BY FI RILEY
Kicking off a new year and the excitement of a fresh start can bring lots of aspirational goals encouraging positive changes in your life, including your work life. These can be aligned with personal development plans, fall out of a new strategy or simply be drawn from an increased focus on growth and development. The good news is that there are tools and systems to support these goals to become a reality in the workplace and set you up to thrive for the coming year.
At AskRIGHT we have a passion for personal development and can all attest to the power of coaching and mentoring to help stay on track with professional goals. Our expert team are incredibly passionate about the power of coaching and mentoring, and love working with clients on a one-to-one basis to help them achieve goals.
“Being mentored by Fi has been transformational for me both personally and professionally. I met Fi when I was refocusing on career after having my family. I was lacking in confidence and direction. Fi inspired and empowered me to be ambitious and believe in myself. She has been a sounding board and coached me through pivotal moments in my career. She has been my challenger and cheerleader. As a person, Fi goes above and beyond to make you feel genuinely cared for and supported. I wouldn’t be where I am in my career now if I hadn’t met Fi.”
Should I use a mentor or coach?
Having an external perspective can really help you to step away from the day to day of your role and set your sights on the bigger picture. Coaches and mentors are a confidential sounding board you can use to navigate the challenges and issues in your role that may be preventing you from hitting your true potential.
Mentors work with you by using their experience in your area to help you to shape an approach. They will often bring knowledge and experience from previous roles to help shape solutions, whilst driving individuals to take ownership of actions.
A coach works with you to challenge you to solve the issues you are facing by using coaching techniques to help reach the root cause of the challenge and empower you to build your own solutions. They won’t step in and solve the problem for you, but instead help you explore the routes you might take to decide your course of action.
Whichever approach you use, you can be assured that working with one of our AskRIGHT consultants will be a professional and thought-provoking experience, helping you to reach the professional goals you have set for the year ahead.
How to get the most from your coaching or mentoring
- Set out a mentoring or coaching agreement – this will ensure you are focused on the specific goal you wish to meet working in partnership with your coach or mentor. It can also be useful to review this regularly to make sure you have not drifted from the initial purpose of working with an external person.
- Use an action log to capture tasks – when working with a mentor or a coach, the conversation should always be solutions focused. This means you will start to uncover actions to take to propel you forwards in your journey. Capturing these in a log that you can revisit will help you keep track of progress.
- Check in regularly against your goals – it is important to track your progress as you go. This might involve scheduled feedback sessions or regular check ins against the agreement you established at the beginning.
- Be open and honest – it can sometimes be hard to be vulnerable in the workplace but rest assured that the confidentiality agreement between you and your coach or mentor means you can speak with them in complete confidence and be honest about the challenges you are facing. Openness and honesty are the best tools to get to the heart of a problem, and the solutions can build from there.
Get in touch
Are you looking for some support achieving your professional goals this year? Get in touch with our team to find out how we can work with you.