Archive for July, 2011

In last week’s blog, I emphasised the need to be aware of your core values to help you understand what you really want from your business and how you do business. Keeping your core values front of mind AND playing to your strengths will undoubtedly set you up for success and help you set goals that you really can achieve.

I am a passionate believer that playing to your strengths is the key to personal and business growth.  The foundation of all my coaching rests on this belief and is backed up masses of research by The Gallup Organization.

Over the past decade,Gallup has surveyed more than 10 million people worldwide on the topic of employee engagement, (how positive and productive people are at work.) Only one third ‘strongly agreed’ with the statement:

‘At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day’.

Time and again when I am coaching clients, we discover that as their business has grown, they have allowed their strengths to be diluted by not undertaking activities that play to their strengths. After building a successful business, many owner managers are reluctant to let go, delegate responsibility to others, and as a result, don’t focus on what they do best – the reason they went into business in the first place.

Gallup’s studies indicate that people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are ‘6 times as likely to be engaged in their jobs’ and more than ‘three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general’.

So to get yourself back on track and to inject a booster of motivation and inspiration, undertake the activities that play to your strengths. Strengths are also needs, the more you use them the happier you will feel. If happiness is a core value for you – consider the power of working to your strengths and your values in achieving success for you.

 If you want to find out more about how I coach to your strengths, and haven’t already listened to my teleseminar, sign up to my free download, ‘What’s Stopping You Step Up Your Business’ at www.denisemolloy.co.uk

As a business coach I support owner managers in having a clear strategy to get them where they want to be. Any strategy needs to have a final desirable outcome so that means you need to know what you want from your business – what you went into business to achieve. Sounds straight forward enough, but being victims of our own success, we can lose sight of what we really want.

Does the reality fit the dream?

Many owner managers want the control that having your own business gives you, or the flexibility to work the hours you choose, with whom you work and of course what you do day in and day out. Others want to earn more money for themselves instead of another company, and for most, to suit their lifestyle so work can fit with other priorities in their life. Think what rings true for you and consider if the reality fits the dream?

How do you measure success?

If the dream is not becoming your reality, go back to your core values to bring front of mind what success means to you and how you measure it. Is it more fun and less stress? Is it to make more profit for financial security? Values are also fundamental in the way you do business and lead to living other core values such as happiness.

Once you are clear about what you want from your business, you can set goals that are achievable as they will be congruent with the way you want to live your life and run your business.

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