Excellent service and very insightful; it has given me a better understanding of how I react in situations and strategies to reduce negative reactions / interactions.
The three biggest points I’ll take away for me are, what hat am I wearing here and now, what is in my ‘backpack’ – what’s in yours, and ‘can I get back to you’; not every situation requires an immediate response.
The most useful strategy I learned was to take a pause to collect myself. Saying to a person “I will get back to you after I have had a think about …” giving me time and space to digest and formulate a response without the emotion.
I like the relaxed and natural flow of the sessions; I knew what I wanted to discuss, and I think most people know what’s bothering them and if not, the situations we discussed Debs was able to identify talking points from her experience.
I liked that the programme is not formal, and we were able to use everyday language, some of this higher level of thinking can be off putting for people and I enjoyed how examples of situations where a strategy was used made it easy to understand.
The coaching support allowed me to understand different personalities and how they interact and what baggage we all carry and how that influences our day-to-day interactions and to develop communication methods that reduce conflict and encourage understanding.
I would recommend Debs, Success Factor. Having an independent voice to bounce ideas off is important. I feel at times we are driven by the heart in business and that approach clouds judgement and decision making. My age and experience have provided me with plenty of examples of good leadership and bad leadership, mentoring has provided a framework to apply the good traits and tools to develop my leadership style.
A mentor is like a coach of a professional sports team or athlete, you have one because you want to get better at your sport or game. Business is like that as well, your coach helps develop your game plan, strategies, and helps to identify aspects of your performance that need improvement so you can be the best version of yourself at any given moment.