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Executive Coaching
You are an organization which provides a valuable product or service, possibly in a crowded market or high-pressure environment.
In such a world, you need creative strategies to outwit your competitors or achieve the seemingly impossible; and the personal focus, energy and confidence to carry them through.
This is why Freer Mind is here to help you. We specialise in the combination of bold creativity, strategic thinking, project management and personal coaching that will carry you through to your success.
Business clarity and development
Making you your most powerful weapon
Getting the most out of your limited time
Communication: not so easy after all?
No-one can resist a confident person
Women: command in a masculine workplace
Business Clarity and Development
Your Strategy for Success
Unless you know what you're trying to do, why it is worth doing, and how you're going to get there (especially given the competition out there), you could be wasting a great deal of time, energy and money that should be spent on moving you onwards and upwards.
Full information on how Freer Mind can help you with your strategic planning...
Bold, Creative Solutions
Genius lies in the inspired connection of two or more disparate elements or ideas, but most of us will tend to feel our way along the same old ruts, coming up with ideas that are only one step away from where we are at the moment.
Freer Mind will help you to make those creative leaps that take you to fruitful areas that you didn't realise existed - and you may never think quite the same way again.
So, when you are stuck on an issue, whether it is how to satisfy your business vision, achieve a goal, improve your sales - or anything that needs you to get out of a rut - this combination of coaching and creative exercises will greatly expand your thinking and move you swiftly to bold new solutions.
This service can be run as a group activity or one-to-one.
Executive Development
Making you your most powerful weapon
"It's lonely at the top." Everyone who rises up an organisation learns the bitter truth of this saying. There are fewer and fewer people in whom you can confide - if any at all - and few who understand the pressures of your role and status.
Your persona as Superman or Wonderwoman gets you kudos, but means that you have no place to express your doubts and confusions - and there isn't a soul in the world who doesn't have them from time to time. Doubts and fears weaken you unless they are quickly acted on productively - and if you're going to succeed, you need to be on top form as often as possible.
This is where Executive Coaching comes into its own: you have someone you can talk to as an equal, in utter confidence, and who will help you to gain perspective on your problems and plot a confident course through them.
If there are communication issues with staff, we can help you to find the way to connect with them in their own language, to get the best out of them and give you confidence in their ability to deliver.
Getting the most out of your limited time
There are only 24 hour in a day; there will never be more. Saying 'yes' to one thing will always mean a 'no' somewhere else - and when you are in Senior Management, failure to make the most effective use of your time has an effect on the whole organization's performance.
Find out how to manage yourself to ensure you have focus and your time is spent to maximum effect, even if you are chronically disorganised.
Communication: not so easy after all?
Communication failure is the issue most often cited as the reason for failure - of projects, marriages and businesses. Hindsight is a wonderful thing - but this should be pure foresight: we know that this is likely to be an issue, so why not deal with it at the start? Some communications problems are about people, and others are about the business culture, but they all have an impact.
Freer Mind will show you how to:
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have a well-defined, solid mission and vision, so that the (often unstated) messages sent throughout the organisation are pure, not mixed
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avoid compulsive and undesired responses to certain situations or people
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understand the goals, values and motivations of the other parties so that you can adjust your (written or verbal) communications accordingly
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find and beneficently exploit points of agreement between parties, as the basis of negotiation
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ensure that the more aggressive/assertive parties do not prevent or discourage milder parties from presenting vital information
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adapt your communication style to allow others to feel comfortable sharing information; or conversely, to prevent others from talking excessively.
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map who needs what information, when and how within your organisation and outside
No-one can resist a confident person
Confidence - the root of all success! If you're paralysed by a fear of failure, rejection, insecurity or conflict, we can help you to gain confidence in the value of your goal, your deservingness of wanting it, and your ability to achieve it; plus the resilience to cope with the setbacks which are part of any undertaking.
You will soon discover the trick in confidence: that from that zone you unconsciously send entirely different, positive, messages to people - and they respond positively to those messages and do what you want, thus completing this strange loop. Same product or intent - wholly different response.
Furthermore, sometimes being endlessly nice to people isn't the answer. We teach you how to stand your ground, comfortably, and to respond with humour or firmness, without ever becoming defensive or aggressive.
When you're at breaking point
The quickest way to reduce performance and waste time and money is to have stressed and angry people on your team. The issues may be real or imagined, work-related or domestic - but the effects are the same: a lack of focus, and power you aren't getting from your workforce.
Furthermore, it isn't only the angry person who is not performing: their attitude and behaviour affects everyone around them, especially their own staff.
Freer Mind are supremely skilled at helping people to clarify the causes of their stress or anger, then either view them differently, more productively, or take the positive steps needed to resolve them.
If the problem lies between staff members, we can mediate, helping them to understand the values that are being offended in each other, and to unite them in their common values and goals.
Women: command in a masculine workplace
Top companies have started to realise the value of the so-called 'feminine skills' in business, such as relationship-building. It is far more than fluffy spare-the-serfs do-gooding: it can actually be doing good for the bottom line.
However, many women (the main proponents of these 'feminine skills') still struggle to be taken seriously by upper management. The higher up the management hierarchy, the harder it is. This means that the benefits of these skills are being locked out of the very place they are most lacking.
Obviously, we could be looking here at straightforward, 1950s keep-the-girls-out sexism - but it is more likely to be an issue of communication style (which can hinder men as much as women).
Put simply, there are two main communication styles: Credible and Approachable, and it is the Credible one that most people in high positions will have, and they only really respond (in business at least) to others with that style. Think of the extreme difference between a siamese cat and a labrador, and you are on the way to understanding the issue.
Women, for a whole raft of valuable reasons, tend to use the Approachable style (not, perhaps, to labrador extremes!) - which can mean that they are not be taken as seriously as their talent should merit by the people with the power and the money.
Freer Mind uses the Michael Grinder method to train women in how to be credible. This is in no way 80s-style denial of femininity. On the contrary: the key to charisma (and therefore irresistibility) is in being able to move between both styles as appropriate.
This will have a positive impact in both their business and personal life - and for the business itself, it means that those 'feminine skills' can start to have their positive impact on the bottom line.
Click here: Women: Command in a Masculine Workplace for an article on the subject.
Freer Mind services are offered in Gloucestershire, Bristol (Avon) and London.