Here at People Empowered we have just celebrated our first birthday! We've enjoyed engaging with so many people throughout the past twelve months, helping them grow themselves and their organisations. Featured in this newsletter:

• Building Relationships with Generation X and Y
• Professional Development...…It's About Coaching Too
• How Mark changed His Business and His Life with Coaching
• Support Free Mammograms for Underprivileged Women
• Networking and Professional Development Events

It has been an exciting and eventful year. We had a plan, focus and direction, but possibilities opened up that we didn't know existed when we started out. Every successful and inspirational person I have met this year told me that we have to be courageous, take risks and move out of our comfort zone if we want to break through to above average heights of success and excellence. Certainly here at People Empowered we want to do that. So we have seized the possibilities and we are taking risks and being courageous.

In all people work, those in leadership can only take people where they have been themselves so we are now better able to take you to where you want to go. In my coaching one of the main things I am doing is opening people up to possibilities for themselves they had never thought of. I then challenge them to turn those possibilities into realities by taking risks, letting go of fears and being courageous. The result is increased passion, enthusiasm and commitment for what they are doing. We want to really touch the lives of people we work with in a way that makes a difference. We want to be part of their success.

One of the most exciting things that happened this year was that People Empowered won a Platinum Award for our web-site from the largest website directory in Australia, the Australian Web Designers Network. Our site was entered by our designer Melissa Norfolk Web Design whose company did a great job for us. The award is more a tribute to them than to us. We can't rest on our laurels, however, and are currently updating the web-site to reflect the changes and developments in People Empowered over the past twelve months.

Another exciting development is the move we are making into multi-media presentations of our workshops and professional development sessions – podcasting, teleconferencing, CD Roms, DVDs and on-line home study courses. Some of the feed-back we received, when we asked you what you wanted and needed, has suggested that many people are reluctant to take time from work to go to seminars and workshops but they will put a CD into their car CD player on the way to and from work. Others would prefer to explore an area of interest to their professional or business development in their own time from home. They then have the option of following up with individual coaching or mentoring after if they desire.

2007 will also see People Empowered expand its workshop programs across the State.

So we invite you all to be part of this. If you are thinking about coaching for yourself or your people, or workshops for your organisation then we want you to think of People Empowered.

Maree Harris

Building Relationships with Generation X and Y

Every journal and business magazine we read, every conference, workshop and seminar we go to and every manager we talk with raises concerns about "managing" generation X and Y. As someone who had seven very exciting and innovative jobs in the first ten years after I left school, (the first being the only one I applied for) I have to wonder what's new! Much of what generation X and Y are asking for are what organisations need to be providing for all their staff anyway -challenges, new experiences, the chance to develop professionally, to move within the organisation, to feel they are doing something that is making a difference. Generation X and Y are really challenging organisations to attend to the development of their people – as a high priority.

That aside, however, the considerable frustration and disappointment is understandable when an organisation does all that for a talented, young, high achieving person, offering them every opportunity to grow and develop so that they will stay in their company – but they still seek something more in another organisation! Having talked with many managers who've been through this, there is a feeling of hopelessness, what's the use, almost despair and sometimes even anger.

What do they do? They give up on them. What could they do? They could maintain contact with them.

Finding an appropriate way to stay in touch can sometimes be difficult if they have gone to a competitor. If they have gone to a different organisation it is much simpler.They may be quite responsive to your on-going contact. You can continue a mentoring role. Send them information you think they may be interested in. Make it known that you are available to them if they need to talk. Many generation X and Y people are searching, searching for what will give their lives meaning and purpose and they often can't articulate what that is. They can only say that they will know it when they find it. A mentor who offers commitment, consistent presence and enthusiastic support can provide considerable input into their searching. At some point maybe those generation X and Y people, having discovered what they are searching for will come back to your company, older, wiser, with considerably more experience and expertise because it has been your organisation, and you in particular, that has journeyed with them in their formative years and helped them discover what gives our lives meaning and purpose.

Professional Development is more than Workshops, Seminars and Conferences
Now it's about Coaching too!

I was talking with one of the Mercure hotel managers recently. They have a strong commitment to training and developing their staff and provide a wide range of options for their staff to choose from. He told me there is an increasing trend for managers to want to "skip" the workshop/seminar/conference approach and ask for instead the equivalent amount of money for coaching. That interest in coaching confirms the feed-back I receive from those I coach. But what is it about coaching that has seen it become so important in recent years?

1. People are being challenged today to not just be good, but to be excellent and remarkable if they want to make a difference in their organisation and their world. This requires them to reflect on their professional selves and focus their learning and development much more sharply than in previous times. Coaching allows them to do this. It helps people to zone right in on the issues that are important for them. One hour of coaching – that is sharply focussed on a person's individual learning needs - can usually be much more value than eight hours at a conference, if the desired result is professional development. Conferences have, however, a great value in terms of networking, expanding our ideas and developing vision.

2. The outcomes from coaching are often quite immediate. It is very solution focussed. Experienced people can go away from a coaching session with the clarity and skills they need to handle a situation about which they were previously feeling quite blocked.

3. Coaching that is on-going and more long term can be enormously supportive and be quite transformational in terms of both developing and enhancing leadership. Those in leadership positions are caught in a tension that sees them needing to demonstrate that they know where they are going and are very focussed, yet often also questioning their own leadership style, whether they are making the right calls and relating with their people the best way, for example. Yet they can't reveal this questioning and doubting of themselves within the organisation – but they can to their coach who keeps them focussed on their strengths, and builds leadership qualities like emotional intelligence, resilience, pro-activity, courage and positive risk-taking.

4. Coaching is also very flexible. It can be "maintenance" focussed something that is engaged in on a regular basis once a month to maintain already established direction and commitment. It can be "crisis" focussed, with three or four sessions engaged in over a month period to work through a crisis. It can be "issue" or "project" focussed, engaged in as we lead some change process in the organisation, for example. It can have a "personal" focus where we work on ourselves, for example, handling conflict better or learning to manage stress. It can be short term or long term. It can be individualised or can happen in small groups. It can happen face to face or over the telephone.

5. Most importantly, when you go for coaching, unlike going to a workshop, you set the agenda. You are in charge. You are asking the coach to help you achieve your goals.

Seeking coaching is coming to be seen as a measure of commitment to excellence and becoming remarkable.

Mark changed His Business and His Life with Coaching

Mark was extremely stressed. He was on anti-depressants. He was working 12 hour days in his business with no breaks, 6 days a week. He was spending very little time with his partner or children. He had known for some time he had to make some changes. He came to that decision after his partner "dragged" him to counselling on the advice of their GP. He acknowledges the counselling was helpful. He felt better afterwards but there was no change in his work hours. He even went to a day workshop on work/family balance run by his industry group with the same result. He enjoyed it, felt revitalised and motivated – but still nothing changed. In fact Mark could not see how he could make any change to the way he was operating his business without severely impacting his bottom line and there was little room for movement there anyway. It was a friend, also in the retail sector, who suggested he get a coach like he had done nine months previously. Mark came to see me.

Firstly, I helped Mark determine what he wanted to change and set some goals. His goals, at first, were small. He would be happy if he could average 9 hour days, get half an hour off for lunch each day and leave the business by 4.30 on Saturday. We then looked at what he was doing in the 72 hours a week he was at work and why he couldn't even stop for lunch or a coffee. He was doing everything, working on the business and in the business. He was doing all the administration, payroll, ordering and processing of stock – everything –and as well he was working in the shop. He felt it was good for morale for the boss to also do what the staff does. So how was he going to take 18 hours from his week as well as a lunch break?

Mark could only see himself doing that by employing more staff which he believed he couldn't afford to do. What about his existing staff? I took him through a process of assessing the skills and competencies of his staff. While he'd never seen any of them as management material, he realised that one staff member who had been with him for five years had good management and people skills. I coached him through a conversation he could have with her to determine whether she would be interested in becoming more involved in the business at a management level. From his feed-back, it sounded as if he handled it very well and she responded positively. She had been doing a management course after work two days a week for the past 18 months and intended leaving Mark's employ when she finished in 6 months time because she felt she had gone as far as she could in his business. Mark had had no idea of any of this. So it worked out well. I also worked with Mark helping him to work out a process for easing his staff member into greater management responsibility for the business. Immediately Mark was able to see that he could leave the business at lunch time – for an hour, not half an hour – and leave her in charge. She responded, in what was for Mark, an amazing way to the faith he expressed in her and began to give more than he expected to the process. This talent had been hidden in his business for years – untapped.

Mark was a different person. He had crawled out from under the pile! He was excited, enthusiastic and had found new energy for the business. Without any prompting from me his goals became very big. He began to see possibilities of five hour days and four day weeks and days off playing golf and holidays with his partner. He began to think in terms of succession planning which had been light years away only a few months before. Mark was 54 and although he would probably not sell his business in the foreseeable future, he wasn't going to be able to work at the pace he had been for a great deal longer. While the business had been in his family for three generations, his own children were not interested in taking it over.

I saw Mark twice a month for about six months while he moved through this process. That was fourteen months ago. Things are still going well. He made a number of other changes that also helped free him from the business, but he did those on his own initiative. That's what good coaching does. It releases imagination, creativity and vision, frees people, allows them to expand and stretch themselves. Mark has called me about four times in the last fourteen months for a one off coaching session each time. I feel I'm much more a sounding board for him now than a "coach". He's now his own coach. He can motivate and energise himself. He can keep himself focussed and positive.

Mark (not his real name) has agreed for his story to be told on condition some minor details were changed to protect his privacy.

Support Free Mammograms for Underprivileged Women

Go to the breast cancer site http://www.thebreastcancersite.com Click on the pink window "Fund Free Mammograms". Corporate sponsors and advertisers donate, in exchange for advertising, a mammogram to women who would otherwise not be able to afford them. The number of mammograms donated depends on the number of clicks per day. So whenever you remember, or have a free minute, go to the site and click. The Breast Cancer site is having difficulty at the moment getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet the quota of donating at least one mammogram a day to a woman.

IT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO THE LIVES OF MANY, MANY WOMEN.

Networking and Professional Development Events

How Do You Do It? A Forum for Working Mothers Strategies for a Balanced Life and A Winning Business.
Thursday, 30th November, 2006. 6p.m. – 8.30 p.m.Melbourne CBD. $49 non members. $39 members.
Contact Australian Businesswomen's Network. http://www.abn.org.au/ Men are welcome.

Network Central Women's Breakfast
Tuesday, 14th November, 2006. 7 a.m.-8.30 a.m. Grand Hyatt, 123 Collins St, Melbourne. $55 non members. Speaker: Ken Wall, CEO The Thinking Network on "Whole Brain Thinking". Men are welcome. Contact Network Central http://www.networkcentral.com.au/

Professional Development Forums from the Australian Institute of Management
All forums are from 6p.m.-8.30p.m., $25 non-members, $15 members, held at Management House, 181 Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda. Details and bookings contact AIM on 03 9534 8181 or on-line http://www.aimvic.com.au/
What Impact does Emotional Intelligence have on Your Leadership Ability?
Monday, 13 November, 2006.
Mentoring to Accelerate Your Career Development
Tuesday, 14 November, 2006.
Website Renovation: Web Usability Techniques to Increase Sales and Build Brand Relationships.
Tuesday, 14th November, 2006.
Understand Innovation and Find the Key to Business Success.
Wednesday, 15th November, 2006.

Copyright © People Empowered-Maree Harris 2006
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