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As a coach, I often ask people to start from the beginning when we first meet. I want to get a feel for what drives them, what’s underpinning their current challenges and what experiences have shaped them in life so far.

It therefore seems only fair that I take my own medicine and share some of my own background with you. A good place to start is with my business name. It wasn’t my original brand, I updated it after a few years of running my business, at a time when I really felt I had ‘arrived’. I’d found my true niche, had grown confident and was loving what I offered my clients.

 

Exploring three words…

 

Mind

To me, the word ‘mind’ is interchangeable with ‘brain’ and so it represents our need to take control of our thoughts, to pay attention and acknowledge what is going on inside our head. If we ignore what our mind is trying to tell us, it will create challenges and hurdles. (This is mainly because a large proportion of it is subconscious and can therefore act outside of our control.)

When we don’t manage what is going on inside our mind, the result is not always desirable.  However, the techniques we need to manage our minds are rarely taught, despite being a critical life skill. That is, not taught until we seek to learn them, and that is where I support my clients.

The work I do in this area is all backed up by my own experience of leaving a large organisation and discovering I didn’t really know my own identity. I had to go away and work to understand what I thought, felt, believed. I look back at some of my career and I was blindly or unconsciously moving forward without taking care of what was on my mind. It soon caught up on me.

My son is very active in the sport of clay pigeon shooting. It’s a sport that requires incredible discipline and motivation, not least because he competes at a high level and therefore experiences the highs and lows that come with winning and losing. I have learnt a lot about my own mind through supporting him. I put my emotions aside sometimes, and other times a ‘mum cuddle’ is all that’s needed. It takes strength of mind to support him and to know what the right behaviour is and when.

Values

In the business world, values can often lack sincerity. All too familiar words (respect, integrity, honesty, you know the ones!), that honestly, most of us would want to live by but don’t differentiate or have true meaning. They are often something bandied around in a box-ticking exercise. We don’t always feel aligned to business values when, really, they should reflect and enhance common personal values.

Personal values, however, are very different. They start to form from a young age, possibly without knowing we have done so. We feel them strongly, deep within ourselves. And, as such if they are compromised, we often react strongly.

I referred earlier to leaving employment, before I set up my own business. I felt lost and part of this was not being consciously aware of what my values were. During my coach training, we spent a whole weekend focussing on exploring our own values and then exploring what happens when you truly live them and, when you find them compromised. I suddenly looked back at difficult or uncomfortable times in my life and could see how my values weren’t being honoured.

I chose values to be in my company name because when we recognise what they truly are, they can help us understand why things might not feel right, and they demonstrate why it’s nearly always right to listen to that feeling in our gut. They also help inform and guide us when making decisions.

Leadership

Leadership is a word that can easily be misinterpreted. It often can be seen as a title or position, but I tend to think of it more generally and I love to find examples of leadership in the wider content of life. (More on that in a later blog series.)

You see, anyone can be a leader. We don’t need a corporate structure to name us as one, nor do we need a team of people to lead. True leadership is all about behaviours and attitude. Going back to my son, I realise that some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned related to leadership have come from him. He leads for himself, by showcasing certain behaviours in his sport, he feeds back on my ‘leadership’ as coach and mum (not always positively!). I know of many other people whose attitude to life exemplify leadership and who should be followed as a great example in whatever they are doing.

Put it all together

In summary, my three words all stand individually but they also come together in a kind of phrase: Mind Values Leadership is a type of leadership. It’s a style of leading that is mindful and has strong links to values. In my opinion, you can’t have one without the others.

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