Altitude
Leadership skills for partners
and directors
Feedback - giving and receiving
Redundancy/de-equitisation counselling
Creating a reputation as preferred employer
Succession planning - home-grown v. external
Coaching, motivating and promoting
Developing your 'personal brand'
Fortitude
New business development
Persuasive bids, tenders & proposals
Self promotion and your key messages
Winning new business plus negotiation skills
Magnitude
Time to climb - personal impact
and effectiveness
Building rapport with people unlike you
Communication skills to get buy-in
Influencing & persuading to get 'buy in'
Disruptive innovation 'outside the box'
Self confidence & positive thinking
Solving problems & taking decisions
Successful presentations & interviews
Latitude
Choice
Pre and post maternity leave/career break counselling
Correctitude
Deal with distractions
Controlling use of power & assertiveness
Conquering addictions & bad habits
Conquering irrational fears & beliefs
Perceptions & slurs - how to deal with them
Attitude
First understand 'you'
Strengths, weaknesses & values
different perspective
Coaching
We use many areas of coaching to increase our clients' business and personal performance. Your own coaching programme is unique and developed around your specific requirements and business goals.
This list of topics is by no means exhaustive. However, it does give you a useful reference to the depth of support you receive from your OvationXL coach.
Altitude
Leadership skills for partners and directors
Leadership
Most successful managers are also successful leaders, motivating people towards achieving their organisation's goals and strategic objectives. Many people are promoted purely because of their natural professional competence. Few receive any formal or even informal training in management. Many resort to a style that mimics how they were parented or managed earlier in their career.
Feedback- giving and receiving
The most progressive organisations are often those that encourage a free flow of frequent and constructive feedback on performance - both upwards, downwards and sideways. As a senior person in your organisation you are required to achieve results through the efforts of your whole team. To get the best from others they need to know what is expected of them and how they are measuring up against specific goals and/or performance indicators that have been agreed in writing.
Leading change
Businesses can quickly vanish off the map when they fail to respond to market forces. As a successful leader you need a thorough understanding of ways to generate positive innovation. Communicating change in process or service should motivate rather than disrupt. Handled wrongly and your best staff and clients are going to walk; handled well and your business is going to grow. Learn to create captivating reasons for people to choose to work with you rather than with the competition. Be active in helping your clients to appreciate new reasons to buy from you rather than from your rivals.
Profitability - how to thrive in a recession
Some businesses perform better during recessions than in the so-called good times. To achieve this for your business you need to work 'smarter' and in a highly focused way. In the current economic climate profitability coaching is second highest on the long list of topics that our clients request.
Redundancy/de-equitisation counselling
Most human beings are more comfortable with the status quo - though nothing lasts forever. The prospect of de-equitisation or redundancy can be immensely stressful. It's best to prepare and get your thinking straight. It's time to consider options that you won't have thought of on your own. Without intervention fears of inadequacy, financial insecurity, or growing old, can take hold. A professional coach can help bring things back into perspective.
Reputation as preferred employer
Jack Welsh once said "if you can create an organisation where people really want to work you have got your hands on one of the most powerful competitive advantages in the game: the ability to hire and field the best team". Your managers and HR department work alongside OvationXL to help build the coveted reputation as preferred employer by developing a culture that encourages and delivers continuous learning.
Strategic thinking
Many entrepreneurs and business leaders are so preoccupied by working in their businesses that they forget to work on their businesses. People are naturally drawn into detail and fire fighting at the expense of appreciating the bigger picture. Do you set aside sufficient time for creating a longer term vision of the future and for taking business-critical decisions? Without management capacity to think strategically there is going to be no alignment between how you use your resources and what you want to achieve. Put directly, if everyone in your business doesn't know what you are trying to achieve and doesn't understand what they should be doing to get there, you are going to fail in your objectives.
Successful public speaking
Have you wondered what qualities make a truly great public speaker? How is it that some people seem so natural, confident, interesting and engaging, when most don't? How do successful speakers captivate their audience and get people talking afterwards?
Succession planning - home-grown v. external
An organisation thrives or declines in direct proportion to the talent of its leaders. The leaders in your business help you develop a clear strategy and are able to maintain 'follow through'. They create a compelling vision and communicate it throughout your organisation. They are the culture makers and change architects who develop a positive spirit and motivate others to adopt a 'can-do', solution-focused attitude. There are specific skills of leadership that need to be identified, encouraged and continuously developed if you are to take your business to its next level of performance and profitability.
Team coaching, motivating and promoting
Research shows that only 2% of business isn't delivered as a result of teamwork. That means that 98% of business draws on a healthy mix of diverse skills, knowledge plus different backgrounds or experience. An ability to build cohesive, high performing teams is now an expected core competency for any manager or aspiring leader. Are you aware of the psychological processes involved in teamwork?
Your 'personal brand'
You know that you want to be more successful and yet you're not sure what more you can do to achieve this. Time is slipping by. You want to be noticed in this over-marketed, media-saturated world - inside your business or even globally. You may be feeling insufficiently recognised for the super-human efforts you've been making for years. Maybe you want to stand above your peer group? Just like businesses that spend billions investing in brand development it is possible to raise your own profile in positive ways.
Fortitude
New business development
Focus on your Top 20%...
Pareto's law suggests that the top 20% of almost anything equates to 80% of the benefit. So how can you maximise profitability from your best clients? Furthermore, should you think about renegotiating with your least profitable 20%? Your worst clients may actually be costing you for the privilege of working with them. Meetings with your best clients need to move away from negotiating one off deals. Are there opportunities to develop a mutually beneficial long-term partnership by delivering more substance and even greater value to your top 20%?
Networking time-effectively
Many organisations claim that effective networking is one of their most cost effective ways for winning new business. Some successful people are natural networkers whilst others require coaching. The reality is that most people are not that good at it. Some of our prospective clients tell us that they attend a great many events and yet get no tangible results.
Persuasive bids, tenders & proposals
Almost all partners, directors and managers have a role in writing proposals. It is one important part of the process of winning new business - the seed corn of any prospering enterprise. Successful bid writing begins by gaining a depth of understanding about the prospective client and their needs - which may not be what they say they are asking for. Your proposition needs to be structured so that the decision maker's task is made easier - they should recognise you as the winner for a mixture of compelling reasons.
Self promotion & your key messages
It's no longer sufficient to be technically adept. To move up the ladder you need to self-promote. You know that you want to be more successful and yet you're not sure what more you can do to achieve this. You want to be noticed in this over-marketed, media-saturated world - inside your business or even globally.
Selling skills for non-sales people
Many senior lawyers and other business professionals were not trained to promote their services to new and existing clients. Some even reject current thinking that it is now an expected core competency of staff at every level to new win business. Learning some of the basics of persuasive negotiation can make a massive difference to the ultimate success of an individual and their business.
Winning new business plus negotiation skills
Do professionals sell? Whatever the answer it's almost certainly time to increase the quality and success rate of your new business activities - and suffer fewer lost opportunities. We've gathered many case studies from law firms and other b2b businesses where experienced people have subsequently beaten all their previous records. As the world economy wavers this may be just the right time to offer this type of additional support to those responsible for bringing in next year's earnings.
Magnitude
Time to climb - personal impact and effectiveness
Balanced scorecard - your nerve centre
The balanced scorecard can be the nerve centre of your business. It is a strategic planning and management system widely used to align effort with vision and strategy. It is a measurement system (not just a management system) that provides feedback on internal business processes and external outcomes, to generate continuous improvement.
Build rapport with people unlike you
All business is conducted between people - not businesses. Therefore an ability to build on-going profitable relationships, internally and externally, is crucial to your success. Building rapport is often described as the most valuable of all business skills - people respond positively to those they 'get-on' with and react negatively to those they don't.
Chasing clients for fees
Chasing slow paying or non-paying clients is a phobia shared by many professionals and yet it is only fair to be paid in a timely manner for the professional services that you or your team has provided.
Versatile communication skills to get 'buy in'
By learning how to talk and write using the four communication 'filters' that people use right across the world, you are going to 'connect' more quickly with more people. The coaching provides you with a range of techniques drawn from Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), vocal influence and psychology. You are going to greatly enhance your self-knowledge, interpersonal skills and workplace performance.
Consultancy skills
An ability to provide pragmatic advice and support to external clients or internal colleagues is regarded by many leaders as a core skill to be nurtured. You may be an external advisor or an internal change manager or a business partner/director. Coaching enhances your skills to provide more tangible value to your client.
Influence & persuade to get 'buy in'
A core competence of anyone in management or sales is the ability to persuade and influence. Businesses waste millions of pounds through internal indecision or by allowing endless procrastination by one's clients. It's time to take control. With training it is possible to create bridges, cross barriers, provide tangible reasons for moving forward and gain acceptance. OvationXL provide a range of techniques drawn from psychology and human behaviour to keep your initiatives on track.
Learning from mistakes
Certain people get disproportionately knocked by their mistakes. They beat themselves up to such a degree that their business performance may suffer for hours, days, weeks and sometimes years. In extreme cases the individual may lose all self confidence and self esteem. Coaching helps people to seek out positives from a given situation so that they can drop their agony.
Disruptive innovation 'outside the box'
Businesses attach a high value to processes that create innovation-driven growth - maybe by developing niche markets that reduce competition for which premium rates can be charged. Sometimes this means developing the necessary skills to re-package what you already do in innovative ways. Being different, or just being perceived to be different, is a proven way to sustain growth even during the most challenging moments of economic uncertainty.
Project management
A lot of project management involves communications. For example, it is imperative that one's own team understand what the project entails and what specifically is required of them plus what the interim stages and timescales are. You are going to need to learn different styles of communicating so that your messages are correctly received and understood by people who may not be the same as you.
Self confidence & positive thinking
Raising self confidence is one of the most common requests that we receive - from Managing Partners and CEOs downwards. Some admit to having a challenge during certain highly specific situations or when working with particular people; others are overwhelmed by a sense inadequacy for much of their working day - just imagine how that impacts on performance. We teach the 'ten secrets of positive thinking' to enable positive outcomes.
Solve problems & take decisions
The ability to be decisive and to solve a problem within an appropriate time frame is a core skill for anyone in business. Often decisions need to be taken by a team rather than just one person - the knowledge of a team is usually far greater than the knowledge of just one person. One challenge is how to define the parameters for taking a decision. What factors need to be considered and what risks need to be assessed? Far too often senior people get distracted by detail rather than focusing on the bigger picture.
Raising ambition/hunger
Some people score high marks for technical capability though do not seem sufficiently 'hungry' for promotion. This perception can limit their true potential. Whilst not everyone is going to be a leader, coaching can help to stretch people beyond their self-set comfort zones for the good of themselves and their organisation.
Run decisive meetings
Research suggests that businesses waste millions of pounds every month by holding unnecessary or unproductive meetings. If you find yourself wasting time by sitting in on meetings which you don't need to attend, or which don't lead to focused action on business critical issues, then changes are needed. You and your business are going to benefit from rapid, noticeable differences in team productivity plus improved morale and effectiveness.
Successful presentations & interviews
People make presentations or are interviewed during pitches to win new business and when they seek promotion or change. Have you ever wondered about the reasons that some people are able to get the job they want time and time again, or they consistently win the deal, whilst others invariably don't? Have you noticed how some people capitulate though nerves or lack of focus whilst others consistently manage to perform?
360 degree assessments
360 degree feedback performance appraisals, training needs analysis, performance evaluation, or assessment of job skills, personality and behaviour. Call them what you will, '360' has become a popular product. Professionally delivered appraisals can start the process for building a strongly motivated workforce that performs well. They can create a positive culture throughout your business impacting on your reputation, performance and profit.
Latitude
Choice
Life coaching
Every sportsperson recognises the need to train regularly to stay at his or her peak performance and yet most of us don't apply the same logic to our lives. Life coaching provides a supportive, caring and inspirational environment. It is a way to realise your true potential by uncovering and then eliminating destructive behaviour and thinking. Life coaching uses a solution-focused approach to personal development that can assist you in making lasting change in your personal life or at work, or both.
Pre and post maternity/career break counselling
The prospect of maternity leave or returning to work can be stressful. Most human beings are more comfortable with the status quo. All sorts of fears (most turn out to be irrational) can enter one's head and a professional coach can help bring things back into perspective.
More on pre and post maternity leave/career break counselling
Work-life balance
Work-life balance is about people having a measure of control over when, where and how they work. It is only properly achieved when an individual's right to a fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and respected. An ideal work life balance may seem a dream where there are constant family and peer pressures 'to be responsible' - or to be more and more successful or wealthy. It can sometimes seem impossible to place considerations such as one's own personal values, beliefs and good health into the equation.
Correctitude
Deal with distractions
Behavioural change
People are often blissfully unaware how their personality impacts on those around them. Yet even the most successful people have negative traits that can be corrected to mutual advantage. Negative behaviours are usually the surface presentation of underlying psychological issues. These may have roots in past events which need to be resolved or redefined. Inappropriate behaviours may also damage your companies' reputation with your clients and other external stakeholders. Denying the existence of such problems is not an option if you wish to grow your business. Dealing with them invariably improves performance and profitability. It can safeguard your reputation.
Controlling use of power & assertiveness
There are many different styles of leadership and management. Not all are good. Some people raise their voices to get their points across; others are unable or unwilling to provide any direct feedback to their team. Some resort to bullying which is against the law and can put their organisations at serious risk of being sued.
Conquer addictions & bad habits
You may not be aware how your own behaviour impacts on your colleagues or clients. Addictions and bad habits usually mask underlying psychological issues. They may have roots in past events that need to be resolved or redefined. Inappropriate behaviours can lead to a de-motivated, disillusioned workforce that is underperforming and can adversely affect the culture of your business - as well as having a negative impact on your reputation, performance and profit.
Conquer irrational fears & beliefs
Even the most successful individuals have limiting beliefs that negatively impact on their performance. Irrational fears (that are frequently created around the age of eleven when people start to make decisions for themselves) can still hold a person back during adulthood.
Crisis intervention
Failing to support your key employees at times of personal crisis can have a negative impact on their colleagues and on your business. Employees inevitably don't perform to their potential and may be off sick for long periods. Their colleagues and the teams they work with are often adversely affected by the loss of leadership or negative energy of the individual. You may end up losing the employee or facing a legal action for 'non duty of care' if you do not take appropriate action to address a crisis situation and support the employee. Inevitably, not taking action will cost you more than investing in a carefully structured, outcome focused solution.
Idea blockers on side
You are a team leader, or a partner, director or manager in your business. Your team functions well, though one person is notorious for blocking any good ideas that may be perceived as veering away from the way they've done things for years ("If it ain't broke don't fix it" logic). Their presence is damaging morale.
Lethargy (lifestyle, overweight, underweight, nutrition)
Many business people are hampered by lethargy that may hit them at particular times in the day - maybe first thing, after lunch or late in the afternoon. There are many root causes to lack of energy and your coach works with you to identify what you need to change.
Perceptions & slurs - how to deal with them
We used to find it quite surprising how many Directors/Partners complained that they were victims of unfair perceptions of their personality/style.
Psychological empowerment
You know that you have more potential. What about fellow directors, managers or other employees? Could they have potential to be unlocked? Psychological empowerment techniques can be the catalyst for taking you and your colleagues to the next level. To tap our full potential we have to develop both hemispheres of our brain - the left (generally logical, conscious processes) and the right (intuition, unconscious processes) - and create a synergy between the two.
Status (gravitas/repositioning)
As we are groomed for promotion the issue of status can become an issue. Behaviour that has kept us popular with our peers for a great many years may need to be modified or toned down. Like respect, status has to be earned. We somehow need to prove that we are irreplaceable and entirely dependable. Moving up the ranks usually requires an element of repositioning.
Self confidence (shy/sensitive to criticism)
Raising self confidence is one of the most common requests that we receive - from Managing Partners and CEOs downwards. Some admit to having a challenge during certain highly specific situations or when working with particular people; others are overwhelmed by a sense inadequacy for much of their working day - just imagine how that impacts on performance. We teach the 'ten secrets of positive thinking' to enable positive outcomes.
Stress (pressure, anger, bullying)
Stress, pressure and bullying each block optimum performance at work in different ways. Stress and pressure are a part of everyday life and are not always a negative influence. Most people recognise that the adrenalin rush sportspeople get before competing increases their performance. Stress and pressure only becomes a drain on a person's physical or mental resources when they lose control of a situation.
Waste of time management
How we use our time is a critical skill if we are to consistently achieve the results we need in the workplace, or indeed, what we want to achieve in our lives. Almost every day we discover that our clients' employees are ineffective at managing their time and this applies equally to executives and managers as new entrants. Time management 'systems' offered in the market as solutions to time management problems today can be too complex and time consuming to use. In many cases they may be entirely inappropriate for your needs. If you are not careful, you can spend all of your time planning and organising your work and end up not delivering anything. OvationXL take a different approach by providing practical tips that can be implemented to great effect on Day One.
Attitude
First understand 'you'
Set SMART goals
The main reason most people drop goals, including New Year's resolutions, is that they have not defined their goals sufficiently for them to stick. Many people describe themselves as good at starting things though they are less skilled at follow through.
Strengths, weaknesses & values
A great starting point to most 1-2-1 business performance coaching is a rapid analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We often make business and personal SWOT analyses. The next step is to examine your core values. We deliberately scramble your thinking to elicit which are the ones you really believe are your most important values right now. We go on to use this information in later parts of your programme.