If you have but one resolution this year, better yet commitment, be an active participant in your life. No more spectating from the sidelines – get in the game! Try new things. Do it afraid. Challenge yourself.
Good coaches help us uncover our potential, encourage practice to hone skills, prompt behavior change and motivate us to improve performance. Be your own coach by flipping old assumptions, asking good questions and using active listening techniques to hear the answers. We unfold, improve and make progress through daily rigor of practice and effort.
Here are a few principles in leadership coaching that you can apply as you lead your own life:
Create a safe and challenging environment: Push yourself out of your comfort zone. No judgment, open space to run, fall and get back up again;
Strengths-based development: Identify and acknowledge your strengths and build upon them. You’ll get farther enhancing your strengths rather than focusing on improving your weaknesses;
Foster a growth mindset: “Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and they put more energy into learning,” states author and Professor Carol Dweck;
Develop your self-awareness: “Without self-awareness, people could not take the perspectives of others, exercise self-control, produce creative accomplishments, or experience pride and high self-esteem. Research suggests that the positive and negative facets of self-awareness are reconciled when people have reasonable self-standards and when they are optimistic about meeting their standards,” according to research of Paul J. Silvia and Maureen E. O'Brien.
Forbes Coaches Council offers powerful questions that coaches ask their clients that can guide your next steps:
What's standing in your way?
What will happen if you don't take this step?
What does success look like?
What are your 'Five Whys?'
What are you most proud of?
What do you want?
If your main obstacle didn't exist, how would your life look?
What do you need most right now?
So What?
Why Not?
“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” – Vince Lombardi
This is your year to yell – “Put ME in coach!” Get. In. The. Game.