Insights from Flow

5 Practices in Search for Meaning and Becoming a Certified ICF Master Coach

I became a certified coach in 2007 by completing an ICF ACTP certification program. Back then, I was already a therapist and I didn’t know what I was getting into. I transitioned to therapy, from a successful executive corporate career, and then to coaching. I wanted to become a certified coach because I wanted to work with corporate people and help them find and have more meaning in their work life, hence to help them find an increased sense of flow. I didn’t know that coaching would become a life-changing experience for me, and eventually transform me into the person that I wanted to become. A huge thing I realized in my career is that no matter how many people I coach and mentor, I always learn something new about myself along the way.

Coaching, that is aligned with ICF (International Coach Federation) code of conduct and competencies, has its roots in the science of solution-focused and client-centered psychology. Therefore, as a therapist that was educated in client-centered therapy, ICF coaching wasn’t totally unfamiliar to me. However, what I wasn’t aware of was the tools and skills that are taught are life-changing. So, once I realized that I disciplined myself to use them on a regular basis towards re-inventing myself.

Eventually, based on my personal experience meeting, coaching and mentoring so many of the amazing individuals who have shaped me into who I am today, I created a curriculum with my partners-in-crime, based on Positive Psychology and FLOW model, to help others to learn these life skills in their search for meaning, hence our innate inclination towards having more flow.

These tools and methods have helped me to find meaning and flow in my search for authentic happiness. Using them, I have been able to rewire my brain cells towards more solution-focused thinking and flow mindset.

Mastery doesn’t come in a day. It is a journey of ups and downs. You need to say yes to its challenges as you say yes to its rewards. You need to embrace the full experience and see it almost as a spiritual practice, similar to the one of a Zen master or a Sufi.

Looking back to my coaching career of 14 years now, I can say that not only coaching others and teaching these skills but also mastering these skills in my own life has been adding to my sense of meaning and flow. So, I want to share with you, my 5 personal practices that helped me to get here and enjoy the journey while becoming a master certified coach.

1. Self-reflection: This is extremely important when you are looking to better yourself every day. If you do not know your baseline and if you are not checking, how can you know how to improve. This is where self-reflection comes in. I always ask myself the same coaching questions I ask my clients. The trick here is to also always answer them honestly.
2. Learner’s mindset: Always asking myself, what am I actually learning here, and what am I going to be getting out of this? How can I learn better? How can I improve the way I am learning?
3. Disciplining my attention: Years ago I accepted that I cannot do everything and cannot be everywhere. So, I pay attention to my priorities and use my time and energy accordingly.
4. Knowing myself: Understanding your temperament and building your support system that nurtures that is crucial to resilience and long term success. For example, I know that I am not a loner, I function at my best with a good team and community. I have worked towards building that community. Yours might be different, so ask yourself what is my innate temperament?
5. Listening to myself and my needs: I learned with a great price that if I don’t take care of myself, then no-one will. So I make time for self-care on a regular basis. This way, I am always listening to my body, and taking the time it needs to recharge and get refreshed.

These are my top 5 practices that I do every day to ensure that I am always centered and know my meaning. This has been a huge help in being able to do everything I do and succeed in all the projects I set my eyes on.

What are yours? I would love to know more.

Love,

Talyaa.

Transforming New Years Resolutions : Next Level Resolution Planning Using Coaching Methodologies

As 2020 comes to a close, we will all be looking back at 2020 and seeing how what we have achieved. With the new year upon us, there will obviously be a need and want to craft new resolutions for 2021. 

How Was 2020 For You? 

2020 was a hard year for everyone, and it seems that it might not get as much easier as we have all hoped it would be. But the team here at FLOW Coaching Institute would like to first congratulate you on getting through one of the craziest years of modern history. With pandemics, natural disasters, political unrest, and even racial unrest - it has been an exhausting and trying year for a lot of people, around the world. 

When it comes to the New Year, the one thing you will hear about the most is - Resolutions. Especially with the year we have had, we can see that everywhere on social media and on the news people are praying and hoping for a better year in 2021. Everyone is also doing their part in creating goals and resolutions for themselves so that they can create and transform 2021 into a year of abundance and growth. 

Maintaining Resolutions 

We are all guilty of creating resolutions, that secret list of things like exercising more, being more mindful, meditating more, checking off that things off your bucket list and so much more. Then, January hits, and things are awesome for a few weeks and then, life happens. And somehow, the cycle starts again where work takes over, or family priorities take over, and somehow all of the awesome plans you had will have taken the backseat. 

So, what is this resistance we all feel when it comes to focusing and staying on the bandwagon of achieving resolutions? According to a study by Franklin Covey, it’s because sometimes we might get a little too excited and overzealous when we create them. Almost 40% of us then blame our busy schedules for the serious lack of follow-through which is why it seems that a lot of people break their New Year Resolutions. 

Non-commitment, busy schedules, and a serious case of over-optimism seems to be the main causes of not being able to maintain resolutions. 

What Can You Do To Overcome This Resolution Resistance? 

Flow Coaching Institute has coached and mentored hundreds of people and we find that there are a few things and questions that you can do and ask yourself to pick the best resolutions for you and be able to stick with them. 

Most of the time, we don’t ask ourselves the right questions and we tend to follow what everyone else is doing without looking internally and realizing what are the best goals and resolutions for us in our current time and being now. 

Questions to Ask Yourself To Resolutions That Resonate 

1. What are the three main things that you want to stop doing? 

• This is the bucket that you should start with first so that you know what you DO NOT want. 
• Once you know what you do not want any more in your life it will become easier to see what you actually want. 
• Believe and trust that you can actually do less of what you dislike.
• This can be habits, work, thought patterns, and even tasks that you feel are not serving you anymore. 

 

2. What are the three main things you like doing and would love to do more of? 

• Once you’ve answered your dislikes, this would be a lot simpler to answer. 
• What makes your soul sing? What is it that you want to look forward to when you wake up? 
• It can be a hobby, a job that you’ve always wanted to apply for, or even a habit that you want to instill. 

 

3. Which three main areas do you want to evolve in? 

• Evolving can mean different things here, it can be mentally, or even skills-wise. 
• How do you want to grow and how would you like to show up in the world? 

With these questions, now you can curate a resolution list that resonates and works with what you want to achieve. This way, you are more inclined to want to see it through because is it deeply rooted in the way you want to grow, be, and show up in the world. 

Steps To Overcome The Resistance 

We have put together 4 simple steps that we think you can use whenever you want to when you feel that fire dissipate or when you need a bit more motivation, use these methods to help get that fire back. 

Picking resolutions that resonate with you. 

• This is easily done once you’ve practiced asking those questions we mentioned above. 

Create your anchor image or vision board

• When you know the resolutions you want, we suggest creating an image for it. Something that is tangible and can be seen so that you are reminded daily about it. 
• This way the probability of you forgetting about it or not being as motivated lessens significantly because it’s always there to remind you about what you truly want. 

Set Guidelines 

• A lot of times, new years resolutions fail because we do not have set guides and timelines in place, so the mind will always say things like tomorrow, or next time. 
• Once you have guidelines, it will be much easier to follow them and stick to it. 

Plan Your Goals Out 

• Once you have the goals and the timelines in which you want to achieve them, you can now put it all on paper! 
• Plan out the steps you need to take to ensure that you reach your new year's resolutions and goals. 
• And whenever you feel like you are not sure what needs to be done, or if you are feeling a little demotivated, you can then look back at these plans and it should set you back up in shape. 

So there you have it - our thoughts on New Years Resolutions, keeping them, maintaining them, and thriving at them. 

We wish you all the best and for a much more eventful 2021 ahead for you. 

How do you maintain your New Years Resolutions? We would love to hear from you! 

 

Written by: Tashya Viknesh

Approved by: Talyaa Vardar (author mentioned in this article)

Showing Up – Five Tips To Becoming The Best Coach For Your Clients

With over a decade of experience coaching, the founders of Flow Coaching Institute have coached businesses, CEOs, athletes, students, and almost everyone in between. Being a coach is not an easy job, but it is an extremely fulfilling one. Over the years, our founders have learned a lot along their coaching journey and we are going to share some of their tips on showing up and being the best coach for your clients. 

What Does Being A Good Coach Mean? 

Coaching in itself is a long and rewarding journey that is deeply rooted in a lot of self-reflection and personal growth from the perspective of the coach themselves. To become the best coach for your clients, you will need to be the best version of yourselves or at least be working on becoming the best version of yourself. 

Tip 1: Be Open & Honest 

Your clients will be coming to you with a lot of problems and things that they want to improve and fix in their lives. If you are not open and honest with them, they will be able to sense that and this will significantly affect the session that you are having. 

Being open and honest means that you are showing them that you are not judging them and that you are able to be honest with them to show your vulnerable side as well. Most times, people will wait for you to open up first before they do so. So as a coach, it’s best for you to open up first and set the example beforehand so that your clients can lead from your example. 

The ability to create a safe environment is extremely important as studies show that when you create a comfortable and safe environment the people around you will feel a lot more at ease when opening up.

Tip 2: Learn To Coach Everyone 

You might be called in to coach a CEO of a multi-million dollar company but deep down they are still someone’s son or daughter, a husband or a wife or a friend. We are all humans and there are a few things that we all have in common. If you want to be a better coach with better coaching methods, you will need to learn to be everyone’s coach. 

Find that thread that links everyone together. This way, you will be able to easily understand the crux of problems and be able to give them the best advice by finding the root of the problem rather than surface-level issues. 

Tip 3: Curate Tangible Results 

When you start working with your clients, always sit down with them and verbalize and when possible write down tangible results that they want to see. Have a healthy discussion on what they need and want to get out of these coaching sessions with you. 

This is extremely important as this will become the blueprint of your journey with this coaching client of yours. It will also help them visualize their progress and where they would like to be in the near future. 

Plus, when things are written down, people are more likely to follow it rather than just speaking it into existence.

Tip 4: Owning Conversations & Maintaining Them 

Sometimes people can mistake therapy for coaching sessions. If you want to be a highly effective coach, become a better coach, and show up for your clients, you need to be able to own conversations and maintain them. 

Not in the way of overstepping your clients, but being able to reel them back in when needed. Asking questions like “what is the goal you want to achieve here?” or reel them back in by saying that “that’s not where we are supposed to go”, and be able to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand. 

This becomes a lot easier as well when you have those tangible results that you and your client have agreed upon beforehand. 

Don’t be afraid to own conversations, you are there as a coach to help them become a better person and improve their journey and life experience. This is your job and if you feel that the trajectory of the conversation is not doing your client any good anymore then gently steer the conversation back. 

Tip 5: Focusing on Follow-Ups 

We get it, sometimes life gets in the way. Especially with everything going remote lately, it might be easier to push meetings or to do shorter meetings. But, being a great coach means that you are very diligent with your follow-ups and checking in on your clients. 

Things get hard and time passes by, but this should not deter you from maintaining your coaching schedules with them. Once you become a coach, you become an accountability partner. 

There you have it! Our 5 main tips to becoming the best coach for your clients. Always remember that you need to have your client's best interest in mind at all times. 

What are some tips that you think we should add? We would love to hear from you! 

If you are interested in becoming a coach yourself, visit this link or send us an email at info@flowcoachinginstitute.com to learn more about our programs!

The New Normal – Becoming A Successful Coach Online

With 2020 behind us, 2021 brings about a lot of promise, hope, and change. We have seen resilience, empathy, grit, and strength from everyone from all walks of life. As a collective, we believe that we saw the most amount of growth from humanity this past year. 

With all those changes, what was normal to us coaches back then, things like sitting face-to-face to have a one-on-one with a client, meeting your team in the office, and just having lunch with a client have completely changed. 

Today, people are getting married on Zoom, they are celebrating birthdays online and everyone has had to adapt and learn how to function online for a lot of the things we used to do face to face. And, after a full year of doing that, we don’t think this new reality is going away anytime soon. 

As a coach and a business owner, I had to pivot my team the minute we saw what was happening with the world. With a career like ours, where community and having face-to-face conversations was crucial - we realized that had to change. 

The life coaching industry is set to make almost $1 billion in revenue yearly and there are over 18,000 life coaching businesses in the US alone. This shows that life coaching is an industry that is not going anywhere soon. 

Moving Your Coaching Business Online 

As a coach, we are all driven to help others. We want to be change-makers and help others become better versions of themselves. However, life coaches aren’t just coaches anymore - to survive in today’s digital age and with the pandemic, you will also need to be an entrepreneur. 

If you don’t move your coaching business online today - you might get left behind. Here are some of our top tips to become a successful coach online in 2021. 

Finding Your Coaching Niche 

This is usually done after you have been certified to become a coach and you have the necessary training required to start coaching actual clients. As a coach, there are so many avenues you can choose from. 

• Business coaching 
• Life coaching 
• Career coaching 
• Personal development coaching 

By deciding on a niche, it would become much easier for you to set up your business, create your websites, share your message and find the right clients that need you. 

To decide on a niche, you can also start asking yourself questions like: 

• What can I offer to my clients? 
• What experiences that I have that I can use to help my clients? 
• What do your family members and friends usually go to you for advice for? 

Once you’ve reflected on these questions, you should be able to decide on your niche. This is extremely helpful moving forward as it will help you set every other part of your online business. 

Launching Your Business

What are you waiting for? There are so many website builders out there that you can easily use to start your own online coaching company. At the end of the day, getting online today is so much easier than it was 10 years ago. Creating an online presence is as simple as 3-4 button clicks.

Make sure that you have a website, a great LinkedIn page, and a social media profile that you are active on. This could be Instagram or Facebook. Whichever suits you the best.

Also make sure that you are incredibly engaging on these platforms because the more your potential clients see you and your personality the more likely they are to engage in you.

Always ensure that you aren't just sharing coaching tips and all the normal stuff -- but make sure that you are posting a lot with regard to WHO YOU ARE. The things you stand for and the values that you hold near and dear to your heart.

These are the things that make people resonate with you and potential clients will love being able to see your personality. Someone is going to spend money on your and you will then be spending your time training them -- this is why it's crucial for them to fully understand who you are so that they know that they can trust you.

These are some of our little tips on how you can become a coach in 2021 -- the year in which literally everything is online! Do you have any tips that we might have missed out on? Let us know in the comments!

 

 

Top Leadership Coaching Skills To Have Post-Pandemic

We might finally see a light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccine rollouts in full force - however, so much has changed in the world of business and leadership that I believe that there is a need for completely new skills moving forward.

As a leader or as a manager or even as a coach, the world post-pandemic is already shaping up to be incredibly different. With this whole pandemic being the ultimate test of grit, determination, and patience, there is so much uncertainty going about that everyone needs to work on as a while.

This means that a lot of businesses and organizations need that support to make informed and smart decisions based on the current issues they are facing. This comes from a very strong leader that will steer the ship to success.

These are some of the top leadership coaching skills that we feel leaders need to have post-pandemic 

#1: The Ability To Build A Strong Team Culture 

When everyone isn't able to see each other and interact with each other the way we used to, there will be a disconnect. With that disconnect comes a lot of assumptions and perhaps even a lot of miscommunication. To ensure this doesn't happen or is lessened as much as possible, as a leader you need to be able to coach your team to be open and communicate well.

Over-communication is key here as people will need to constantly go back and forth to ensure that they have all the information they need. A good team culture is needed to ensure that all members feel like they are part of a team despite being apart from one another.

#2: Strong Goal Setting & Accountability

As a coach, you need to be able to work on setting goals with your clients for the short-term as well as the long term. Therefore, this needs to be translated to the rest of your team as well. With strong goals, your team will have something to work towards. This gives them a sense of ownership and it makes them feel like they have things under control.

With that, you allow your team to take charge of certain aspects while you work on steering the ship. In addition to that, good goal setting and a good coach makes up for incredible accountability. This is especially important when you are in a team that is remote due to the pandemic. Life gets in the way -- especially at home where you might have crying children or partners who are in need of some extra support that morning.

Being able to hold people accountable without pushing them over or making them feel like you are micromanaging is a crucial skill to have in the post-pandemic world.

#3: Reliable Listening Skills 

As a coach, you will be listening to a lot of people and most times this is one of the most important aspects of being a coach. This is also especially true when it comes to a leadership position. Being a leader means your team will turn to you and they will need you to listen to their issues, wins and concerns. Always listen to understand and not to answer.

A lot of people only listen to see what they will get out of the conversation. However, being a good leader means that you listen to understand the issue to ensure that your team feels safe and heard.

These are some of our top leadership coaching skills that we feel that every leader needs in a post-pandemic world. What do you think?

If you are interested in becoming a business or leadership coach yourself, head on over to our program schedule to book a call with one of our program advisors today. We can't wait to see you.

 

 

Coaching Techniques That Will Help You Through Isolation

2020 was a hard year for everyone. It is stated that in the US 4 out of 10 adults stated that they were having mental health issues due to the pandemic. This is a huge percentage. And a huge chunk of them mentioned the depression that came from extensive isolation was what causes them to feel this intense form of sadness, depression, and helplessness.

How Does Long-Term Isolation Affect You? 

There's a reason why solitary confinement is a punishment for those who did something really bad in prison. It can turn even the sanest of people a little mad. And almost the entire population of the world had to deal with some form or another of extended isolation. When one is isolated for an extended period of time, this can cause severe depression because of loneliness. Humans are social creatures, without socialization and being able to meet others, speak to them and hang out, causes the brain to feel sad and lonely.

According to this study,

"...As the Greek philosopher Aristotle reminds us, man is a “social animal,” unable to live isolated from others, since the absence of relationships removes essential conditions for the development of personal identity and the exercise of reason".

What Do Coaching Techniques Have To Do With Getting Through Isolation? 

Coaches are trained extensively to be able to speak to their clients, find out what's wrong, and work with them through all of their issues. Life coaches also hold their clients accountable for their own growth. Coaching methodologies have been known to help those who might not have the money or the resources to get themselves a coach. And we wanted to share some of those with you today so that you can also use them on your own if you do not currently have access to a coach.

#1: Practicing Mindfulness

Coaching yourself is a big part of being a coach. And with that comes the ability to practice mindfulness. The main definition of mindfulness is to focus on the present moment. This way, you are able to let the rest of the issues, anxiety, and problems melt away when you only focus on the now and the thing that is directly in your control at this moment.

Practice simple breathing exercises and make sure you leave the house for fresh air at least once a day. Clear your mind when you feel like it's becoming too much. Being mindful also means that you are aware of what you are thinking and that you are conscious enough to stop that thought and try to remove it from your system.

Breathe and start noticing your thoughts is super crucial in practicing mindfulness. As a coach, this is also a great way to get your client to disconnect from their harmful thoughts and self-sabotaging ways and to pivot and shift their focus on the now so that you can break them from the current vicious cycles they might be going through.

#2: Communication 

Coaches are known to be some of the best communicators. They can understand complex issues that someone is going through and be able to calm them down and communicate with them so that they feel safe and heard.

When it comes to the pandemic depression and anxiety that so many people are experiencing, we have noticed that effective communication helps lower the anxiety, concerns, and fears that may be present in the minds of everyone.

Always have a list of a few people that you speak to on a daily basis. It could be your partner, best friend or even your parents. Share with them what you did during the day. Don't stop there, you can also share things like your concerns with how you're feeling. Having a support system is great when you make sure that you constantly communicate with them as well.

These are our two main tips and coaching techniques that we believe you should use to help you in times of isolation and depression. Let us know if you've used any of these and if you did, we would love to know if it helped.

How Much Do Professional Coaches Earn?

Professional Coaching is one of the fastest-growing industries globally, and if you are considering becoming a certified coach we have some information to share with you.

If you've been thinking about becoming a certified life coach, executive coach, or a career coach but you have been unsure about the income, you are about to learn! FLOW Coaching Institute has alumni and a group of professional coaches across the world working in the field of various specialties such as career coaching, executive coaching, life coaching, corporate coaching, parent coaching, team coaching, etc. We reached out to them and asked about how much income they earn to give you as much precise information as we can reflecting different a range of different specialties and geographies.

So, if you are the kind of person who enjoys helping other people and has always dreamed about doing that kind of work that makes a real difference in people’s lives, but at the same time worried about the income you will make, we hope that this information will give you an idea if becoming a Certified Professional Coach matches your financial expectations.

Based on this brief research, we managed to conclude that the key to earning a considerable amount of good salary lies in “professional commitment”. These FLOW graduates that we interviewed have a high commitment to keeping their practice aligned with professional standards. Therefore, they network on a regular basis, they develop their practice by listening to their clients and their feedback, they invest in mentoring and supervision, and they coach and are coached themselves on a regular basis.

So How Much Do Coaches Make? 

According to our survey and interviews with ICF Certified Professional Flow Coaches, we can say that full-time certified life coaches that work for 6-8 hours a day earn between a range of $50-$500 per hour and earn around the ranges of $70,000 to a whopping $600,000. (P.s: Note that this is calculated by working 6 hours per day with a 20-day working month).

Career Coaches 

Certified Professional Career Coaches stated that they make 30-70% more than this on average as they get a chance to work with a number of individuals from their corporate clients. Life Coaches' on the other hand have business models that vary from providing hourly in-person/live coaching sessions to monthly live group coaching sessions through online platforms like Zoom or through social media.

Compare this to the average full-time job. To earn $48,000 you need to work 40 hours or more per week for a job you might not enjoy,  maybe in a culture, you don't like, doing the type of work that doesn’t allow you to enjoy your every day.

Executive Coaches 

If your specialty is ICF Certified Professional Executive Coaching, things get even better. When we asked our executive coaches about how they charge for their sessions, they mentioned a range between $200-$1000 per hour, and their annual income starts with a minimum of around $200,000 and eventually reaches up to a 6 figure income. (P.s: Note that this is calculated by working 6 hours per day with a 20-day working month)

ICF Certified Professional Executive Coaches work with director level and above (C level). They either have 1:1 individual sessions or work with teams from the same organization or they might have a specific type of leadership retreats where executives from various organizations join. It is coaching in its most premium state and you will be working with some of the smartest minds on the planet.

This is just one of the reasons that becoming an ICF certified professional coach might be the ideal path for you to start a fulfilling and profitable career by doing work that you love.

Please note that, at Flow Coaching’s ICF ACTP training program, we have special business and career-building sessions with our 6 figure income earning coaches, to help our coaches to work on their future coaching career or business plans individually.

What does FLOW Offer? 

FLOW Coaching Institute offers two paths to your ICF Certification:
1. The Fast Track path includes 5 modules. Both Core Foundations and Business Coaching ICF 60 ACSTH/ACC training programs make you eligible for certification.
2. Our All-Inclusive Advanced ICF ACTP Certification program has 6 modules carrying you all the way up to ICF ACC & PCC credentials.

To learn more about our programs, leave us a comment, just fill in our contact form or send us an email to info@flowcoachinginstitute.com to get in touch with our team today! Or, visit our latest schedule here to see when the next intake is for you!

We would love to hear from you.

6 Ways a Business Coach Can Help You

Business coaching is another branch of coaching that mainly focuses on helping clients grow their business overall. There are multiple ways this can happen but as a coach, they will need to not only be great at coaching but would also need to understand how businesses work so that they can effectively help you and your business grow.

If you are willing to achieve their business goals and there is a gap between your current state and the desired state, then business coaching can help.

With a business coach, you can start to achieve business goals, give a new life to your business, increase sales and profits, design and implement a new plan and help out with similar challenges or opportunities.

How Do Business Coaches Help You?

By setting the goals you really want to achieve and are beneficial for you

Humans want a lot of things but not all are really beneficial for them. A business coach helps to distinguish what you can have and what you should have. He helps reach out to the depths of your desires and help you understand what is useful for you and your business in the long-term. Once you have the ideal goal you are much likely to move in a direction to reach it.

By helping you achieve a life with a work-life balance

A balanced life is essential as in the turmoil of business its very easy to get lost and overburden yourself leading to exhaustion. A business coach will help you learn how to think about yourself along with your business and how to act responsibly. It is important to get your needs met. You will build a strong foundation of self-care and also pay attention to your business at the same time with the help of the business coach.

By growing financial strength

You deserve to earn a lot more than you think. A business coach will help you with your financial plan, help you design a strategy to earn more from your business.

By expanding your business reach without burning out 

When you have a Success Partner with you whom you can trust and rely on you will have the power to expand your business’s reach and go for more opportunities because you will have a clear head and a specific direction.

By helping you make better decisions for yourself and your business

A business coach understands the value of sharing opinions and ideas for a client with them who understands where they are coming from. A business coach can help you clear your focus and help you make the best decisions for you and your business as the business coach will present you with views that are not biased or influenced.

By helping you grow with increased energy

When you will have a free mind and a clear focus you will be able to tackle challenges in a better way and be more productive. All thanks to your business coach.

No matter what stage your business is at, a business coach can help. They can make you work harder, be more accountable, progress faster than you would on your own. A business coach can serve as a Success Partner in your journey to achieving your business goals.

If you want to become an ICF Certified Business Coach view our upcoming programs now!

Living Life In The New Normal – Getting over VUCA and Focusing On Yourself

When was the last time someone asked you, how do you really feel? And when was the last time you gave them an honest answer? 2021 is upon us and we know that 2020 was a different, challenging, and thought-provoking year for everyone. With that, we also know that everyone has felt so many different types of emotions. 

How Are You Feeling?

So what are some of the emotions you have been feeling the past year and even today? Are you feeling:

• Calm 
• In Control
• Content
• Alert 
• Bored 
• Stressed Out 
• Frustrated 
• Happy 
• Hopeful
• Depressed 
• Anxious 
• Relaxed

Regardless of what you are feeling, the team here at Flow Coaching Institute hopes that you have been feeling better since the start of the new year. However, with everything that happened in 2020, we realized that there is a name for the uncertainty and confusion during the pandemic. 

What is VUCA?

This is called the VUCA environment. VUCA stands for: 

1. Volatility 
2. Uncertainty 
3. Complexity 
4. Ambiguity 

The VUCA environment is known to badly affect our decision-making skills, it makes us question everything we do, it becomes harder for us to navigate our day to day as well as being able to see what the future should look like for us. Put that all together and we know that your brain will get incredibly stressed out when it has to deal with all that uncertainty. It also becomes paralyzing when you are needed to make a big decision or even work on something mundane. 

Waiting for the VUCA time to pass does get depressing and stress-inducing. You are constantly worried about the future, you can’t seem to see past what is happening today, there is a feeling of helplessness and anxiety. VUCA cripples you. 

Relaxing As A Form of Moving Away From VUCA 

This is why all our coaches are focusing on letting their students and clients know that they need to take the time to relax and find meaning in whatever is happening right now. 

By relaxing and taking it all in while analyzing how it makes us feel and why we are feeling this way, will allow for a more relaxed mindset. We believe that you can see that as a meditation process or even as a spiritual practice - a cause to discipline your wild thoughts. It is also a good time to learn and explore what FLOW means to us and what being IN FLOW means to us. 

Questions To Ask Yourself To Calm Your Mind

In times of chaos and uncertainty, we believe that you should always practice asking grounding questions. These questions will not only help you find clarity but also help you to move away from the VUCA environment. 

1. What am I learning? 
2. Who am I becoming? 
3. Who do I want to become? 
4. How do I discipline my mind to become more resilient? 
5. What does flow mean to me? 
6. Where do I find the meaning of flow and resilience? 
7. What does being strong mean to me? 
8. What grounds me? 
9. What can I do to ground myself? 
10. What does peace mean to me? 

These questions are paramount in helping you find the light in your storm and for you to find what it means to be calm and happy in times of chaos. 

Here at FLOW, we know that as change agents we are responsible for making way for these transformations to be made. We have been busy inspiring and changing lives to move the world in a more positive direction. We have had our fair share of frustrating VUCA moments but we decided to rely on our collective strengths to use our platforms and coaches to be part of this positive movement. 

Getting out of the VUCA environment isn’t just another coaching session for us, it’s a life-changing event that we believe will carry on with you at every twist and turn of your life. 

How Flow Coaching Institute Has Committed to Helping People Out of VUCA Environments

Here at Flow Coaching Institute, we certified hundreds of FLOW coaches from our online ICF coaching programs, but we also committed to ensuring we brought about a bigger change. We chose to support our Toronto and international communities all year long. 

So, we partnered with the City of Toronto and Dixon Hall for the Wrap Around Support Program to provide emotional, mental and career coaching support to those who are badly influenced by the Covid-19 crisis. 

We also partnered with Schulich Business School to help future female leaders build resilience and leadership capacity through Women in Leadership Program.

We know that waiting for the crisis to pass is not the best coping strategy. We know that action creates momentum. And nothing could have been better than supporting the STEM Women of WSTEM TO group, as we partnered with them for the MentorSHE project coaching women leaders in the STEM industry.

  Along with these projects, FLOW joined hands with other renowned organizations like Henkel, ING Bank, and TEB to provide coaching to their management to help the organizations grow in the right direction during VUCA times.  

We believe that as coaches, we are change agents. We are put on the planet to support, help you build resilience, take you out of your limiting beliefs, build leadership capacities, and also help people transform their lives for the better. And also to help them find their purpose and their flow. 

All of us here at Flow Coaching Institute hopes that you find your flow amidst this chaos and VUCA. 

Let us know how we can help you and we would love to step in. 

If you have any ideas and suggestions on how to best ground yourself in trying times, please leave us a message as well! 

Happy 2021! 

 

How Can Self-Awareness Help Leaders Succeed?

Is Self-Awareness a leadership practice? According to science, yes. Leaders with self-awareness habits have more resilience than others who don’t. Studies on leadership shows us that leaders with self-awareness are evaluated as more respected and inspirational leaders by their followers than others.

Having a self-check regularly is a practice that is applied by authentic leaders and many others. In our survey with workplace leaders, 50% of executives who are rated as having high self-awareness by their organization through engagement surveys stated that they have an executive coach.

With a good self-awareness habit, leaders are able to work out their strengths and shortfalls, and only by being aware of them, they can overcome their weak points by making use of their strong points.

If one is not aware of oneself it can lead to lots of trial and error based on what they can and what they can’t do. But not everybody has the luxury of making mistakes and learning through them, therefore, it's very important to know one’s capabilities especially when there is a lot at stake such as time, money, and resources.

As we grow into professionals and leaders, understanding our capabilities, strengths and areas of improvement is essential for long lasting success and perhaps the most vital leadership skill.

What Is Self-Awareness?

Self-awareness begins with paying attention to own thoughts, emotions and feelings. It is related to emotional intelligence which stems from honest self-thought. Self-awareness is monitoring the way we act and think and be aware of our internal voice. One must be willing to dwell deep and learn about oneself.

Once we understand our inner world, we make peace with ourselves along with our thoughts, behavior and actions. We are then able to consciously work towards the betterment of our life experiences.

How Can You Increase Your Self-Awareness?

1. Ironically one of the best ways to heighten self-awareness is to practice keen listening to others. When you listen to others you get into the same frequency as them and understand their emotions and body language. Once you master listening to others it can help you to listen to your inner self as well.
2. Another way is to open your mind to new perspectives. When you view situations and your surroundings from another perspective it can be refreshing to see how other people view things differently. It makes you ask for and accept other people’s honest opinions.
3. Most executive coaches would agree that 360-degree feedback on a client is extremely useful during the coaching process as it will help them to recognize their areas of improvement and get a big picture leading to better self-awareness.
4. Maintaining a journal is also a good way to increase self-awareness as It can help identify what triggers certain behaviors and emotions. It gives an opportunity to reflect on certain habits and actions.
5. Most people find creating some “me-time” everyday use in creating better self-awareness. Spending time alone can give us a chance to know ourselves without the distraction of technology or other people. It can be a good way to connect with the inner you.

How Does Self-Awareness Make Leaders More Effective?

Most definitely self-aware leaders perform better than leaders who are not connected with their inner self. You must have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect where people think they are better than they actually are. Sometimes people have inflated beliefs about themselves which results from ignorance of one’s limitations.

Self-aware leaders are in touch with not only their inner self but also have a better understanding of the situation as they have high empathy. Self-awareness plays a big role in the performance of the leader as he works on getting not only the best out of him but also from the team.

Teams that are led by self-aware leaders are less likely to be affected by internal team tussle as a leader who is self-aware also promotes the benefits and understanding of self-awareness to others as well.

For example, Authentic Leadership is a leadership practice where the leader values self-awareness and has a regular habit of self-reflection. Engagement surveys in workplaces show us that authentic leaders are more respected and trusted in their organization than others with lower self-awareness.

The majority of authentic leaders have a mentor or a coach, helping them to mirror their impact in the organization. From Bill Gates to Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, leaders with self-awareness agree that everyone-including the CEO- needs a coach.

Conclusion

Executive coaching focuses on working with leaders to help them fulfill their greatest potential as effective leadership is much more than just industry experience and the basic set of skills. Executive coaching is all about focusing on strengths, understanding areas of growth and improvement, and working on developing skills for overall excellence.

A self-aware person doesn’t make assumptions that other people will read his mind and team members will know how to handle the obstacles instead he identifies the factors for conflicts earlier on and addresses them.

If you are interested in becoming a professional coach yourself, or interested to know how professional coaching can help you get in touch with us at info@flowcoachinginstitute.com