It's a small clothing company in America but its mission statement has become famous. I'm grateful to Craig Ballantyne at Early to Rise for telling me about this. So famous is its mission statement that it has had it printed and now sells it as a poster. Would anyone want to buy the mission statement of your organisation? They usually don't inspire their own workforce let alone a nation or a global community. That's what's happened at Hostee however.

 

Whenever I begin talking with managers about using a coaching process to motivate and inspire higher levels of performance in their people, there's always a hesitancy.

They know they need to give feedback and do performance appraisals whether they like it or not but they see coaching as optional and discretionary. More importantly they don't feel they could do it.

This feeling of inadequacy is more about them misunderstanding what coaching is, than it is about any real inadequacy on their part.

In 2008, Blessing White did a very interesting global study on coaching - The Coaching Conundrum. One of the important results in this study is very relevant to what we are talking about here.

They asked survey respondents to think of their "best coach" and then think of the one coaching action by that manager which they most valued. These were the answers:

20% - Stretched me beyond what I thought I could do.

18% - Asked questions to help me think through and solve work challenges on my own.

13% - Guided me by sharing personal insights, learnings and experiences.

10% - Treated me as an individual, understanding my unique needs.

10% - Recognized my talents and accomplishments.

9% - Provided useful feedback to help me achieve my career goals.

8% - Was candid; told me what others would not.

8% - Helped me understand where I could make a difference in the organisation.

4% - Established clear performance goals for me.

None of the respondents expected their coaches to have all the answers. What they wanted was something quite different.

Managers can take each of these points above and use as a guide to best ways to work with their people because a sizeable group of people have found these to be helpful.

 

 

If you’ve ever been working out with a personal trainer, you’ll know what it is like to be stretched to the limit? They always want us to go that bit further than we think we are capable of. They stand beside us and coach us to keep going. “But I can’t”, we say. “Yes, you can. Don’t stop. Stay with it. You can do it. I know you can.”

What happens? We do stay with it. Yes, we can do it, but we didn’t think we could. We wouldn’t have done it either unless we had someone beside us who believed in us more than we believed in ourselves and coached us.

We are all like sticks of dynamite. The power is on inside us

.....but nothing happens until the fuse gets lit.

That really inspired me when I first read it. It is just so true. I really believe that every single person has something special and unique inside them. The reason why some are able to develop that and show it to the world is because they light the fuse. That's what it means to empower ourselves. No one else can empower us. We have to do it ourselves. Others can encourage, support, motivate and inspire us, but only we can take that final step and light the fuse. When we do that, we take off. All those talents and all that potential we have inside us is activated and released. Some people think the word "empowerment" is an old word belonging to the 1970s when it first emerged in popular jargon. I certainly don't think that, especially when my main business is called "People Empowered". More than ever today, in the midst of a complex, uncertain, ambiguous and paradoxical world, we need to be able to believe in the "power within" which is what empowerment is about. We can very easily be overcome with fear, doubt, frustration, disillusionment and depression and never even explore the breadth of our inner resources.We never experience what it means to stretch ourselves to the edges of our potential.

So, if you want to light your fuse, if you want to be more than you already are, if you want to explore all the possibilities that are in your life, then there are some things you need to do first.

• Discover what your dream is, either personally or professionally. Set yourself some goals and give them a deadline. A goal is a dream with a deadline. If there is no deadline it usually remains a dream. If there is no dream, the goal remains a dead-line!

I am including here the url of my blog  for IWD 2008 if you'd like to re-read it.

I discussed what I had to be proud about being a woman in Australia in 2008.

http://womenleadingthefuture.com/blog/empowering-women-international-womens-day-2008

 

I still remain proud - even more so - for the same reasons.

One of the people I wrote about was Chief Commissioner of Police, Christine Nixon. We have in recent weeks seen her retire as Chief Commissioner of Police to be appointed to lead the recovery effort following the devastating Victorian bushfires - an inspired appointment.