Support a worthwhile charity, get a complimentary coaching session

This week's Save-the-world Sunday post comes a day early, in order to bring you news of a special offer.

On August 9th I'll do my first City2Surf 14km race in Sydney, from Hyde Park to Bondi Beach. I want to raise as much money as I can for a cause that's dear to me, the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), in support of their efforts to help protect animals around the world from cruelty.

THE ASK: I'm seeking sponsorships of my race-for-charity. Any amount is gratefully accepted - even $10 donations add up - and you can donate from wherever you are in the world by credit card at the fundraising page.

THE OFFER: if you choose to donate AUD$50* or more, tmc will offer you a complimentary 1-hour coaching session. No further obligation is required - just make a donation and we'll book you a coaching session at your convenience. That's it!

*that's about £25 / €28 / SEK310 / HK$300 / S$57 / CAD$45 / US$40

So...with just one donation, you get four things at once:

1. A chance to try out coaching, if you've not done so before, at a knock-down rate
2. Feel-goods as you help a deserving global charity to improve animal welfare
3. The one-on-one attention of an experienced coach to address an issue that's real for you today - and walk away with practical actions to do right away
4. And as a charitable contribution, it's tax deductable!
   

Why coaching?

Coaching will benefit anyone who wants something and has not yet been able to get it. It is a structured way to renew your focus, better tackle your challenges and identify how you can make the best use of your efforts and resources to get sustained results over a period of time.

Todd asks great questions - pertinent and provocative. Then makes sure you work through to a good answer. ~ Paul Z. Jackson, Owner, The Solutions Focus

In the same way that top athletes have coaches to help them realize their full potential and improve their performance, coaching helps you to be your best. Far from being a remedial step or an admission of weakness, having a coach is a useful way to head off potential issues before they impede your performance, drawing on your existing strengths to get results.

At the outset of a new project it is also invaluable in setting the right course so that when storms blow up along the way, you will already have the means in place to handle them and not get blown off course or overwhelmed.

GETTING THINGS DONE
Coaching...gave me real clarity and focus, which was just what I was needing at the time. After just one coaching conversation, I found that I was better organised, and managing my time much more effectively. Over time, I have found that the tools I gained have stayed with me, even if my method has changed. ~ Linnet Good, writer and entrepreneur, Goodscribble

How does coaching work?

You will draw on your own experiences as you “think out loud,” with the added benefit of an impartial outside point of view for fresh perspective. Through skilled work as both a sounding board and source of positive support, a coach can help uncover your own hidden insights and ideas. An ongoing coaching dialogue also makes it more likely that you will follow through on your commitment to do the actions you know need to be done.

A coaching session gives you that all-important pause to get clarity on a course of action, identify useful and practical ways forward, and follow up on those actions to get the maximum possible learning benefit from them.

ACHIEVING BREAKTHROUGH INSIGHTS
I've found Todd's coaching consistently excellent, in one session helping me reach a goal I'd been striving towards for 15 years...in a field with which he had no previous experience! He is very creative, and generous with his time, energy and ideas. He is both very professional and excellent company. Time spent with Todd is time very well spent. ~ Sakya Kumara, Training Manager and Coach, windhorse:evolution

Some practical examples

Coaching can help if you’d like to develop your skills in any of these areas:

• assertiveness in business and personal situations
• negotiation to get the outcomes you want
• having difficult conversations with co-workers or partners
• using effective persuasion and influencing skills
• leadership development
• becoming a better manager
• coaching others to help their performance/business focus
• time management and priority-setting to get things done
• business planning
• strategy execution to turn your plans into reality
• decisiveness in knowing what you want and how to get it
• cross-cultural (or other) communication challenges
• presentation skills to deliver your message with maximum effect

And if you want to:

• get “unstuck” from current dramas
• achieve breakthrough insights
• handle conflict in a no-dramas way
• interact more effectively with other people
• set a course that’s right for you and stick to it
• get your business in shape to achieve its full potential

For more details about how coaching works and who it's right for, read more about solution-focused coaching.

LEARN TO FIND YOUR OWN WAY FORWARD
I write to sincerely thank you for the coaching...invaluable help in that I've realised it is not what you can do for me, rather how you enable me to do it for myself. When I talked with you this afternoon, on more than one occasion I answered my own question. That fact alone speaks volumes for your skills. ~ Tom Pattinson, Operations Manager, British Nuclear Group

What to do next

Please make your donation at the fundraising page and then to contact me directly to schedule your coaching conversation. Also: encourage your friends, colleagues and anyone else you can think of who could put this offer to good use - to make a donation as well.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
A talented communications professional who understands the importance of smart questions, thoughtful listening and flawless execution. Clever, focused and thorough, Todd is a pleasure to work with. ~ Andrew Cole, Manager, Bell Canada

**Remember, the donations support a worthy global charity, with a tax receipt issued directly to the donor.

Thanks - I hope I can count on your support of my efforts and look forward to speaking to donors very soon...or at least once I've recovered from the 14km race!
tm
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A positive New Year's resolution for 2009

Greetings from one of the places where the New Year 2009 had its earliest beginnings: Sydney, Australia. I sincerely wish my readers health, happiness, growth and learning this year - and I hope that you look forward to achieving your goals even as you appreciate the good things that happened for you in 2008.

At this moment of good intentions, hopefulness and a fresh start to the year, I'd like to suggest a New Year's Resolution that I know will bring delight and greater happiness to those who decide to have a go.

Like most things that consistently work well, it is based on common sense and is not very complicated. In my work with both individuals and groups of people, one of the things that has most often delivered positive outcomes and, well, there's no other word for it, a "feel-good" atmosphere is: the practice of offering sincere, positive feedback to other people.

The Affirm

The technique that describes how to do this most effectively comes from the world of solution-focused practice and is described in the book The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and Change Simple (Jackson/McKergow 2002, 2007).

The Affirm is a deceptively simple, yet highly effective tool, one that is based on the principle that people feel better (and in organizational terms perform better) when they are appreciated and their strengths, talents and attributes are noticed in a positive way. Giving sincere, positive feedback is one of the most underrated tools in the box. It seems we are stronger at spotting mistakes and homing in on what’s wrong or not so good. And yet how many of us do not warm to the praise of those around us and feel pretty good as a result?

So is this just a matter of giving compliments willy-nilly to anyone and everyone?

Well, no.

You'll have noted by now that I've mentioned the word "sincere" several times. To identify the sort of compliments that leave people deflated and cynical, rather than buoyed-up and energetic, I invite you to imagine the manager who delivers, with the emphatic two-thumbs-up gesture, a loud: "You guys are GREAT!" Such a comment misses the mark entirely because it is insincere, it's unspecific and it's so open-ended as to be totally irrelevant to the receiver.

By contrast, Affirms work as effective positive feedback because they are:

• Authentic and sincere,
• Specific and detailed,
• Relevant to the context

So if, using these points as a guide, we were to coach our well-meaning manager in the example above, he might revise his comment to the team to sound something like, "I think it's great the way you guys worked together to get that widget proposal delivered yesterday - even though there were different ideas on how to get it done, I really like how you managed to build on each other's contributions and produce high-quality work despite a really short lead-time. Well done!"

By cleansing the practice of complimenting others from the stink of insincerity, this technique helps to create a more positive environment, one where it's OK to give and to receive sincere positive feedback and to look for what's working rather than what's not working. It's not only a great way to mind your use of language to help spread some happiness and positivity in the world, it's an absolutely essential ingredient in effective engagement of people and the creation of high-performance teams in the workplace.

Most astoundingly, it can even be used to turn around some quite negative situations. If someone is complaining or "having a moan" about something, you can even Affirm them in such a way that they actually feel heard and are more likely to stop moaning and get on with something more productive!

Because you affirm the person's underlying strength, talent or attribute rather than the moan itself (which is really just a symptom, a transient reactive emotional state they've been triggered into) you actually enable the person to get back in touch with their higher cognitive and more noble qualities. With a gentle prod you can help them become more resourceful and actually get on the path to solving their own problems instead of inflicting them on everyone around them.

Check out this Affirm activity as an example of how this can play out in real life - from my own experience, I've had great results introducing it to people who very quickly get in the spirit of things and revelled in the challenge of finding the person's positive noble qualities lurking beneath even the most cantankerous moaning and bellyaching.

I wish you every success with your Affirming in 2009!
TM

Growing Solutions Focus in Australia

On January 30th, 2008 my friend Andrew Rixon and his colleagues at Babelfish Group in Melbourne are holding a workshop on "Solutions Focus for Change".

This one day session introduces participants to some of the main principles of the solution-focused approach - one that informs all the work that I do with my clients in my consultancy and coaching practice and has produced both successful results and highly positive feedback.

The workshop features Paul Z Jackson on his first Australian tour. Paul is a co-author of The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and Change SIMPLE . It's an exciting opportunity for those of us in Australia to learn more about this simple yet highly effective methodology from the guy who (literally) wrote the book. You can find all the details here.

**NB: if you mention the special rate code "TMC" when you register you'll qualify for a "mate's rate" on this useful and interactive workshop. Hope to see you there!
TM