Karen is the founder of small communications agency who has won plenty of awards for her highly ambitious campaigns over the past 10 years. Her ambition has not wavered, but Karen has lost focus and trust in her ability to make impactful decisions for growth.

Goal: Make braver decisions

Energy without Focus

When you meet Karen you are confronted with a contagious energy that can’t help make you smile. As we explore the needs of Karen’s business and start to unpack the challenges relating to growth, what starts to emerge is the lack of focus Karen has. 

Ideas without Commitment

Natural energy allows Karen to come up with tonnes of ideas - her happy space - committing to them, however, has become more difficult.

Leading without Support

Exploring what makes commitment so difficult, Karen’s energy depletes, her body and her language become more defeatist; ‘drained’, ‘carrying the weight of the world’, and ‘lonely ’, are descriptions she uses. Exploring this uncovers the less-than-ideal habit she has settled into.

Results.

The goal was to reduce the impact of tiredness and loneliness how could she move through the experience with minimum impact on her confidence.

Three key techniques helped her with this:

Healthy Business Owner - Healthy Business

Karen recognised a healthy business needs a healthy leader and no amount of strategic planning is going to help without taking care of herself. Once she accepted this a whole host of tools and techniques were established to keep her healthy in both mind and body. The aim was not to overload, but to enhance her life with micro-moments of self-care. 

Advisors, Mentors & Lifelines

Karen identified four people who could provide industry wisdom and four who could provide compassion and kindness. The idea was to use these eight individuals to support her, bounce ideas with, listen to her fears and challenge her enough to gain greater perspectives. By opening up and being honest she not only discovered she was not alone in her experiences but also a number of valuable learnings and coping strategies.

“The relief, the emotions, the questions from hearing others say they struggle too was immense."

Assumptions of leadership

Uncovering underlying beliefs about what a leader is and how they ‘should’ act, opened up the opportunity for Karen to ask more questions of her own team. Resulting in some open and very frank and uncomfortable conversations about the limitations of her leadership style. The feedback provided an opportunity to reframe leadership ideas and develop and identify skills that require some attention.

As this process opened up more head space, the focus of coaching turned to develop growth strategies for her business.