The Coaching Guru: Know Your Rights

The Coaching Guru: Know Your Rights: Ever been stranded at the airport and having to kip on the floor, declaring that when you return you will find our your rights an...

Know Your Rights

Ever been stranded at the airport and having to kip on the floor, declaring that when you return you will find our your rights and claim compensation?

Now there is no need - the 'know your rights' app is available for your smart phone, you will be able to access your rights in 22 different languages and this covers all types of transport, so whether you are cruising or flying, on road or by rail, there is no need to delay your complaint while you seethe and vow to find out, do it on the spot.

It's a fact that however angry we are, in the majority of cases we settle down and if a couple of hours pass we even forget the severity of the wrong doing, putting weight behind the old saying, time heals.  It is much more likely that you will complain about something if you are at home when the situation occurs, or it affects someone else and you feel the need to fight on their behalf.

So how does this app help?  Well it encourages starting a complaint at the moment you are at your most hurt or angry, there is nothing like a long flight delay to kick start the frustration, but can this really help in the long term.  Well dealing with anger is good as too much anger is bad for your health, but what if you are met with a member of staff who just isn't listening, will you be in the right frame of mind to deal with this correctly, or will it be a case of waving your smart phone in the face of the operative and an assault charge imminent.

When we are that annoyed, particularly if you feel wronged, it can be very difficult to climb down and let your emotions cool, with an on hand answer to the question of your rights, yet resolve is often easier to find if you avoid going on the attack, take a deep breath and step back.

Letting rip will push up your blood pressure, upset the people who are with you and can lead to heart attack or stroke. Count down slowly backwards from ten, have something to drink and walk around for five minutes talking calmly or thinking, about something relaxing.

Prepare your approach, discuss, write down or practice what you plan to say, imagine the likely responses and be prepared to listen.  If you are advised to put your complaint in writing, ask for the name of the person you are dealing with, their position, also take note of the day and time plus a brief visual description of the person you have spoken to.

When we become angry or upset it is much easier to forget or misinterpret what is happening.

Have a read of your rights before you travel so that you are well prepared if something goes wrong, it can save upset, stress and frustration.

If you have trouble free travel, remember the positive points.

The Coaching Guru: Coaching a Revolution

The Coaching Guru: Coaching a Revolution: It's a belief amongst the uninitiated that coaching is the latest in a trend of newly named old phenomenons, dressed up and sold ...

Coaching a Revolution

It's a belief amongst the uninitiated that coaching is the latest in a trend of newly named old phenomenons, dressed up and sold as the old present re-wrapped, yet is it.  Well coaching in itself is hardly new, an American take on a Socratic  belief, introduced in the 1970's by an accountant who avoided advice in place of nurturing a skill in clients, after all how could someone advise you how to make your business work if they did not know the intricacies, yet help and advice was needed.  When faced with a year of accounts improvements can often be made, the owner of a multi million dollar corporation can always look to improve or earn more, that is the only way to stay at the top, the top earners and achievers look for ways to continuously expand and improve profit margins, yet behind nearly every strong powerful organisation is an advisor, the coach, the critique, the guide.

So how did coaching suddenly become so popular?  In the UK it was always going to be on the cards.  Many businesses and individuals employ a coach in the USA, so as usual these business and personal strategies filter across the pond to us.  I don't think you can talk to anyone in the field of medicine or accountancy that do not mention goals and plans, now, actively encouraging us to take responsibility for ourselves whereas a few years ago it was a minority. Therefore there must be some evidence to support coaching does work.

Many make the error in assuming that coaching evolved from sports coaching and therefore transferring into everyday life or career seems quite a difficult task, and it would be as there is little association between the two.  However discipline that comes from coaching someone within sport can be transferred even though the ethos is not the same.

The danger is a poorly skilled coach can do more harm than good, you only have to read the works of Passmore, Whitmore, Beck and Robbins to know that the mind is fragile and playing with it outside of a trained environment can cause problems.  NLP for example, if carried out correctly can induce a trance like state, similar to that of hypnosis, to dabble in this unskilled could have serious consequences, how many would want that responsibility.

So how many would be coaches are there around, well actually loads, there is no regulation in the UK concerning life coaching so there are the few jumping on the wagon, I had experience of this recently when going to the dental surgery, I was given a new leaflet which asked me to write what I wanted in terms of service, my goal for the work to be done and of course good old scaling, the safety net of all would be coaches, let me insist you mark your experience on a scale of one to ten, there is a lot of information that steers away from this when used in this way.  Unfortunately after filling in the form I asked the dentist for a realistic time scale of when I could expect to achieve the completion of work, and she was non committal telling me it is difficult to predict a time scale, which surely undermines the whole exercise.

After a chat it seemed that as a company, their are two surgeries, they had been approached by a coaching company who were going to come in and define improvements that could be made, well I'm not sure how a questionnaire that the staff did not understand the relevance of, could help.  So moving positively into new strategies for companies and how to improve their business it is helpful if they extend this training to their staff including the freelance and self employed.

You cannot dictate coaching it has to come from within, you also have to want it, for coaching to be effective and improve performance everybody has to take the experience with both hands and run with it into a new era, it is difficult to sell coaching to employees as they have different goals to business owners, you cannot buy loyalty it has to be earned, can it be earned through a coaching environment, yes absolutely, but it isn't an overnight result, however the benefits can be reaped, they can also be reaped by a sole trader looking to improve their business strategy and approach.

Small businesses in the UK have a poor record when it comes to survival, with three years considered to be the average time it takes for a company, regardless of size, to get off of the ground, if it can generate a profit after three years then it is considered to be more likely to survive.  However over the last couple of years we have seen some household names fall off the edge after many decades of trading, and yet lessons could have been learned before the fateful day, it may have held their business away from danger even if it wasn't a picture of what they had come to believe it looked like. Yet the failure rate for small businesses in the US have fallen, despite the fact that start up's for small business has increased, which indicates a turn in the US economy does it indicate a slower turn in the UK?

Coaching in the executive sector has been a slow burner, our reluctance as a business owner often prevents us from asking for help, throwing around ideas, or doing more of what worked in the past can be putting good money after bad, a fresh look from a coach can revitalise a business, but more importantly it's how as well as what.

Will we see a coaching revolution in business, undoubtedly, will we see a coaching revolution for personal achievement that is not so clear as those who do have a coach for specialist coaching are often private about this and therefore the research is harder to carry out.


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