I've been particularly enjoying the colours in nature this year. I don't know if they are more vivid than usual, or whether it's just my heightened awareness that is making them so. Being in nature feels very nurturing in so many ways. I'm starting to bring nature into my one-to-one and group coaching. My final article in this newsletter suggests ways in which you might like to work with nature too.
The two other topics for this month's issue are:
- Finding your life's purpose and how to make that happen (hints and tips for pursuing your career)
- How to make project management work with current-day pressures
I hope you find something here that gives you new insights and helps you in your work and maybe even in your every day life. I'd love to hear from you if you do, or even if you don't.
And of course do get in touch if you would like to arrange one-to-one coaching, team coaching or one of our group coaching-style courses.
Elisabeth Goodman
ACC - International Coaching Federation
(P.S. If you aspire to or already take a coaching approach to your work and are looking for a way to continue your learning and development around this, you might be interested in joining The Coaches' Forum. We have monthly live events and a LinkedIn group to support it. Do get in touch to find out more.)
Finding your life's purpose and how to make that happen
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I've been having a few conversations about careers, in my one-to-one coaching, in our group coaching styles courses for managers, and even in some group mentoring that I've been doing with students with Form the Future.
Two recent articles in Harvard Business Review reminded me of the Ikigai canvas that I've been using with some of my clients, and also family members, to help them discover what's important to them in life, and how they could make that part of their career.
Clark, D. (HBR Sept-Oct 2021) has a few more concrete tips for people who are feeling stuck in their careers.
She suggests that it’s a game of patience: to have a long term strategic view of what you are aspiring to, and not to get discouraged if you’re not getting there straight-away. That it’s common for progress to seem slow or patchy. To “notice the raindrops” that are all leading in the direction of your goal, and not to be too hasty to “shift the goal posts”.
Her tips are to:
1. Do your research including talking to other people to get a sense of what you might need to get to where you want to get and the sort of timeline and milestones that might be involved.
2. Find those motivating 'raindrops' to appreciate what you are already doing, what is already happening that's taking you in the right direction.
3. Reach out to the people in your network, to see what you can learn from them and how they might guide and support you - a point that's expanded on more fully by Cross, R. and their co-authors in the second HBR article (Nov-Dec 2021).
4. Be prepared to flex the detail of your approach and seize related opportunities that might arise, whilst maintaining the general direction of your approach.
And of course: consider working with a coach: to clarify what is important to you, what your ‘life’s purpose” might be, and how you could get there, be it a raindrop at a time!
You can read more about this here: Making your life's purpose a reality - one raindrop at a time.
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How to make project management work with current-day pressures
Our project management group-coaching style course aims to support three levels of awareness that are fundamental to RiverRhee's approach: methodology, working with other people, being aware of and accessing our inner brilliance.
One of our clients brings three of their senior members of staff into the training that we deliver for them about twice a year. They sponsor, co-facilitate, bring their own case studies and also their organisational context. This, combined with a recently added module on resilience seems to give the delegates everything they need to help them manage their current-day pressures.
Other clients are not able to provide that same level of insight and support on our courses, and it has become evident that many people are struggling with workload, competition for resources and lack of clarity around priorities for their projects.
So I was delighted to see Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez's recently published "Project Managment Handbook" hit the headlines. He has an article in the November-December issue of Harvard Business Review, who are also the publishers of his book. And there is a short video on YouTube that also gives a nice summary of some of the key points.
It seems, from my reading of the article, viewing of the video, and initial scan of Nieto-Rodriguez's book, that project managers need to start putting a lot more emphasis on three things:
1. Expecting their organisations to take a portfolio management approach to prioritising and re-prioritising their projects (and hence co-ordinating the resources to support them)
2. Actively engaging the sponsors of their projects to support them in their work
3. Sharpening their interpersonal skills and their own personal awareness to enable everyone in the team to be, and to contribute at their best.
Working with nature
And you might be someone who makes a daily walk around the garden, your nearest park, or some other aspect of nature part of your regular routine. You might already appreciate how good this is for your well-being.
But if not...
As someone reminded me the other day: we are a product of nature. We are nature. And when we are out of doors, amongst any form of greenery, there's something instantly restorative about that.
I've started exploring how to bring nature into my one-to-one coaching and also into our group coaching with clients. It's more than just being in nature, it's about working with it.
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Here's one example if you would like to give it a try:
1. Pick a tree - any tree that you are drawn to. Write down or say out loud the qualities that you love about it.
2. Which of these qualities are in you? Which would you like to be in you?
3. What could you do to make these qualities stronger?
I hope you enjoyed this short experience and look forward to being in touch with and working with you in the near future.
Elisabeth Goodman