I am coming to the end of the Wright Place TV Show season and I just can not fit all the interviews that I want to do on the show. So being creative, here is an online interview with Life Coach Anne Fitzgerald. I think personal coaching can bring the break through you need to reach your goals.
1. There are a lot of different types of coaching, what is your style?
I have been trained and continue to be trained in Ontology. An Ontological Coach studies how people show up in their world. While I work with people in creating the results they want, I’m always working on how they are being in relationship to that result. This way of coaching produces lasting change for people. For example, it’s simple to tell someone how to lose weight: exercise more and eat less, or count calories, and if they do that they will lose weight. But if we don’t shift their relationship to food and eating that change isn’t likely to last. We have to address the emotional undercurrents of the strategies we have created in our lives (like overeating when we’re stressed, e.g.) . It’s all about awareness and choice.
2. Who is coaching best suited for?
Coaching is best suited for people who feel their life is mostly working but have one or more areas they’d like to see improved or changed. Maybe they experience it as something missing. These areas can be in regards to relationships (including parenting), income, career, unmet dreams and travel, etc. It’s suited for people who know that this change is not going to happen overnight or sitting down. They have to be willing to take action and look at the reasons that have stopped them before. Coaching requires partnership and the willingness to stretch oneself.
3. Why is self acceptance so important to achievement?
I love this question. Self acceptance is one of my favorite areas to work on with people. Most people are hardest on themselves. We criticize, judge and beat ourselves up because something wasn’t good enough, perfect or “right”. When we begin to accept ourselves, even a little, for who we are, what we’ve done and are now doing, we grow. We become lighter. We become less harsh with others. Spaciousness is added to our life and it allows for achievement. So many of us believe we don’t deserve to be successful. And really life wants us to be successful.
4. What are the important steps to developing our business leadership?
Another great question. I love leadership development. Briefly, (because we could write a book on this topic) as leaders, the most important piece to develop is a sense of responsibility for everything that happens in our lives. Once we understand that we are in the driver’s seat for all areas of our life we have the capacity to support others to see the same. And this is vital to leading an effective team. Leaders also need to have a strong vision and the ability to inspire their team to work toward that vision. This is vital to their success. Is the vision tantalizing enough that the team is enrolled in working toward it? If it is then you’ll have happy employees and this will attract the best people to you. Being a mentor for your employees, not having all the answers, is another key. Leadership is not about control, it’s about creating a team and being part of it. Of course a great leader needs to invest in themselves. This means taking care of themselves, sleeping, eating well, exercising, spending time with family or loved ones, and, of course engaging a coach or coaches to support them on the journey.
5. Are business leaders born or is it something we can learn?
Leadership is something we learn but we have to want to. And business is something we learn, too. Business is not something that is cut out for everyone but everyone can learn to lead their own lives, whether they consider themselves a leader or not. Think of a stay at home mom. She’s a leader in all capacities. She’s likely leading the household budget, medical decisions, educational decisions.. everything. Practice being a leader in all aspects of your life. The world will reward you kindly for it!
6.Is happiness overrated? Is this a goal we should aspire to?
Should people aspire to happiness? This feels like a complex question and I’m going to approach it very simply and say, “yes” we should aspire to happiness. However I’ll add another layer. What is happiness for you? That’s what you should aspire to. The simplest way to invite happiness into your life is to practice gratitude and connection every day. I recommend being easy on yourself and letting yourself really practice happiness. Be careful not to get caught in how someone else is doing happiness. It may not be your thing. Experience has shown me that most of us forget what makes us happy. Maybe it’s because we spent all our time doing something that didn’t make us happy, whether it was school or a job or trying to make ends meet. I invite you to consider all the little things that COULD make you happy. Is it the rain? (Living in Seattle I’ve decided rain does make me happy!) Your child’s laughter? Reading the paper with a cup of tea? Invite happiness into your life in small ways and allow the experience to settle. Happiness feeds on itself.
7. How do we contact you?
Tags: annie Fitzgerald, business, coaching, Dr Letitia Wright, Happiness, Health, leadership, life coach, money, skype, weight loss, wright place TV
Book: Crisis of Character: Building Corporate Reputation in the Age of Skepticism
Author: Peter Firestein
We all know that one of the biggest problems the sales department has is getting your potential customers to believe that your products will do what you say they will do. They have to believe the services work as advertised to spend their money. This is the age of the informed consumer. As we begin to come out of the recession, people are cautious about how they spend their money. Even the wealthy are more careful about spending their money. The author puts corporations on notice that ?Reputation is the strongest determinant of any corporation?s sustainability. Stock prices can always come back. Business Strategies can always be changed. But then your reputation is gone, its retrieval is difficult, long-term and uncertain.?
After watching corporations, I think everyone wonders if they care about reputation, especially if the corporation is going under. At some point, no one at Enron cared about their reputation and negative impact on stake holders. The 7 Strategies of Reputation Leadership are a great list start from. The Case studies are interesting. The author outlines the steps to building corporate reputation. I wonder what the job title of the person who is responsible for this is.
The section on Reputation training covers ethics, internal communication and compliance. However the chapter on Tell Your Corporate Story disappoints as there is no information about media training. Getting on camera with no training can make your reputation worse because you do not come across to the public the way you want to. Most of the book is focused on internal dialogs among the employees of the company.
Dealing with the outside world is a big part of managing your reputation; however the author begins and ends with what is going on inside of the corporation itself with the goal of perfecting that. The book has lots of good case studies to plump it out.
This book is an L.A. 7
Leadership Can Be Developed
To become a leader, you have to be able to work with others, have an effective communication line with others so that you can achieve all of your goals. Although this may sound easy, it actually isn’t. Being in the position to lead your team could really put a heavy pressure on your back. But to get through this a little easier, maybe you could start by reflecting on your strong and weak points.
Becoming aware of your strong and weak areas are key points in leadership development. By knowing your weak points, you can start working on them so that you could either get rid of them or turn them into positive characteristics. This also goes the same for your strengths. By recognizing them, your self esteem is boosted and you can find ways to use them to their maximum benefits.
Another way of becoming a great leader is to learn how to communicate with your workers. Having good communication with your team is the key to get through each other and achieve optimum project results at a faster rate. With this kind of attribute, you, as a leader, will be able to avoid resolve issues before they even happen.