Life of a Family Man

After 10 years of regular columns, I am now back to more regular personal updates and personal development advice. I work as a trusted advisor, executive coach, and business consultant; this includes mindfulness trainings. I also host a podcast on success, wrote a book on success...oh and I have written a book on productivity too. Feel free to follow the links on the left-hand side, or reach out to me directly!

What is your agenda 2020? How can Coaching help you?

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For those of us that have been around for a while, you might remember the EU member states agreeing on the agenda 2020, looking at principles, priorities and approaches for their youth policy strategy. Now, with the year coming to an end, you should think about what your agenda is for 2020, and how coaching might benefit your strategy. I have been involved in personal development since the early naughties, gaining a Master Practitioner in NLP in 2003 and subsequently dismissing EQ (Emotional Intelligence) as a fad in 2004 during my MBA thesis. I thought both approaches were common sense, being aware of yourself, striving for being better and having a growth mindset. Always giving your best and defining your goals, reviewing them and making plans. This, as I know now, looking back at 15 years working in a corporate career and with technology start ups, isn’t the case. People don’t apply common sense, not every manager is emotional aware, and yes, I have seen printers and fax machines being thrown through the office. It is time to understand what the workplace really needs! Hence, after coaching teams, executives and advising businesses and boards on strategic positioning and outcomes for

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About Principles for Success (4)

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I have a few more chapters I want to share of my book Principles for Success. So if you haven’t bought and read my book, have a look at it. And feel free to tune into stories of success on any podcast outlet or www.storiesofsuccess.fm We discuss life-life balance, realising that work-life balance doesn’t work, given we are spending more time at work than with our family. Maybe it is just a phrase but the underlying thought is that you only have one life. Why divide it between work and life, if you can combine the two. My prediction is that the way we are working is changing in the future. And we discuss visualisation. Did you know that the brain can’t necessarily differentiate between the real experience and a good visualisation? This is a huge thing for athletes who go through a run or a swim over and over again. Just to get the brain and body to think you have done it. I did that for my marathon and it helps. Try it! You would have guessed that mindfulness and meditation foster success, whether that is through journaling, reflection or whatever it means for you. I found that

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About Principles for Success (3)

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How has your week been? I wanted to continue sharing some content from my book, Principles for Success. We spoke about teams last week. Another important factor is diversity in teams. I cannot stress this point enough, and still don’t believe that there are people who discriminate based on gender, race, political or sexual views. WTF? It drives me potty. The only way you should ever judge people is on their performance, if they can do the job and if they fit within the team. And if they don’t fit into your team due to them being diverse….now think what this says about your team? Hard work and discipline. My grandmother used to say, that I will always have a job, because I am good with people, disciplined and hard working. Make sure you keep those skills up. Don’t slack and be good to people. Emotional intelligent! I want to be honest, since launching my own business, I realise how hard you have to work to get anything off the ground. But I enjoy it! But of course you have a huge motivation too. The other thing, and you would recognise that from my first book, is about routines and

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About Principles for Success (2)

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Today I wanted to share a few more chapters of my book Principles for Success. Thanks for the overwhelming feedback and ‘likes’ on social media so far. Please continue to share the book and buy it of course :-). I have had, and many of those I interviewed, mentors all my life. From early in school to business. They help you to achieve your success, and similar to coaches, give you an external opinion. They are trusted advisors. Having mentors and guidance in building a business, helps you to be more successful. Learn from those who have done it before you. Learn from other people’s mistakes. Good coaches know of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic-Programming), allowing for modelling behaviour. This can really accelerate things. But also learn from your team, be good in delegating, a good team player and trust in your team and people. Be a compassionate and empathetic leader, someone with a high EQ (Emotional Intelligence). Trust is such an important topic. One want to trust the leadership to get the business where it needs to be. Or, as Jim Rohn says, and I mentioned this in most episodes, surround yourself with the right people, as you are only as good

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Launching my book Principles for Success (1)

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I can officially announce the launch of my book. I want to be honest on my blog here, I am quite chuffed to have achieved that. Yes, I wrote a book before, but juggling a full time job, family and writing a book on the back of a podcast….but it can be done. It is down to time management, discipline and routines. Latter you heard over the years, and it is mentioned in both of my books. After interviewing 40 people in 18 months of my podcast Stories of Success, I am delighted to summarise what I have learned in terms of What makes you successful. Thanks again to all my podcast guests for sharing their stories. I name them all in the book! In the next few days and weeks, I want to share those principles in short videos. You can find them on my LinkedIn feed, Facebook or Instagram. The first few chapters are about understanding and identifying your WHY, the why of your business and what it means to you. Understanding yourself and what drives you on. It is such a fundamental question to ask. We then solve the question if money means success. A question I

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Back to School

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This week is back to school. If not a lot earlier, most people return to work this week. Particularly in the UK, with people enjoying splendid weather over the bank holiday weekend (just over a week ago), some took the additional week off. Why not. I have been on it since early August, working on content for my blog, my LinkedIn Videos and launch of my executive and productivity coaching business. I have been lucky to see a trend that companies are interested in mindfulness trainings and how they can create a culture within an organisation that looks after their employees. As I continue with a top end training course later in the year, I started teaching meditation and mindfulness, incorporating emotional intelligence (EQ), working towards productivity. It all seems to come together. This week is back to school for the kids too. That means childcare is sorted for most of the day, and life returns to some kind of routine. It also means that you see less of your children. Unfortunately, that’s how life is. Those who follow me closely know that I currently split my time between a part-time job and launching my own business. That is splitting

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Productivity Book Promotion #BeBetter

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As an executive and productivity coach, it isn’t very uncommon to have a book published on productivity. This was my first ever book and my next book on Success Principles will be published later this year. Given we are all back after a long summer, a great long bank holiday weekend, it might just be the right time to kick-start your productivity habits. I have developed a 7 pillar framework which looks at – Defining what success actually means – Looking at your values and purpose – Defining the here and now and status quo – What do you want to achieve? – Define your stepping stones. – Plan your actions, as a plan is no good without actions – #BeBetter There is a lot more in the book, about trusted systems, healthy bodies, and spirits; it covers habits and routines, productivity tools and more. Let me know if you like the ideas or want to have a chat about the book or how this could be applied to your executives and teams. Best thing. The book is FREE to download from AMAZON this week! Promotion is on until Thursday.

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d:pulse – the new digital must-attend event in Europe!

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You have to admit that flying to Zurich to a conference from London, staying over night, has to be a good conference, right? A conference that adds value to a coach and consultant. So when my friends, Frank and Christian, invited me to join them in Zurich for d:pulse, I was on fire. They have built dmexco, brought the industry together a few times, and just understand the concept of good conferencing, adding value and getting the right people on board. So there I was, and admittedly, not knowing who Sven Hannawald was, he started the conference talking about burn-out, life-life balance and taking breaks. I thought I was on a personal development conference for a moment, as the multi Olympia winner talked about his struggle with mental health, performance and not being able to take a break. He spoke to what I preach, and that at a digital conference. It reiterated my point about the industry having to come closer together to not overwork people and look after each other. Besides us being a billion dollar industry, we are still a close knit team, and we have to work together to make it a sustainable industry not only from

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Mindfulness @Work

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I recently put my first proposal for an 8 week mindfulness workshop together. What I learned by doing this, is that a lot of mindfulness is ‘meditation’. But is it? Actually it is not, it is a good mix of EQ (Emotional Intelligence) and Meditation. Also, listening to a recent EQ (Emotional Intelligence) webinar, I realised that one of the core messages (see also last week’s post on here) is about being in the moment, being present. So the lines of EQ and mindfulness are a bit blurred in some areas. So what does mindfulness at work mean for me? First of all, I would define mindfulness as being kind and curious, paying attention to the here and now, the present moment. If we want to translate that to the workplace, we are looking at being present, being in the moment, and not disturbed by other means. An example could be to not be on your phone or laptop during a meeting, but paying attention to the presenter/speaker, and listen actively. Ask questions, be engaged and don’t get distracted by another email in your inbox or another whats app message. Pay full attention to what’s happening. How does that translate

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Social, Conversational & Emotional Intelligence

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Social Intelligence is a term that goes in line with Emotional Intelligence (EQ) for me. Ever since I wrote my MBA thesis over 15 years ago, I have been involved in EQ. At that time I wasn’t sure about the concept but I am now! Social Intelligence is about the ability to form successful relationships and navigate social environments. And, strong relationships improve your immune system, and reduce stress and health problems like depression. The relationships to others are key, and that’s where I found Emotional Intelligence comes in, and that’s why I like coaching and teaching people about it. For me it is about awareness, self management, social awareness, e.g. social intelligence and relationship management. Within social awareness we look at empathy and organisational awareness. How do I fit in, and how can I feel for others? How does that drive me forward, seeing myself more as a coach, influencer or team player? How does that align with the corporate goals and values? Conversational Intelligence is something I came across through one of my podcast guests for season 3. It is defined as how open you are to learn new and effective powerful conversational rituals that prime the brain

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