Are your Goals Straight Lines, Cycles, or Spirals?

Are your traditional routes to goal achievement working? Our guest blogger Susie Dennis explores different routes to developing new goals.

Goals Still In FocusIt’s January, my inbox is full of ‘Goal setting’, ‘Intention setting’, ‘Starting 2019 with some sort of lofty resolution’. 2019: make a list of 19 goals. Join us on a 40km or 80km challenge. Linking to Apps with no direct social interaction. I am exhausted looking at it!

We write our lists, set goals, but how do we go about achieving them? There are no added pages for strategy. The rules are not given for how to ‘overcome’ all the excuses. No guidelines for the small steps in between Zero to Hero. Is the “hero’ a list of ‘stuff’, new car, job, place to live, holiday? Is it a list of learning? Courses to attend, interests to take up. Is it is a ‘health list’, loose weight, eat healthy, more exercise, I ‘should’ start: running, yoga, meditation?

Into the fourth day and already the focus has shifted, I can’t start my diet — there is too much cheese to eat up, can’t waste it. It is too cold to start running. The New Year sales are too good, preventing control of finances. Inbox at work is too full, meetings to attend. Only a couple of days until the kids go back to school, wanting to spend time with them.

How can I cope? Is there a better way?  Continue reading


‘Grow as a Coach’, webinar learning programme

Grow as a CoachWe developed our virtual ‘Grow as a Coach’ Programme following our enormous success with face-to-face programmes for new coaches.

The Grow as a Coach programme is facilitated virtually. So it includes four 90-minute virtual webinars run over a two or three month period. The participants attend the webinars and work with an identified buddy coach to practise and complete reflection notes after each session and feedback is provided by the facilitators to help the coach’s development. Continue reading


Benefits of Coaching, research and reality

Benefits of CoachingSo why bother to introduce coaching in your organisation? What benefits are your employees going to get out of it? Can people really support each other in their learning and development through having a simple developmental dialogue?

Read on for the latest research and to learn more about the benefits of coaching. Get the answers to these frequently asked questions about using coaching in the workplace. Continue reading


Mentoring Technology — Check you’re ready

Mentoring Technology. Are you Ready?Are you running, or are about to run, a mentoring program? If so, the chances are you’re wondering whether it’s worth investing in mentoring technology to help you manage the scheme. Here are three tests to help you understand whether you should be thinking about a technology platform, or whether you are better saving your money! Continue reading


FLEXImums coaching and mentoring programme partnership

Gender EquityMarie Swarbreck of FLEXImums and Lis Merrick of Coach Mentoring Ltd have formed a partnership between their two organisations to provide coaching and mentoring programme support to the organisations associated with FLEXImums.

FLEXImums have identified Coach Mentoring Ltd as a source of programme expertise. We provide consultancy in mentoring and coaching to grow, retain and motivate people through individual coaching or mentoring solutions. Our bespoke programmes develop employees to have good developmental dialogues in the workplace.

We are so delighted to be working with FLEXImums, we made a video…

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Mentoring Programme Design — the 8 key steps

Mentoring Programme DesignHow to set up a Mentoring Programme

Setting up a successful mentoring programme that delivers the results you are looking to achieve can be complicated. If the organisational culture is at odds with the philosophy of mentoring, or the senior management are paying lip service to the programme’s introduction, you will have your work cut out. Follow these 8 key steps for design success! Continue reading


How does mentoring address gender equity for women?

Gender EquityIn the last two decades, many employers have shown enthusiastic commitment to gender diversity. Women have made enormous strides in being able to compete on the same playing field as men at work. This is where initiatives such as mentoring and sponsor programmes have been really successful in helping erode this gender imbalance and create more gender equity. Gender equity means fairness of treatment for women and men, according to their respective needs. All the research strongly confirms this as being an important factor in developing more women leaders. So let us consider:

  1. What are the outcomes from introducing mentoring for women into your organisation?
  2. The outcomes of mentoring which support gender equity for women.
  3. And what is different about female talent mentoring today?

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Talent Management and Mentoring

What is Talent Management?

Talent Management and MentoringAs long ago as 2005, Brewster et al defined talent management as occurring on a global basis. It is a far broader concept than a series of international assignments for young potential. They describe a picture of being able to retain and attract the best talent anywhere in the world. Global brands like Diageo, Shell and Rolls Royce attach great importance to developing a positive brand for potential recruits.

Read on, or watch the video, to learn more about a model on Talent Management and Mentoring that I developed with my colleague, Lis Merrick.

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Seven ways to keep your mentoring programme running effectively

Mentoring ConversationOrganisations are keen to ensure that their mentoring programme will be the best. They want it to run smoothly, with everyone getting a great deal out of it!

To achieve this you will need to put in a certain amount of effort, a lot of planning up front and be willing to listen to feedback to improve as you go along. 7 tips and the Infographic follow… Continue reading