The Inbox Coach - previous editions

Consistency

If we want to maximise all the learning that goes on while we are doing our jobs, then we need to consistently be aware of what we are trying to do and the opportunities we have to support our growth…

Uncertainty

2020 was the year of uncertainty, where everything we were used to relying on disappeared and two months in to 2021, we still aren’t certain what the future looks like. We’ve collectively experienced a huge amount of uncertainty in the last year, but it is something that can happen in our careers at any time. 

Boundaries

This month I’m going to look at boundaries at work. I am a huge fan of setting and enforcing boundaries in the workplace, it is something I’ve had a lot of practice at over the last 10 years and have seen how beneficial it can be. I’ve also seen how challenging people can find it…

Career Fulfilment

I chose the term Career Fulfilment Coach to describe my work as I thought it best reflected what I help my clients to do. Career success is something that comes with lots of preconceptions, it can be difficult to know if the goals we are chasing are what we truly want or instead if they are what we have been conditioned to think of as successful…

Confidence

If there is one topic that consistently comes up with my clients, it is confidence. Wanting to be more confident, not feeling confident enough to take an action, having your confidence knocked by a bad boss or a toxic workplace. It is at the heart of so many conversations…

Impact

We all have busy lives and multiple pressures at work, so making time for personal development that will further our careers seemed to be the thing that slips to the bottom of the list. I believe that not only is your development the most important thing, but it doesn’t need to take up lots of time to have a big impact….

Leadership

Over the last 18 months, good leadership has been the difference between making people feel good about their career and leaving them feeling undervalued and overworked…

Rest

Do you think about rest as part of your career development or is it just something you do as an afterthought? I’ve been doing a lot of work on self-care over the last three months and for The Inbox Coach topic this month I want to think about rest and how this supports us in being our best self at work. When we make time for rest…

Burnout

I’m hearing lots from my clients and colleagues that work is getting busier, and we’ve all had a rough 18 months, so we aren’t starting from a great place. When you are tired and busy it can be easy to just push through, thinking that once it gets a bit quieter everything will be ok, but if you aren’t careful burnout could be just around the corner…

Mistakes

I have a very mixed relationship with making mistakes. Coaching requires you to do a lot of self-reflection and something I have learnt about myself is that I like to do things right. I don’t like to make mistakes. In work and in life, if there is a “right way” to do something, I want to do it…

Ease

The concept of ease is something I’ve been thinking about for several years now, both from observing how my clients think but also through having coaching myself. I’ve been asking myself a lot, “how can I set myself up so that doing hard work is something I do with ease?”…

The Context of Work

I’ve been having lots of coaching conversations this year with my clients about the impact the context in which they are working is having on their choices. We don’t work on our careers in isolation. Our lives outside of work determine how much energy and brain space we have to focus on our career…

Reflection

Before I did my coach training, I didn’t really know what reflection was and how to use it to develop in my career. Now I use reflection every day to continually make small, incremental improvements to my work…

Self-Promotion

I always want my work to speak for itself, believing that if I do a good job that will be enough, but what I’ve come to realise is that I also need to highlight my work to people if I want them to…

Ambition

Like the word success, I think ambition has lots of meaning attached to it. For some people it will be a negative word, with ambition being about a fight for promotion and putting work above anything else. For others it will be a driving force that helps them to succeed in what they do…

Career Fulfilment

Career fulfilment comes in the everyday. It’s sticking to your boundaries about your work relationships so that you don’t feel taken advantage of…..

Taking a break

When you think of career development, you probably think about all the things you need to do, but just as important is thinking about when you are going to stop and take a break…

Bad Days

I believe that everyone has the right to feel good at work and my hope for the people who come to me is that I can help them to make their career something that brings them joy and satisfaction. Whilst I believe that a fulfilling career is possible, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be any bad days…

Celebration

I work with a lot of driven people, people who come to me for coaching so that they can grow and develop in their career. I’ve noticed a tendency with most people I coach, and I know I do this myself too, that they focus more on the work still to come, and they don’t make time to celebrate everything they have already achieved…

Career Development Plans

Simply put, a development plan details what you want from your career and what steps you are going to take next to get there. The hardest goals to achieve are the ones where the distance between where you are now and where you want to be feel vast. We tend to avoid goals which are too hard or feel too out of reach…

Uncertainty

Uncertainty is something I have had to deal with throughout my career. Sometimes it has been a minor issue and other times it has caused me to be stuck for months at a time, leaving me feeling frustrated, angry, and hopeless about my future. I’ve learnt that those feelings are an indicator that I need to change my behaviour..