A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Transform Your Professional Impact. You already have a professional impact. Every day, through the way you think, solve problems, work with other people and respond to challenges, you influence what happens around you. The question is whether you understand what creates it. Transform Your Professional Impact takes you from recognising the natural character trait you’ve been carrying all along, to developing it intentionally, connecting it to real professional outcomes and extending what you’ve discovered to the people around you.
Category Archives: Professional Self-Coaching
How Do I Network When I Hate Networking?
Ingrid was fifty-two, a structural engineer, and a partner in a practice that had put its name on buildings people trusted their lives to. And she was sitting in a car park, in the dark, not getting out of the car to go into the networking event. What she hated was never the people — it was what the room seemed to require: brightness, availability, an eagerness to be liked. She had told herself for thirty years that this was a character flaw. Then after she went its — she always did — she watched a man in the noisiest corner of that room do it entirely differently — and went home to write down what thirty years had actually taught her — and brought it back to the next networking event — to three engaging conversations.
Self-Coaching in the Age of AI Who Is Really Doing the Thinking?
Maddy had been offered voluntary redundancy after twenty-three years with the same organisation. She could stay. Or she could take the package and leave. Everyone had an answer — her husband, her closest colleague, her sister. Maddy didn’t. So she turned to AI — the very technology reshaping her workplace. She gave it everything she thought it needed to help her decide. By eleven o’clock she knew considerably more than she had at seven. She still didn’t know what to do. Then she changed the question. What followed is a story about self-coaching in the age of AI — and the difference between using technology to help us think and asking it to do our thinking for us.
What Do I Say After “What Do You Do?”
Tade’s answer was perfect. “I’m a product designer. I work on the checkout experience for a fintech platform.” Clear, accurate, exactly the right length — and every time he gave it, the same small nod, the same “cool,” and a silence he never knew how to fill. He’d been to eleven events that year and couldn’t name one relationship that had come from any of them. Then he watched someone else answer the same question, and say one more sentence — and went home to find the three stories that had been sitting in ten years of work, unspoken.
How Do I Introduce Myself at a Networking Event?
Adaeze was one of the best forensic accountants in the country. In a room full of documents, she was formidable. In every networking room she entered, she disappeared. “So — what do you do?” Thirty seconds later the conversation was over — not rudely; they’d nod, say “that sounds interesting,” and their eyes would begin the small journey around the room that means the conversation is finished. Then, at a conference coffee station, she watched a stranger answer that same question completely differently — and went home to find the three stories that had been sitting in fifteen years of work, unspoken.
Can You Coach Yourself Through a Job Interview?
Piotr hadn’t interviewed in nine years — he’d never needed to. Then came the restructure, and an interview three weeks away for a role he genuinely wanted. His instinct was the sensible one: get a coach. His oldest friend was one — booked months out. What she told him down the phone instead changed his three weeks: “I wouldn’t give you a single answer. The answers were always going to come from you.” So he asked the question this story exists to answer: could I do that for myself?
Introducing Get the Strategic Influence
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Get the Strategic Influence. Your expertise is respected — and still, people value the technical service and treat it as operational, while the strategic insight you carry rarely reaches the table. The gap isn’t that you lack a voice; it’s that people don’t see the purpose behind how you see. Get the Strategic Influence takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that reveal the purpose behind your expertise — so people stop treating you as a technical service and start treating you as a strategic mind.
Introducing Get the Thinking Across
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Get the Thinking Across. You do good work, and your clients are satisfied — and still, the relationship stays at the surface, and when a harder problem arrives it isn’t you they turn to. A client who is satisfied has seen your work; a client who has seen how you think will bring you the harder things. A finished result shows what you made, not how you made it. Get the Thinking Across takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that get the thinking behind your work across — so clients stop receiving your work and start thinking the problem through with you.
Introducing Get the Trust
A new resource in Professional Self-Coaching: Get the Trust. You lead well, and your team respects you — and still, when a problem arrives, they wait for you to solve it. A team that respects you will do what you ask; a team that trusts you will do more than you ask. Respect is earned through effectiveness, and effectiveness keeps people at a distance. Get the Trust takes you from your experience to three prepared professional stories that let people see the thinking behind how you lead — so they stop waiting to be directed and start navigating the work with you.
How Do I Prepare for an Interview in One Day?
The call came at four o’clock: hiring freeze Friday, can you do 4pm tomorrow? Sandra had planned a week of preparation; what she had was one evening. So she did what twenty-eight years of supply chain had taught her to do when a timeline collapses — decide what actually matters, and cut the rest on purpose. And she knew what actually mattered, because twenty-eight years includes a lot of hiring: three things, and she had one evening to find a story for each.