Coach | Trainer | Speaker | Consultant
I found this very interesting quote today:
“An expat is often someone who knows little about his own people he spent a long time with, but thinks he knows everything about the foreigners he has spent a short time with.” (T. Crossley)
Food for thought!
Have you ever found yourself living or working for a longer period of time in a country different from your own? If so, you will certainly have felt something like:
You will almost certainly also have had a lot of questions even more so when you moved to the new location with your family. If you were lucky, you had something called an ‘expat package’ where competent people in the target country took you by the hand and showed you all you needed to know. Nowadays however, these packages are either non existent anymore (as you are more likely to get a local contract even as an international hire) or somewhat reduced so that you still need to do many things on your own.
Having lived in and moved to many foreign countries myself, I very well know what it is like and how you might feel. As a multilingual coach and consultant, I am more than happy to help you over the hurdles and accompany you on your journey, so that it will be an enjoyable experience for you and for your family.
Contact me today for a non-binding offer!
In addition, if you are reading this and you happen to be moving to Switzerland or just arrived in the country, please join me at the Welcome Event of International Link, the non-profit organisation created by the Chamber of Commerce of the Canton Vaud to facilitate the integration of foreign businesses and international employees into the local environment. The event will be held centrally in Lausanne on the 1st of May.
The goal of the Welcome Day is to officially welcome international newcomers and to get them acquainted with the Lake Geneva region. You will receive a first introduction and I will be guiding you into the Swiss culture and its different facets.
Looking forward to meeting you there!
Many people I worked with or met, be it in the NGO world or in corporations, kept asking why time should be lost writing or even thinking about strategies: nobody ever reads them and sooner rather than later if not directly, they will find their way to the bin. The simple answer is that most of the people simply don’t understand what a strategy is and what it does. Not only is a strategy an ideal way to put your thoughts into a structured framework and to make them more tangible; no, it also gives you a powerful tool at hand that will help you sell your ideas and plans in a professional and successful manner. In addition, it will also enable you to measure whether you have reached your objectives and how or if you need to adjust your measures and tools.
If you don’t know where you are going, how do you know when you get there?
Let me explain this to you: imagine you are asked to drive a new product launch and all you have are highly interesting and valid but loosely tied bits and pieces of your product managers, your marketing people and your engineers. How are you going to convince your customers – let alone your internal stakeholders who are first on the list – of the added value of your product if there is no thread, no thoroughly reflected and grounded path and no story?
Or how are you going to convince external donors and stakeholders to give to your organisation/association or to become active volunteers/members if you cannot show them where you are heading and what you have achieved so far and will in the future.
Well, I think it will be difficult…
Even if every single milestone you think of while writing your strategy, will confront you inevitably with new questions, issues and problems, it will only allow you to dig deeper in order to find out the true value proposition, goal or objective that will create the ‘wow’ effect in your customer’s or stakeholder’s eyes. So yes, time consuming it is, but in the end, the outcome rewards all efforts!
Let’s take a quick look at how a strategic document could be structured (only general categories are reproduced here, in practice, many more can be added of course):
1. Current Situation/Background
2. Alignment to Global or Segment Strategy
4. General Objectives (qualitative/quantitative)
3. Specific Objectives
4. Target Markets and Audiences
5. Analysis of competition (how are they positioned, how do they communicate?); yes, this is very important for NGOs and Associations too!
6. Communication Plan (including the appropriate communication vehicles and key messages)
7. Evaluating Success
8. Tactical calendar
9. Budget
If you follow this simple guideline involving if possible your managers, peers and other important partners within your organisation in the thought process (this obviously includes summarizing and structuring what you have received from your colleagues or reaching out to them), you will have all the pre-requisites for a successful launch, thought process, road-map, introduction or campaign. Not only will you generate the buzz and buy-in you need internally to get things done, but your external appearance on the market and with your various audiences will be a true experience and hence a success.
Let me know if you need some input for streamlining your thoughts or creatively brainstorming on the way forward. Having led many initiatives (locally and internationally) and written many strategic documents and guidelines for various industries and organisations, I am sure that I will be able to help you too!
Have an excellent start in the new week, Jenny
To end the weekend, I want to share an excellent technique called “quick coherence” from www.heartmath.org with you that I am often using when working in a training or coaching setting. It is very useful when starting a session, in order to reduce anxiety, stress or frustration; of course it can also be used at home or in preparation of difficult conversations or meetings. It is said to create positive changes in your heart rhythms, sending powerful signals to the brain that can improve how you are feeling and thus how you are acting and behaving.
Focus your attention on the area around your heart, the area in the center of your chest. If you prefer, the first couple of times you try it, place your hand over the center of your chest to help keep your attention in the heart area.
Breathe deeply but normally and feel as if your breath is coming in and going out through your heart area. Continue breathing with ease until you find a natural inner rhythm that feels good to you.
As you maintain your heart focus and heart breathing, activate a positive feeling. Recall a positive feeling, a time when you felt good inside, and try to re-experience the feeling. One of the easiest ways to generate a positive, heart-based feeling is to remember a special place you’ve been to or the love you feel for a close friend or family member or treasured pet. This is the most important step.
Spoken words are extremely powerful but many of us are not aware of this fact. Words are used to communicate but most of the time we don’t really pay attention to what we are saying and which words we choose to make our point.
As soon as we are becoming mindful of what and how we are saying things, we begin to take responsibility for our lives.
Words are not only coming out of our mouths but are also unspoken, being constructed within thoughts. If we begin to pay attention to what we are saying, we will quickly notice that many things are quite negative. We are using words like ‘should’ and ‘must’ as well as ‘but’ and many other expressions to gain control over situations that we don’t control or to justify why we did not do something or are not up to the level that others are expecting us to be.
Test it for yourself: record phone calls randomly for your own use and listen to them later. Are there any patterns that you see emerging? Anything in particular that you are noticing? It is really interesting to find out how we communicate as it reflects the way in which we think about ourselves or how we are structuring our thoughts.
Have you ever thought about how you start your day? Are you complaining about the weather, the fact that your coffee is not ready and that you have a terrible headache? Or are you welcoming the new day with a smile and a friendly thought? Usually, what you expect will come true and the more your thoughts and words will be negative/positive, the more your day will be negative/positive.
You could also pay close attention to how you are speaking about yourself. What kind or words are you using? How are you describing your life, your work, your relationships with other people? What belief systems have you accepted and what are you expecting? Usually, what you expect and portray will emanate from you and expectations very often become reality.
How can you start becoming more mindful about what is going on?
Have an excellent weekend and thanks for reading! As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to me should you wish some advice or coaching.
Jenny
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently
– Henry Ford
Before you start the new week, let me give some tips on how to remain serene and creative even though you have to cope with a flood of incoming mails, various problems, family issues etc.:
Here’s wishing you an excellent week!
Jenny
It’s that time of the year again, people take resolutions that they never live up to (or at least rarely) and everything is supposed to be better, brighter in the New Year. The fact is though that YOU are the architect of your life and that self-awareness and being kind to yourself should be at the basis of whatever you strive for.
Start with acknowledging how you feel and where this can be felt in your body, focus and sharpen your attention on all these small things going on at this very moment. Don’t judge, plan, think. Simply BE… You hold the key to happiness, you simply need to pay attention to how life unfolds every single second. Think about something that made you feel warm and loved. Stay with that feeling and see what it does inside of you. Smile to yourself and be present. Moment after moment. Happy New Year!
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being introduced to a fun tool during a team building exercise, called “Lutts, Mipps & Wors”. As I thought this tool was really fun and could be very helpful in an environment where you need to develop:
I am introducing it to you now. Whereas the exercise might seem fairly simple as such, the difficulty actually lies in understanding what you need to do as the units of measurement are not expressed in a way you are used to.
The task reads as follows: A man drives from city A to city B, then to C, and then to D. The objective is to calculate how long it takes him, in units of wors.
There are 26 data cards which contain elements of the required data needed for solving the problem (some are really needed and some not but it is up to the participants to find out!). Cut them out and distribute them evenly to the participants.
There are many ways in which to facilitate this workshop but you could ask your participants to work without putting their respective cards out of their hands (so only one hand is free) and without anybody taking concrete leadership.
Access to a flip chart with markers should be given and in 10 minutes max the right answer needs to be found.
After the exercise, you can lead a discussion of the experience, and highlight various learning points that were involved.
A good guideline for conducting the workshop can be found here.
Have fun and let me know how it went!
Jenny
Yesterday I had the chance to attend Daniel Goleman’s presentation at the IMD in Lausanne. The room was full and people were attentively listening to what was entitled: “How can Global Leaders focus for High Performance”. I had never seen Goleman live before and I must say that it was a very interesting and enriching conference!
Firstly, did you know for example that when somebody says something that hurts you or when you simply receive an email that annoys you, your full bodily reaction is activated (stress hormones being released, muscles ready to run etc.) exactly as if you were fleeing from a predator like in ancient times? The simple thought of a negative event can in fact already trigger that reaction…
Secondly, were you aware that there are three different kinds of empathy[1]?
Thirdly, also interesting, were Goleman’s explanations around what differentiates a top leader from a “mainstream” one. Not astonishingly, three areas of focus[2] are needed:
Once all three are combined, leaders excel in their tasks and are also perceived by peers and employees to be thriving.
And finally, to my surprise, Goleman even brought a simple mindfulness exercise to the audience, who sat in silence for a while, listening to his voice giving the instructions. What an inspiring moment!
Mindfulness according to him is “fitness for the brain”, training attention and focus. The more it is done, the more the brain changes the way it operates and reacts to stimuli and the better one will also be able to “listen” to the info coming from the gut (the somatic markers).
Bringing mindfulness into the workplace using different formats and tools to deal with difference, furthering not only internal communications, innovation and creativity but also self-awareness and efficiency in teams is what I am focusing on as a consultant/coach/trainer. If you are interested in learning more, I would be very pleased to hear from you!
And to end with a really nice old eskimo proverb that my mindfulness teacher brought to my attention yesterday and that I found back here:
Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow is wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly