What can you learn in a year of significant challenge?
Well, wasn’t 2020 ermm interesting?!! Why do people use the word interesting when there are soooo many other words they could use to describe a situation?
If anyone had told me twelve months ago that 2020 was going to be the most difficult year that my children would ever have encountered – or me for that matter, I would have laughed at them and told them it was just a storm in a teacup. In fact, I think I remember saying something quite similar when my husband started getting jittery about Covid-19 during February 2019!
Anyway, here we are ten months on from the beginning of the worst global pandemic in living history and things don’t look like they will be getting much better any time soon.
2020 was to be my second full year in business – the one where I took over the world! Ok not the world, but one where the balance of my work would start to shift from HR Consultancy to Coaching.
It hasn’t exactly turned out the way that any of us had hoped for. It would be very easy to fall into despondency, and feel deeply sorry for ourselves – all the missed interactions with family and friends, particularly over the Christmas period, business not what you had wanted it to be, but where will that actually get you – nowhere.
My family and I have so much to be thankful for despite the challenges– we are all together, healthy, and happy, but to rest on my laurels would be foolish.
So, I thought I would take a look at 2020 and reflect on what it has taught me – after all as a Coach my job is to support coaches through difficult times and decisions – so here I am practising what I preach.
January
January was a quiet month for me, I was still reeling a little from what I had thought was a guaranteed coaching assignment that fell through at the last minute due to some bureaucracy with the company my coachee worked for. I allowed this to affect me more than I should have. It wasn’t anything to do with me and his desire to work with me, he had moved companies and the new company wouldn’t engage me as I wasn’t on their preferred supplier listing. But I still felt the hurt and rejection and allowed it to affect me.
Learning: - Don’t allow one setback to knock you off course. If you are clear on your vision, mission and have goals to achieve them a setback is merely a learning opportunity. My learning here was not to bank on work until the contract is signed!
February
February, I focussed on some HR Consultancy that I support a charity with Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust. We had decided to do an engagement survey for the first time. It was great to see the People Agenda moving forward with them, becoming more proactive in how they engaged employees rather than merely responding to issues.
I also became a coach for MMU’s MBA Apprenticeship programmed which was a great opportunity to coach some upcoming talent, but also to create some great links with organizations the students worked with.
Learning: - Taking a proactive approach means that you are more in control and from a coaching point of view this is something I talk about with my coachees. Rather than waiting for a small issue to become a problem, if you are proactive and able to identify the root cause early on you are much better positioned not only for it not to become a big problem but also to solve it for the better for everyone.
In relation to the MBA programmed building and expanding my network is critical as a Coach. All the marketing in the world can never replace the power of personal recommendation.
March
Now March was obviously the month when Covid-19 started to really take hold. I had a holiday planned with friends in Morocco, but we were flying from different parts of the country and meeting there. I agonised over whether I should go. I was due to fly on the 15th March. Part of me – very naively – thought getting stuck for an extended holiday in a nice warm country might be ok. My husband is very capable, he could cope with the kids if I was stranded for an extra week – right???
My friends flew on the Saturday and arrived safely, so I decided to travel. I was at the airport, it was really quiet, I knew in the pit of my stomach that I shouldn’t be doing it, but I saw the queue of all the others getting on the plane and decided to go for it! Well, about 2 hours after I landed the Moroccan government closed the airspace to all aircraft. We were stuck! We spent the next four days glued to phones trying to get home. Special repatriation flights were being organised, but you had to get yourself a ticket to travel! Through the powers of social media one of my friends had connected with someone on Twitter who gave us a number for BA, and we got through and managed to book flights back to the UK. Into Gatwick not Manchester – but at that point I would have taken anything! A night at a friends then an eerie journey across London with a scarf wrapped round my face (long before face masks had even become a thing!) and onto a train bound for Manchester! Probably 5 of the most stressful days I have encountered in an exceptionally long time.
Because I was only in my second year and had only filed one set of business accounts, I was not eligible for any support announced at the end of March for the self-employed from the government. Something I accepted at the time, but 10 months on and Covid-19 isn’t going away, the fact that the criteria for those self-employed eligibility hasn’t changed to include 2019/20 tax returns is simply wrong and so devastating for so many people setting out on their own business journeys.
Learning: - Trust your gut instincts. I knew that travelling wasn’t the right thing to do, but combined with a difficult start to the year, miserable weather, and a desire to just sit in the sun for a few days I ignored my gut and went. I’ve since done a Neuroscience course with the wonderful Dr Lynda Shaw and I’ve learnt that there is some science to this idea of trusting your gut instinct. The gut (digestive system) is popularly known as your second brain. It can influence your emotions, immune system, and your health. The gut functions without any input from the brain, it is the only organ that is able to do this. This gut has over 100 million brain cells (neurons) and has its own nervous system, called the enteric nervous system. And it sends emotional signals to the brain which means that we feel with our gut before own brain knows. Equally messages run from the brain to the gut with messages of peace or fight or flight. (Dr Lynda Shaw – Your Brain is Boss 2017) So when you trust your gut it is not just a saying, it has some scientific resonance. So, moving forward I will trust my instincts more – they rarely let me down and will encourage my coachees to do the same.
Despite not receiving any government support I did not allow this to distract me away from what I needed to do for me, my business and my family. Yes, it was disappointing but dwelling on it wasn’t going to pay the bills.
April-July
Well, what can I say about these four months? It might help to explain I have two children aged 7 and 8, and we had the hell that was home schooling! It was not fun for any of us, but we survived and made the most of the beautiful weather that April to June gave us, kept ourselves safe, and even joined in the Joe Wicks phenomenon. The kids did what they could, I felt incredibly guilty that I wasn’t able to support them better – something my husband did not seem to suffer from! And there it is - mum guilt! Never feeling like you are doing a good enough job even when you are doing your best. We have since had parents’ evenings for both children and both are doing well so despite feeling like the worst teacher on the planet, I must have done something right! We stayed home, we stayed safe and we made the best of what we were dealing with. My kids rarely complained – apart from my teaching skills and I was proud of them for it. At the same time as all this I was trying to keep my business going. I was coaching students on the MBA; I did some outplacement support coaching and then my second big mistake of the year when yet again I didn’t trust my gut instinct! I had a call from an ex-client who wanted some HR support with a redundancy. As soon as I saw the name on my phone my heart sank and yet I answered and said yes when he asked for my help. The reason why my heart sank is not because this a bad person, but he doesn’t listen and even when given a really clear script goes off piste. It resulted in a messy process that was resolved but cost the client more than it should have done – in payment to the employee and me in fees due to the time I had to spend on it.
On the plus side I discovered a wonderful organisation called Zircon BeTalent. Like most organisations Zircon BeTalent led by the amazing Amanda Potter and Sarah Linton were having to pivot their organisation due to the challenges of lockdown. Zircon Be Talent as an organisation who design Psychometric Tools, deliver training on these tools, and provide consultancy to organisations. They decided during lockdown to offer all their training free of charge online. During the months of July to December I trained in all their products and have been using them with my coaching clients to great success. The beauty of the products are they are simple and easy to understand, create a common language by which groups of people can talk about challenges and are at a price point that makes them very accessible.
Learning:- I am not a good teacher of children who are related to me! Despite being a Coach and knowing and understanding all the correct methods for effective learning, when placed in the cauldron of lockdown, children who didn’t really want to be doing schoolwork and trying to juggle a business, this learning all went out of the window! In hindsight I should have concentrated on doing one thing really well – and honestly the most important thing would have been to support the children better.
I could have managed existing clients and done home schooling, but when combined with trying to actively market the business too, it was a step too far. So, this year if I disappear off social media for a while, don’t worry I haven’t gone anywhere I am just prioritising, and family will always come first. It was the reason why I became self-employed in the first place – to better balance my work and home life and do a few things well. I lost sight of that in 2020 and it won’t be a mistake I will be making again. The consequences of doing so are big – I begin to feel like I am doing a bad job at everything and that impacts on confidence and self-belief.
August
As we came out of lockdown the kids were finally able to start doing the things that they enjoy so as we moved into the summer holidays, they were able to spend time at the local tennis camp. Typically, the weather took a turn for the worse but hey even Covid-19 can’t affect the great British Summer?
This enabled me to finally be able to focus on work and the business again and I went into it full on. I enrolled on a Coaching Business Summer School with Ruth Kudzi and started to really do some work on who my ideal client is, and where to find them, and I realised that I was terrified of going out on social media and finding them, because I was worrying about what people would think of me. Ruth helped me to realise that it didn’t matter what ‘other’ people thought of me – as long as my ideal client likes and resonates with my posts this is all that matters. I was hearing her, but still not quite believing it!
Learning: - Having the space and freedom to think without being overwhelmed by other responsibilities is liberating. I was able to think without being disturbed with cries of ‘can I have a snack’, ‘he’s being mean to me’, ‘can I play on my tablet’ for the first time in months. It enabled me to take the learnings from the Business Course and really start to think about how I could apply it to my business.
September-October
School was re-opened and despite some slight concerns I was incredibly happy for my kids to return, and so were they. They had missed the routine, the fun, and the interaction with their classmates. And despite worrying about how quickly it would be for one or both to be sent home to self- isolate we managed to get all the way to half term before that happened! The school have been fantastic and there have been very few cases in total. I enrolled on a free 5-day challenge in September which was around Mission Led Content with the lovely Lisa Barry and for the first time ever I completed a challenge. I had signed up for a few previously and quit before the end – probably because I wasn’t clear on who I was trying to talk to. Lisa helped me to see that I had something important to say, and that getting my message out there wasn’t just important to me and my business, but it was my duty for someone who has a mission. My mission is to help women who feel like I have felt in the past. Four years ago I was on the verge of burnout, but I didn’t recognise it then, and it took me another 6 months to do something about it by leaving my organisation. I had worked at a senior level in HR for 25 years, and I had two young children aged 4 and 5 at the time. I was exhausted – at work of the bureaucracy and politics and supporting an organisation who was fighting for its very survival (The Coop); at home trying to hold down a full-time job in part time hours and juggle a family and career; friendships were suffering, I just didn’t have any more physical and mental capacity for anyone else; and my health was suffering too. I have an underactive thyroid gland and it had got way out of alignment so much so that my GP called me on Christmas Eve of 2016 to insist I got an increased dose of my prescription right then. And yet I still carried on for 6 more months because my boss asked me to – my ability to put myself first was at the very bottom of the list of things to do! Had someone offered me a Coach at that time I do believe things could have been quite different. If someone had recognised that I had so much more to give, but that I really wasn’t delivering at that time – not because I wasn’t capable, but because I just wasn’t coping. I do believe that if that investment had been made in me the organisation would have had a high performing senior employee again, instead I walked away feeling shame that I couldn’t manage it all. I don’t regret walking away, it has enabled me to become a Coach and I love what I do, but I often wonder how things would have been different if coaching support had been available.
A lot of work on myself later and I realise that it wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough, it was that I didn’t have the right support I needed at that time. And I believe there are a lot of exceptionally good talented senior women in business who feel like I do. Juggling work and family life and feeling like they are failing at both, constantly comparing themselves to others and feeling like they are coming up short, a lack of confidence and self-belief rooted in their past. All things that can hold someone back from reaching their full potential. And Coaching can make all the difference. Providing the space for a coachee to share their innermost concerns and fears about being able to do it all, supporting them to see that they are already enough, and they don’t need to be like anyone else.
That developing their resilience and own authentic leadership style based on who they already are is the most impactful leadership style to have. Now I have this clear idea of who my ideal client was, the challenge became writing in a way that spoke to them. And during September and October I felt like I started to achieve this. My Social Media posts started to get much more interaction and this in turn boosted my confidence. During October something else happened which I should have done long ago. I got myself a Coach! Its funny that the one thing that you do to help other people, and you know it works, is the one thing I hadn’t done for myself. There are many reasons or perhaps excuses for this, but in October I found myself a Coach and it has been great so thank you Mina Odavic.
What Mina has supported me to do is to look at my business and how I can reach my ideal client in organisations. I had been focussing on attracting private paying coaching clients, but the reality is that all of my 25 years’ experience in HR has been in large successful organisations, and much of what I did was about Individual Leadership and Leadership Team Development. The skills that I now have as a Coach position me even better to support organisations with their Leadership Challenges, I just needed to work out who were the organisations I wanted to work with, and how to approach them. It was at this point I realised that I needed to use the language of my past HR life to help CEO’s/MD’s understand who I could help, and why it would be beneficial to their organisations. Anyone who is familiar with Talent Management systems and methodology has probably heard of the 9-box grid. Employees are placed on a gird according to their performance and potential. I realised that my ideal client probably sits in the top middle box. They are considered high potential by their organisation but have not get reached it, and from a performance perspective there may be some gaps that, if filled would enable them to really highly perform. These are the perfect candidates for coaching – investing in those who have not yet reached their potential rather than in those that are already your high flyers will return you so much more. By talking to potential organisational clients about those colleagues who may fit these criteria, I would be able to access my ideal client, but that the organisation would also see the return on investment that a coaching relationship would bring to them in terms of their performance both individually and for the organisation.
Also, because of my coaching Mina helped me to understand the unique position I am in as a Coach with a background in Senior Level HR. I have the insight into the challenges that Senior Leaders face, and the challenges that can occur when Leadership Teams are not aligned. Using the tools developed by BeTalent I can work not only with individuals, but also Leadership Teams in group coaching to support effective team working, which any astute CEO/MD knows can be the difference between doing and ok and a business really thriving. The power of Coaching is more than just the output. Those who have had the investment of coaching feel more valued, are more motivated and therefore can deliver more. The organisation has more engaged senior leaders who feel more appreciated, are more likely to stay, will deliver more, be a better and more impactful leader which has a positive effect on the whole organisation.
Perhaps not coincidentally during this time I started to gain more coaching clients. A flurry of new clients came my way, along with an intense piece of HR work that I took on as a favour to someone I knew. I didn’t think I would enjoy the HR work, but I did, and it reconnected me with my past, something I had run away from could actually still be fun and interesting!
Learnings: - Really focussing in on my ideal client has given me a confidence to my writing. I am writing to and for them, and no one else matters. What would my ex-colleagues think no longer mattered! By finding my mission to support women (although not exclusively) who feel like I felt gives me a purpose to my work which is inspiring and motivating. Getting myself a Coach has given me the space to explore my self-limiting beliefs around my business capability and really examine who I want to be working with, where I need to find them, and ensure that my business is best placed to be able to service them when they need me. Whilst my ideal client may be a female like myself, I want to work with organisations too and working on that side of my ideal client research has enabled me to focus in on who exactly I want to work with, and perhaps more importantly who I don’t. 2020 has taught me that life can be short, and that spending time with people who you don’t like, respect, or share your values is time not well spent.
November/December
I describe November as my epiphany month. I have a challenging relationship with my mother – yes, I can say it out loud and realise that this is another one of those subjects that people do not talk about – miscarriage, domestic violence, challenging behaviour in children etc. It came to a head on November and I finally realised that I have been looking for the approval of my mother my whole life, and it has never been there, and honestly never will. But the impact has been that the absence of that meant I felt I was not good enough. What I now realise is that I don’t need my mother’s approval, and more importantly that it really isn’t important. That dawning realisation has been like a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders and I feel a lightness and freedom I have not felt in the previous 48 years of my life. It has had a positive impact in all aspects of my life – my work, my relationship with my husband, my family – everything. Now this has not all happened by magic.
What I haven’t mentioned yet in this blog is that none of this would have been possible without the wonderful support of Nike Lawal and her My Thrive Tribe. I completed a 12-week Resilience programmed with Nike that started in January 2020 and have continued with her My Thrive Tribe Community since which is a monthly group coaching and therapy session and weekly coffee catchups. This community has been my lifeline during lockdown, and I know that others who belong to it feel the same. We have helped and supported each other through some really challenging times and through it we have all emerged stronger, happier, and more resilient people. Nike blends Coaching and Therapy as she is qualified in both, but it is again an example for me of the power of Coaching, this time in a group setting. I can honestly say that I feel like a different person than the one who started out in 2020. It was also an extremely busy time. More new clients and a desire to make all the changes that my Coaching was bringing up resulted in a hectic couple of months of 50+ hour weeks. This is not what I signed up for when I decided to work for myself, but this time I was doing it out of choice.
Learning:- Sometimes you have to let go of things that you really want (the approval of my mother) to get what you really need (the approval of yourself). We hang onto to things which we desperately want to work, and sometimes they are just not meant to be. That what the world has for us is more beautiful and powerful than you can imagine, but you must be prepared to let go in order to find what it truly is. That the power of a group is so much more than the sum of its parts. When you look at the composition of The Thrive Tribe – it is a mix of ages, social backgrounds, experience and across 3 continents and yet the power of that collective is immense.
Working long hours isn’t ideal but when it is with a specific purpose in mind and you can see an end in sight it becomes manageable. I knew there were things I wanted to achieve by Christmas, and I did that. I have given myself a good break only working a few hours over the festive period to write this blog to ensure that I go into 2021 with the energy I will need to make my business the success I know it can be, and that I deserve.
Summary
So, 2020 has been a challenge, a whirlwind with highs and lows but through it all I honestly believe I have emerged stronger, happier, healthier and more resilient. What I hope you will see is that I have invested a lot of time, effort, energy and yes some money too in me and my self development, possibly more than I have ever done before. As a sole business owner you are the one that makes the difference. If you don’t invest in yourself, any other investment in your business is wasted. I have been lucky, I have managed to sustain a level of business which enables me to live my life – it isn’t what I had hoped it would be for 2020, but then nothing about 2020 has been. When I consider what I have achieved, alongside everything else I am immensely proud of the progress that I have made, but my heart goes out to those whose circumstances haven’t allowed this to happen for them, or their business was just not able to operate.
So, if this can happen in a year when so many sad and bad things have happened what does 2021 have in store? I am excited to find out and by applying my learnings from 2020 I am now more equipped than ever to tackle whatever the future has in store for me.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my journey of business challenge and self-discovery. I hope that it inspires you to realise that even in the bleakest of times there are lessons to be learnt, joy to be found and future happiness to be created. If anything you have read strikes a chord I would love to have a conversation about what I could do to support you in your journey of self-discovery to enable you to fulfil your potential at work, or in your business, but also to lead you to lead a happier and more fulfilled life.