck in a professional relationship that is giving you grief in some way, why not try some personal coaching or ask the Enfys Acumen to help with developing a strategy to help your team work together more effectively.

Is your priest or pastor a servant of the Lord or a slave to the church?

As a Christian I am aware of the huge pressures that may be placed on clergy to manage their time effectively, work with limiting resources and deal with the fantastic number of challenges that face them every day from a diverse range of people. I am also aware as a church member, that clergy can often be in quite an isolated position, the kind of management support that is available in other careers and callings may not always be available and it is possible to become stuck in a creative rut or a cycle of procrastination. What I sometimes think of as a slave to the machinery of the church.

If these issues sound familiar, you might like to make sure that your priest, minister or pastor receives a copy of this blog post.

I would be delighted to offer my services as a coach to help your clergy to remain positive and increase their success in their role as a servant of the Lord. More information about the kind of coaching support I can provide and the benefits to the coaching client can be seen on the Enfys Acumen website.

In today’s changing church environment, I am sure you will see how they could be applied to church leadership professions.

As an introductory opportunity I am offering four coaching sessions, by telephone at the client's convenience, for the total fee of £108 (ongoing sessions can be agreed at a favourable rate). Naturally, professional confidentiality will be guaranteed. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you would like to know more.