If you were to describe your position as a leader, would you include “Climate Engineer”? Now, before you envision yourself in front of a green screen, pointing to cold fronts and high pressure icons, think more locally. In addition to setting strategic direction and ensuring smooth organizational operations, leaders also set the climate of their team, department, and organization through their attitudes and behaviors, according to positive psychology researchers. Those in your organization watch how you respond to all challenges and this sets the tenor for how others meet challenges and how they work with each other. Thus, leaders serve as climate engineers.

One way to set a positive climate is through strengths coaching. Strengths coaching allows leaders to recognize and develop their own strengths and also recognize strengths in others.  When used in positive psychology, the term “strengths” refers to ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are intrinsic or come naturally to us. They differ from skills in that skills can be learned, even if one is not necessarily good at something.

Several researchers, ranging from the Gallup Organization to university based organizational and positive psychologists, have found benefits to a strengths-based approach in the workplace, including: better performance, higher engagement, and greater likelihood of goal achievement. Recognizing and managing to strengths in yourself and others, explain the researchers, allows leaders to allocate “people and resources according to individual and collective strengths as they go about building strengths-based organizations more broadly.”

However, a strengths-based approach does not imply that weaknesses are ignored in favor of what one does well naturally. We all have areas of weakness and they may be included in our job descriptions. To build robust organizations, weaknesses must be recognized in ourselves and in teams and not ignored. Depending on how integral they are to one’s position, weaknesses should be mitigated. The good news is that you can choose to use strengths as a way to mitigate those weaknesses.

For example, I once wrote speeches for a C-suite leader. He was not a great public speaker, yet because of his position in the company, this was not something he could allocate. So, we sent him to an executive seminar to hone his public speaking skills. His skills improved, but it was still a struggle. If I were to work with him now, I would recognize his strength for making difficult concepts very approachable and ask him how he could use this strength in developing and delivering content for presentations. Using strengths that come naturally to him (explaining difficult concepts in an approachable manner) would have contributed to a much more natural speaking style and probably less anxiety about public speaking. Would that have made him a great speaker? Probably not, but the goal would be to mitigate the weakness using one’s strengths.

There are many ways to identify personal strengths, including several assessment options and coaching. Observation also provides opportunities to recognize strengths. Notice what you, or your team members, tend to naturally gravitate towards and are successful doing. Who always volunteers for presentations? Who thrives on analytics? Allocate based on personal strengths when you can. Watch your employees thrive as the climate changes.

Neuroscientific research tells us that change is painful, as painful as breaking a bone in fact. When researchers at Columbia University (1) used fMRI imaging techniques to map the nerve centers of the brain, they found that the same neural receptors that register physical pain also light up when we go through significant emotional change (like changing jobs). So if change feels hard, that’s because it is.

Organizational psychologists have written at length about the impact of ineffectively navigating change on the bottom line and change management theory is now a well established field of study in all top international business schools. Harvard Business School, like most others, has developed whole curricula for executives on managing all manner of changes: turbulent change; change in the time of growth; change in response to a merger…..the list goes on. We have a ton of organizational development research available to support us as we figure out how to successfully drive change in our teams and organizations, but how about managing our response on a personal level?

Knowing about the pain associations that occur in our brains is a first step towards understanding why it can take so long and feel so hard to make personal and professional changes. Neuroscience also tells us that by focusing our efforts we can abandon old maps and create new neural pathways to learn new behaviors. Jeffrey Schwartz, a leading researcher in the field of self-directed neuroplasticity at UCLA’s School of Medicine, suggests that the brain is a quantum environment and therefore the laws of quantum physics hold true. Viz: the question you ask of your brain influences the outcome you see.

So what does this mean for us in the context of coaching and minimizing some of the negative impacts of personal and professional change? If the brain truly is a quantum environment then how and where we focus our thoughts and attention can allow us to make new connections, and thereby change habits and behaviors. If we decide to reframe negative situations by focusing on the positive (a central exercise in positive psychology) then we can re-wire our response to impactful change and decrease its negative effects. We can train our brains to do what Winston Churchill describes so eloquently: be optimists who see the opportunity in every difficulty as opposed to pessimists who see the difficulty in every opportunity.

Coaching has been shown to be an essential tool in supporting the creation and establishment of new neural pathways. By working with a coach we can learn tricks and techniques that help us actively focus on the habits, activities and actions we want to have more of in order to move away from old patterns, habits and actions we no longer wish to exhibit.  Coaches can point out the learning we experience as we create these new pathways and help us formulate solutions to problems we might encounter as we embark on this energy intensive process. Coaches acknowledge the successes and small victories we achieve as we create these new habits to help us stay on track with our goals- an exceptionally powerful process and one that Jeffery Schwartz discovered when he used his quantum brain theory to re-train the thought patterns of patients with severe OCD (2). It’s unlikely that we will be able to completely mitigate the pain that comes with change, but with the right coach and the right conditions, we might just get to those gains with a little less pain than usual.

(1)   Research conducted Edward E. Smith, Director of Cognitive Neuroscience at Columbia University quoted at http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/651291.html, March 28^th 2011

(2)   Schwartz, J. M., Stapp, H. P., and Beauregard, M. (2005). Quantum theory in neuroscience and psychology: A neurophysical model of mind-brain interaction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 360(1458):1309-27.

This may sound counterintuitive as most of us start the new year by thinking ‘big picture’ and what we hope to accomplish and achieve over the coming twelve months. But this is also in part the reason why so many New Year’s resolutions fail: we bite off more than we can chew.

So, if you are like many of our clients who hope to make this year a happy year filled with more courage and less worrying, more productivity and less procrastination, and more connectivity and less conflict, how about breaking it down into a smaller program? There is a collection of timeless nuggets of wisdom by Sybil Partridge that can increase our portion of ‘la joie de vivre’:

1. Just for today I will be happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true that,”Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals.

2. Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them.

3. Just for today I will take care of my body. I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse it nor neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding.

4. Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought, and concentration.

5. Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests, “just for exercise.”

6. Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticize not at all, nor find fault with anything, and not try to regulate nor improve anyone.

7. Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do things for twelve hours that would appall me if I have to keep them up for a lifetime.

8. Just for today I will have a plan. I will write down what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. It will eliminate two pests – hurrying and indecision.

9. Just for today I will have a quiet half hour all by myself and relax. In this half hour, sometimes, I will think of what my purpose is on this earth so as to get a little more perspective into my life.

10. Just for today I will be unafraid. Especially, I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me.

As coaches, we commit to “walk the talk.” As such, we embrace living lives that are balanced and fulfilled, both personally as well as professionally. Part of this balance means we take time to enjoy the winter holidays. While we will continue to work on a number of assignments and remain dedicated to our partnership with wonderful clients, we will take the time between now and January 15th off from writing our blog. If you have some time and wish to explore some of our past blogs, simply scroll down and check out the Archive. If you, too, are able to make this a time when you slow down the rhythm of life, take a step back and enjoy the beautiful season with family and friends – congratulations! This is another step towards building sustainable happiness and well-being. We will be back on January 15th. Until then, happy holidays!

A few months ago, Atul Gawande, contributor to The New Yorker, wrote an article about his decision to seek coaching. He wasn’t looking for a writing coach, but a surgical coach. In addition to writing, Gawande is also an endocrine surgeon. Initially, I wondered why a surgeon would need a coach. After all, don’t we all want a surgeon that has already “improved”? In explaining his decision, Gawande made two observations:

1. Even the best of the best cannot achieve and sustain mastery on their own.
2. While coaches do not need to be the “experts” in your field, they must serve as teachers, bosses, “editors,” and your eyes and ears for there to be benefit.

I found it fascinating that someone who has successfully completed many thousands of operations and beats national averages on surgical complications would seek coaching. After all, Gawande was at the top of his game! Likening his decision to find a coach to that of professional opera singers and athletes, Gawande notes that among athletes, there is a clear understanding that “no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.” Opera singers, even when they have mastered their art through years of training, continue to have a coach who observes them as an extra set of ears to make their best even better. This was Gawande’s situation. He felt he had peaked and wasn’t getting any better. The way he saw it, it could only go south.

There are some barriers to the general acceptance of coaching among professionals, Gawande points out. Among these, I suggest the greatest challenge may be our own openness to observational, non-remedial  coaching. In the corporate world, coaching sometimes is used for remedial purposes whereby a “weakness” is observed by others, and a coach is hired to help the person change things. Other times coaching is sought to make changes that will get you to that “next level.” What if, as a seasoned professional, you ARE at that next level? Would you hire a coach to observe you working and provide feedback just because you want to be even better at what you do?

Famous coaches work with elite executives who are at the top of their game.  I believe these situations are too few and far between. There are many reasons for this, but I would like to offer one that is so entrenched in us – fear of failing in front of others. For some reason, we have come to believe that as professionals, we should not let our mistakes be observed. Something in our professional status (surgeon, executive, therapist, and even coach) allows us to believe that we have learned and perfected our profession in a way that leaves little room for change. Yet, this very situation happened to Gawande. His pre-surgery decisions failed and his coach (a former surgeon) observed not only his decision process, but also the consequences of his poor decisions. (Note: No patients were harmed in this process…)

Whereas athletes and vocalists are vastly exposed to the public each time they perform, C-suite executives experience minimal public observation of their work.  It behooves athletes and vocalists to hire coaches to help them maintain their elite positions. While there can be serious repercussions from the failed decision-making of a C-suite executive, few people ever witness the process except in times of crisis (e.g. Tylenol tampering, various oil spills, etc.). The word “failure” is so loaded that no one wants to be associated with it never mind be observed failing!

Some people believe things are “good enough” if they are not failing. Gawande has a point, though. If you believe you are good enough, then the only direction for things to go is down. You have ceased to strive for excellence and mastery. For those who wish to not only achieve mastery, but also sustain it, a coach can provide teachable moments, act as another set of eyes and ears, and give feedback to keep you at the top of your game.

”Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Victoria – an information design director with an Internet consulting firm – came to North Of Neutral as, despite significant successes in her current role, she was exhibiting serious burnout symptoms.

She complained that there were ‘never enough hours in the day’ to get everything done on her ‘To Do’ list, and that her private life was virtually non-existent. She needed help with her time management to create a healthier balance between her professional responsibilities, and her need to have time out to relax and keep herself sane.

Adjusting the balance in your life can be difficult, and can seem more so during slow economic times: it may seem daunting to demand more personal time in the face of an unstable employment market. If done right, however, the process can in fact help you to enjoy your life more and become more productive…

There are many different models geared towards achieving this goal, and they are all effective in their own ways. In my experience, however, the model that has proven most effective delineates the process into five distinct steps:

Step 1: Define your goals

The first step involves determining exactly where you are going. Ask yourself: what is it that I want to accomplish?

Next, develop SMART goals for yourself:

Specific your goals. They must be unambiguous and explicit. Be sure to include the answers to the 5 “W’s”: Who, What, Where, When, and Why.

An unspecific goal, such as: ’I want to increase sales’ is too vague. You need a specific goal; such as ’our sales force needs to generate ten new B2B leads in the U.S. market by the end of this quarter’.

Measurable. If you are unable to measure your goal, you won’t be able to recognize success when it occurs. With reference to the previous example, this could be that ’our sales force needs to make at least a total of 250 phone calls a day for 30 consecutive days’. Quantify your goals by asking questions such as ’How many?’ or ’How much?’ Make your goals assessable by establishing ‘How will I know when I have achieved my goal?’ Visible progress is in itself a powerful motivation.

Attainable. An effective goal statement must genuinely be a challenge and stretch you, but at the same time needs to provide you with a sense that it can be accomplished. Be realistic: are 250 phone calls a day feasible, given the size of your sales force and the timeline you set? Will your current sales conversion rates get you your 10 new clients or do you need a more effective pitch?

Relevant. Is a particular goal compatible and congruent with the overall direction you wish to take your professional and personal life? Is it consistent with your general value system and your internal compass? Address any dissonance and, if necessary, take a step back and re-assess the validity of your goal.

Time-oriented. There needs to be a deadline. Not only a point in time when you will be able to evaluate whether your goal has been achieved, but also check points along the way so you can reflect on your progress and take action or adjust your goal if necessary.

Finally, I recommend writing your goal down on a bright post-it note and making it visible: on your desk, your computer or your window. Move it around your desk from time to time – don’t let it just blend in with the rest of your work environment…

Step 2: Prioritize

Establish what it is that needs to be done to allow you to attain your goals. Once you have created a list of individual action steps, tackle them in order of importance.

In his book “First Things First”, time management guru Stephen R. Covey illustrates the competing elements of our lives that need prioritizing according to the table below. He asserts that we should strive to spend most of our time and effort on Quadrant 2 tasks. ‘Important’ is what directly affects our goals, where we want to be and assessing how this aligns with our values. This is where we need to spend most of our time on as it directly affects our ‘performance dashboard’ and this is where you have the ability to ‘move the needle’.

Most of my clients do not struggle with actions that fall under Quadrant 1 (these are genuine emergencies that need to be addressed immediately: such as a product recall). One challenge for people is in resisting the temptation of spending too much time on action items that fall into Quadrants 3 and 4…

A further challenge that senior executives may face is that their job and environment are structured in such a way that, even after sorting out Quadrant 3 and 4 tasks, the volume of the remaining tasks (that do fall into Quadrant 2) is overwhelming. Despite their best efforts, they do not get the benefits of managing their time more effectively and are left feeling depleted and de-motivated. This may be the moment to ask more profound questions: “Am I doing what I should be doing professionally? Is my career aligned with my values and who ‘I’ am? Or is it time to reassess the choice and direction of my career?”

Step 3: Overcome Procrastination

The key to coping with and ultimately conquering this destructive frame of mind is to be aware of when you begin to procrastinate, to understand why this happens, and to take steps to better manage your time and your outcomes. Clients get ‘stuck’ for a variety of reasons, such as: they are striving for perfection; they feel overwhelmed; they have a fear of failure, or they clearly dislike the task at hand. Thankfully, there are tactics you can use to get ‘unstuck’ and help get yourself back on track.

Determine the resources at hand. Is there a mentor or a peer who you can turn to for help? Is there anyone you could brainstorm solutions with? Could a third-party specialist or a professional support your efforts?  Have you reached for ‘low-hanging fruit’, such as Wikipedia?

Break projects into small steps. Sometimes an item on your ‘To Do’ list is simply too big – dividing it into smaller units will make the task more manageable. Take it one actionable step at a time.

Delegate. You may not like the idea of letting other people share the load, but delegating a task that doesn‘t play to your strengths to someone who enjoys that type of activity is a win-win situation.  It results in a productive collaboration that could also be useful in the future.

“Worst Things First”. Rather than letting the ‘dreaded’ items linger on your list, if they are important and you can’t delegate them: get them out of the way.  They probably won’t be as bad as you envisage, and knowing they’re done will leave you feeling relieved and energized and you’ll get more done in your workday.

Visualize the positive sensation of completing a task. Sometimes it helps to sit down and imagine the sense of accomplishment you’ll get from finishing a task or reaching your goal… It will get you motivated to take that next step.

Create your own rewards. Consider adding your own rewards; such as dinner out with friends, a weekend getaway, or simply an hour of reading the daily once you’ve have accomplished your task.

Step 4: Manage External Disruptions

So… You have your goal statement in place, your priority list is organized and you feel well equipped to manage any internal hurdles… The next thing you know: the phone rings, or a colleague stops by to chat about a particular issue, or you’re suddenly swamped by 50 emails… What do you do? (In fact, many assessment centers use this particular challenge)

Here are some common sense methods that you can use to improve your chances of success:

Firstly, as with your priority list, not all interruptions that are urgent are important. Learn to distinguish between the two. Next, set aside buffers of time that are reserved 100% for tackling your ‘To Do’ list. Put your phone and blackberry on silent, tell your assistant only to disturb you for real emergencies (let them know what exactly constitutes an emergency!) and process your email on a schedule rather than checking it continuously.

Set aside one hour twice a week to reflect and plan…

Step 5: Take charge of your schedule

Effectively scheduling your time is critical. Develop a balanced agenda, one that offers room for family, social pursuits, daily responsibilities and personal downtime. Analyze your schedule: all work and no play is a recipe for burnout (although sometimes work itself should be play). Treat your calendar like a road and regularly check what is coming up next…

Some final thoughts

Returning to where we began: Victoria – the design director – has begun to see the positive effect of analyzing and changing her time management practices. She feels energized for work and has received positive feedback from her manager both in terms of her contributions and her motivation. She even has found some time for her hobby: horse riding at the local stable.

However, she has also learned to accept that there will be days when she won’t be able to get everything done on her list. She needs to decide when she will end her workday and stick to it. Effectively: she has to learn to say “no”, and to attend that cocktail party, go to her son’s soccer game or get that massage that she booked a week ago.

I had just completed an engagement in LA and arrived at LAX to fly back home to NYC. The airport was jam packed with travelers, many flying home to join their families for Thanksgiving. People were pretty stressed out. One man hollered at another traveler, who he thought had cut him off intentionally in the long security lane: “I have an artificial leg, you jerk!” Which resulted in that person breaking out in tears and sobbing their way through the gate…

Holidays, more so than any other time, make it clear how stressful modern life can be. Time is a precious resource and when we have to, in addition to every day responsibilities, juggle last minute work deadlines and family life, even the most effective time management specialist can run into a dead end and have an emotional melt down. After all, there are only 24 hours in the day.

As a coach I have seen clients reap huge payoffs when they shift their focus more towards managing their energy than their time. Different from time (which comes in a fixed ‘quantity’), we can deliberately expand our levels of energy, and in theory there is no set limit. Also, while time is largely controlled externally, we are able to exert a greater degree of control over how energized we are.  There are essentially four levels when it comes to managing our energy: emotional, mental, spiritual and physical.

As many holidays, including Thanksgiving, center around food – and as food is one of the main sources for physical energy – let’s think about this a bit more. After passing through security, I had a few minutes before my plane took off, so I bought the latest book by Michael Pollan: ‘Food Rules’. Maira Kalman’s beautiful illustrations in the book reflect its content: simple yet powerful. Rather than strain the reader with overwhelming detail, like many of the thousands of guides to a healthy diet out there, Pollan manages to boil down the essentials into an easily digestible (no pun intended!) format. He offers about 20 rules or so for each of the book’s three sections:

Part I:           What should I eat? (Eat food)

Part II:         What kind of food should I eat? (Mostly plants)

Part II:         How should I eat? (Don’t eat too much)

These rules serve as general guidelines which can make decision making about what to eat much easier. Following these food rules will certainly fuel your energy and likely save your life. In addition to what he says on his video above, here are a handful of Pollan’s rules that I found particularly ‘sticky’:

O Avoid foods you see advertised on television

O Be the kind of person who takes supplements – then skip the supplements

O Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature

O The Banquet is in the first bite

O Leave something on your plate

Pollan fleshes out most of his suggestions with helpful examples, some research and further explanations. Faced with the holiday feasts, Pollan’s final rule (#83) gets us off the hook: “Break the rules once in a while.”  What counts is not the special occasion, but our everyday practice.

I hope you will have a fun holiday with your family and friends, and based on Pollan’s final suggestion on breaking the rules, remember to feel good about eating everything that’s on the table – even if it’s not all good for you…as recharging our batteries and building our energy levels also comes from spending time with loved ones.

In this spirit, if you want to start these days with some chuckles, check this out:

Happy Thanksgiving!

In your planner, on scrap paper, on your computer, or in your smartphone, you probably have a to-do list. And, if you are like me, you get deep satisfaction from completing items on the list and the items that remain undone haunt you to some degree. This is why the first chapter I read in Baumeister and Tierney’s book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, was about the to-do list.

Those of us who are driven by success generally have goals. Goals translate to tasks on a “to-do” list. And many of those items on our lists never get done. Why? Baumeister and Tierney suggest we do several things that set us up for failure in completing our lists. First, we have too many goals. In fact, state the authors, we have so many goals that “an executive’s daily to-do list for Monday often contains more work than could be done the entire week.”  Sometimes our goals are in conflict (e.g. get more sleep/go to the gym before work), which can lead to worry, rumination, and poor health. To make matters even more complicated, we have proximal goals (with short-term objectives) and distal goals (with long-term objectives) and, although some people tend to do better with one or the other,  if we don’t embrace the notion that proximal goals support the distal goals, we’re unlikely to act on either.

The key to completing to-do lists, suggest the authors, is to reconcile short-term with long-term, and specific with flexible – and make sure none of them are in conflict. Hmmm… Easy to suggest, but how do we put it into practice? Baumeister and Tierney seem to be proponents of rather low-tech system by David Allen, who uses the 43-folder system. Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) is explained in detail in his book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. I have yet to read Allen’s book, but I will attempt to simplify the way I understood it through Willpower.  Instead of leaping from task to task, because something happens to be on the list, break goals into tasks and organize the tasks. Decide when each needs to be done. Then put each task in a day-specific tickler file. Your to-do list becomes a piece of paper for each task, instead of one overwhelming list.

How overwhelming can to-do lists be? The typical person generally has at least 150 tasks that need to be completed and new tasks are added to that list constantly. Our brain simply cannot deal well with all of that “noise.” Breaking our goals down into tasks, and placing our tasks in a tickler file, and then completing what needs to be done each day helps our brain cope with to-do items. So, the authors suggest, our brain doesn’t crave completion of these tasks as much as it craves a plan for them. By filing each task in a tickler file, we provide that plan for our brain, freeing it to focus on things done that need immediate attention.

So, instead of adding “Implement the GTD system,” to my to-do list, I will instead break it into tasks. The first task is to get the book. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I was recently on a panel for the Association des Amis des Grandes Ecoles de France (similar to the Ivy League schools for the US) here in New York and, together with my fellow panelists, we tried to address some key questions people had about coaching. One question was, of course: “What can coaching can do for me?” And a great response offers this recent article ‘Personal Best’ by Atul Gawande in the New York Times.

Now, once you’re convinced of the merits of coaching, the next important question is: “How do I find a great coach?” In a bit of an exaggerated sense, this isn’t dissimilar to choosing a spouse: if you pick the right one, you will both enjoy the journey (for the most part!), and see some great outcomes. But if you pick the wrong one…

The coaching industry as it stands today is incredibly fast growing, and is gaining legitimacy. People (and organizations) are ever more willing to invest top dollar into their personal and professional growth and potential. However, coaching as a discipline is also still fairly ‘young’, and the fundamentals of the industry continue to be in flux. The profession as a whole is not regulated at this point and, while you will find some excellent coaches with fantastic credentials and experiences, the term coach is not protected, and anyone who wishes can hang out their shingle with no further qualifications and call themselves a ‘Coach’. This makes it hard from the outside to know who to seek out (or sometimes even where to begin looking).

The Search

Some strategies which have worked for people are to reach out to recognized coaching training programs from brand name schools – like INSEAD, Columbia or Georgetown University – who all list their training credentialing process, and who will provide a list of their graduates. Other people seeking the right kind of coach have approached their HR departments to see if they have a list of coaches who they have on retainers or can recommend. There are also certification institutions, such as the International Coach Federation, or associations such as the World Wide Association of Business Coaches which can serve as a starting point. Finally, given that coaching is becoming ever more mainstream, and is often seen as a ‘badge of honor’ for successful people, many clients have simply asked their peers who have been coached about their experiences with a particular coach.

Once you have a short list of reputable coaches, the next step is to make sure that coaches have experience in a setting relevant to you, that they have some clear methodology, and, very importantly, that they have a high quality client list. You may wish to check out the testimonials on their website. (Make sure there are names or companies associated with a quote and be wary of anonymous quotes!) You could also consider asking to speak to former clients for a reference.

Now, assuming that you have found a coach who has the credentials, and who has the right experience in the area that you wish to be coached on, the next step is the most important: make sure you and your coach have chemistry! From both research and experience we know that the success of the coaching relationship comes, in essence, down to two things:

1) The willingness of the client to be coached

2) The relationship between coach and client

It is vital that you have the right chemistry with your coach and that their personality and coaching style resonates with who you are. This will have a huge impact on how much return you can get from your investment. Coaches are aware that this is a key component and most offer a complimentary session to help you (and them) decide whether this partnership has the potential to become a trusting and fruitful partnership, or whether it could end in a messy divorce…!

Read more on how to pick a coach also in a previous posting.

This is a great question: do we have to disguise ourselves to get the support we all crave? Researchers found that blood pressure and levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) go down after we hug or experience other expressions of social support.

A study by Gallup found that if we have a best friend at work we are 7 times more likely to be engaged. Positive emotions are good for our health. For organizations, the payoff is clear: a more engaged workforce, more creativity and innovation, less absenteeism, and overall a boost for bottom line.