Coaching Blog
The Coaching Group Of Switzerland

Most people assume that the solution to their emotional struggles is to do more:

• I’m feeling anxious, so I need to do some kind of coping skill like deep breathing or mindfulness meditation to calm myself down.
• I’m feeling angry at the memory of the abuse I suffered as a child so I need to try and understand and analyze why they did that to me.
• I’m feeling sad that my daughter has left and gone away to college so I should probably call her.

But here’s the problem…
The more you do to try and get rid of emotions directly, the stronger they’ll get.
Take sadness, for example:

• If every time you feel sad, you immediately try to get rid of it by doing something, you’re teaching your brain that it’s bad to feel sad.
• This means the next time you feel sad, you’re going to feel fear and shame on top of the sadness.

The solution is to develop emotional anti-skills.
A skill is when you learn how to do something in order to achieve a positive outcome; an anti-skill is learning how to not do something in order to achieve a positive outcome.

by Kelly Miller, Positive Psychology. com
​
​So many humans are walking around this planet unaware of the impact they have on the people around them. Within each of us is a tremendous capacity to affect change. Yet, too many of us simply react to the creations of others.

Being self-aware and practicing daily reflection and introspection allows each of us the opportunity to find what we really want out of this precious life.  We are all susceptible to outside influence and personal bias. Without self-awareness, we are even more susceptible.

When one can accomplish self-mastery through a deep understanding of the internal self and the public self through the attainment of true self-awareness, real freedom can be achieved.  Let’s explore more...

by Suzie Doscher, Life and Executive Coach - The Coaching Group of Switzerland

Learning how to respond to a situation rather than reacting brings huge rewards. Needless to say, it is one of those behaviour changes that are easier said than done. However it can be achieved.
Being able to respond to /act upon means you are in a mindful place - a place where you are aware of your thoughts and feelings. This means you have considered the situation and the response that best suits you.
'Responding' rather than 'reacting' means you are  choosing your behaviour. To 'react' indicates that a button has been pushed – something triggered you not to take the time to think and consider your response. This can often leave you in a position at the mercy of others.
Some of the benefits by stopping the knee-jerk type reactions are:

• Sense of strength,
• Sense of achievement
• Power to influence – yourself and the situation
• Calmness
• An increase in your self-esteem

The rewards will be felt not only in your private life, but also at work. 

 By Marcel Schwantes 

Ever wonder if you're true leadership material? Perhaps you've been told you are, but the question is, by what standard? Thousands of leadership books are written each year, many of them with marketing agendas to rehash and repackage what has been talked about for decades.

What is true about leadership that will remain unchanged through the centuries is this: It's about people and relationships. And that requires that leaders have a natural bent for both. If you're not into either, you're not a leader.

And you can start with the proven fact that great leaders aspire to lead by serving the needs of their people. You don't need flavor-of-the-month books and expensive formal training to learn this concept.

But you do need to develop and measure yourself against the standards of great leadership (which I strongly propose to be servant leadership). Here are four top leadership characteristics I have witnessed that float to the top. Do any describe you?  

FIND YOUR WAY Coaching cards offer guidance questions to help you discover your path in life.
All you need are the cards, a journal, and a little time set aside to deepen your self-awareness and design the life that you love. Surrender to the fun creativity that the cards provide, carefully contemplate and, write down answers to each question, be patient, take massive action, and then trust that you will find your way.

This inspiring 54-card deck does not follow any particular formula. You can use it any way you like. There are no rules, simply let your intuition and creativity guide you, and you will find answers and meaning.  

BY STEPHANIE VOZZA - 4 MINUTE READ

​Ever have to psych yourself up to go to work? If that’s the case more often than not, your job might not align with your personal motives, says Carter Cast, author of The Right (and Wrong) Stuff: How Brilliant Careers are Made and Unmade.
​
Strengths are your natural skillsets, and motives are the place from which you draw energy, says Cast. They differ from values, which are what’s important to you. “If you ask someone what their values are, they can rattle them off quickly,” he says. “Motives are much harder to identify because we’re often not conscious of them. They’re the river that flows under us.”
A mismatch in job and motives will wear you down and eventually cause you to fail to live up to your potential, says Cast. “Currently, the assumption is that if you took this job, it’s the right job for you,” says Cast. “But people who are smart, don’t have a skill gap, and are good interpersonally will underperform if they don’t have energy for position.”

by Cayla Vidmar posted on Thrive Global

I lay in bed in the middle of the night, looking at the ceiling when my chest seized up in excruciating pain. This chest pain was something that had been going on for some time, but this was next level. At that moment I realized something was wrong: I hated my job, the one I had worked so hard to get.

My job itself wasn’t overly stressful, but I couldn’t shake the thought that my life still wasn’t what I thought it should be, and it was quickly ticking by, with every year being the same as the last.
The work I was doing wasn’t changing people’s lives, I wasn’t helping anyone, I didn’t feel like there was any meaning in my day to day life.
​
On top of that, I couldn’t figure out what my purpose was, or what I’d rather be doing. I was running in circles, consuming as much information as I could about starting businesses and flip-flopping from one passion to the next.

By Ellie Kaplan

Most people fail to achieve their goals and the success they want — here’s why.The classic “marshmallow test” proved the universal importance of delaying one’s gratification. The ability to resist immediate rewards in anticipation for much bigger things is a test of character that only successful people benefit from.
However, while you strive to reach your long-term goals, energy-draining struggles and challenges will come your way and affect your mindset. If you are not in your best shape mentally and physically, your performance will become compromised.

The good news is that Harvard Business Review found a solution to this dilemma through a series of extensive studies.
​
Read on to get some tips on how to properly motivate yourself over the long-term and crush your goals, without having to give up on what’s truly important in life.

By Peter Barron Stark
​
On a scale from 1-10, how would you rate your productivity as a leader? Many of us, if not all, wouldn’t rate ourselves as high on the productivity scale as we would like to be. Sometimes leaders feel like they are constantly busy but are somehow still unable to accomplish their goals. Have you ever started your workday with a list of things to do and at the end of the workday STILL had the same number of things to do?

If you are nodding your head in agreement as you read this, take a look at our recent blog post [1] which will walk you through conducting a time audit [2]. Once you have completed at least one time audit, you will be able to take a more objective look at how you spend your time. Chances are good that you will have several tasks on your list that can be delegated to your employees, freeing up more of your time to work on higher level assignments that will help you and your team achieve the organization’s goals.
 
It’s important to remember that as we rise further up the ladder in organizations, our responsibilities change from less emphasis on the operational or the “doing” tasks and more emphasis on the leadership tasks (managing, planning, leading).

by Suzie Doscher

Emotional Intelligence can be defined as having: 

• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Motivation

• Empathy
• Social Skills
  
  

I like to think in terms of feeling a sense of power - Personal Power means you have the soft skills that make up Emotional Intelligence.

I believe your Personal Power is intact when you:

By Holly Green
Twenty-five years ago, fax machines – which took minutes to transmit one page of data and print it out on wax paper in barely legible text -- were considered the height of communications technology. These big, bulky devices had to be plugged into an electrical outlet in order to function and were not very portable.

Today, 4G cell phones can instantly connect us to any person or piece of information, anywhere in the world, at any time. These completely portable devices fit in the palm of our hands and require only a charged battery to operate. They can forward information to printers, web sites, Facebook pages, email accounts -- basically anywhere you need the information to go.
How’s that for change?

I bring this up because... ​(click below to read more)

by Suzie Doscher

Addressing the issue would bring clarity and awareness. And yet it is fascinating how quickly talking about a topic that, in fact, is hurting everybody in some way or another is avoided. The problem could be dealt with and a sense of clarity, peace, and calm could return. Yet the elephant, the sometimes very large elephant, is ignored and walked around, everyone trying to pretend that athe elephant does not actually exist.
 
Imagine you are in a situation with an elephant in the room. For example, let us say the issue is a miscommunication.:

BY MALISSA CLARK - 3 MINUTE READ

When I tell people that I study workaholism for a living, I’m usually bombarded by suggestions of subjects I could do a case study on. It seems that everyone can think of at least one person in their lives that they’d label a workaholic–or, perhaps, they identify as a workaholic themselves.
The definition of workaholism has expanded over the years to include motivational, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components–but understanding why you’re overworking can help you unlock ways to deal with it.

A BRIEF TAXONOMY OF WORKAHOLISM
These are a few of the leading causes of overwork:

• Motivational: Workaholics are different from people who are simply highly engaged in their jobs. They don’t enjoy their work; they feel compelled to work because of internal pressures. In other words, they work because they feel like they should or ought to be working.
• Cognitive: Workaholics have persistent thoughts about work when they’re not working, and they find it difficult to mentally disengage from work.
• Emotional: Workaholics experience negative emotions like anxiety and guilt when they aren’t working.
• Behavioral: Workaholics tend to work beyond what is reasonably expected of them by their organization.

As this breakdown makes clear, all these forms of workaholism can be triggered and exacerbated by different factors: internal needs, external factors, underlying personality traits, and more.