The power of coaching, how it can unleash potential and set a path towards your most fulfilled self
“Nic Crisp, author and Head and Heart Leadership Executive Coach to C-suite leaders in the NHS, FMCG giants and the Live Events industry, is releasing her second book – The Mindset of Encouragement: How to lead with more power, and less control.
“It was not until I neared the end of reading it, that I realised it was a gentle, nearly subconscious guide to imparting skills, insight and advice to becoming a highly effective coach and leader. It demonstrates the power that coaching others to success by unlocking their potential, can really have.
“Nic’s first book, Courage, dear heart, focussed on self-alignment and I read this at what can only be described as a low point in my career. Having returned to work after 10 months of maternity leave my career wasn’t going the way I wanted. After six months, I was exhausted, fearful, losing energy and creativity and questioning whether I had chosen the right career at all. My health and my family were suffering, and something had to change.
“‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’ were the words which rang out of the pages of Courage, dear heart. I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t think straight and didn’t have the confidence in the abilities I’d build my career success on to date.
“I got in touch with Nic. (Actually, that’s not true – she got in touch with me, like she sensed I was reading her book and needed help… but that’s for another time.) We arranged a one-to-one and I’ve not looked back since. In our session we explored what was happening and it led to some decisions. The most powerful thing was how she helped me compartmentalise everything making way for my spirit and creativity to return, and I felt I had a new focus. We did an exercise which explored my strengths and inner desires and the long-term outcomes are quite remarkable.
“I wrote and had published a children’s book; ‘The Brownest Mouse in Town,’ a rhyming picture book about playing to your strengths. Dedicated to my family, I’m so proud to say it was also included in diverse book boxes distributed to hundreds of schools and it featured in the Save the Children #SaveWithStories campaign, read by actress Sienna Miller to raise funds for children affected by the Coronavirus crisis. I applied and was accepted to serve as a family “Magistrate on the Coventry and Warwickshire bench, and I started my own consultancy. I am now doing work I love, balancing other passions and interests and feeling confident and empowered. Nic, her book and work as a coach were powerful catalysts in leading me to this point.
“Her second book turns to the leader, exploring the dynamics needed to achieve alignment on a collective level, and with many of today’s workplaces physically fragmenting due to the impacts of Coronavirus – working from home, restructures and redundancies – it couldn’t come at a better time.
“Many leaders now looking at the last quarter of 2020 are piecing together the most important and valuable aspects of their businesses, whilst trying to build trust in their teams and galvanise their workforces in an aligned effort to innovate, pivot or facilitate recovery and growth. Most will be doing this having lost key team members or amidst major changes to where their teams are working and what their customers now value.
“The book is structured into chapters and summary questions which provide the reader the space to think and reflect, applying learnings to their own context and teams. There are simple frameworks, insights and shared learnings. The underlying theme is one of empowerment, and how to lead in a way that enables others to step up, to give more, create more and to think and learn for themselves.
“The book also explores organisational structures, citing Frederick Laloux’s “Teal thinking”, a concept that supports the wisdom that people can always find a way, without the need for hierarchical power and control, charging those closest to the customer, who understand what they value, with decision making and liberating companies and organisations through shared empowerment. I believe it’s this approach that might just be critical to the survival of so many companies and organisations as they try to move with pace, shaking off the shackles of process and hierarchy.
“The book also takes an insightful look at who is shaping our workforce, generation by generation, highlighting what they each value and why that is important to achieving cabinet responsibility.
“My story is just one example of the true power of coaching and I’m sure that with the help of this book, its practical advice and analysis of the cost of infighting and disengagement, other leaders will also find the catalyst for remarkable change within their people, whatever the cultural context or commercial backdrop.”
The Mindset of Encouragement: How to lead with more power, and less control is available on Amazon from 7th September 2020.
By Tarah Gear, Independent Marketing Consultant, Children’s Author and Magistrate in training.
