Ten Coaching Tips for Career Women

Here are ten coaching tips to reduce stress and increase the energy required to face your daily challenges.

1. Women’s Stressors are Unique

Women’s hormones and biology make them different from men.Women have different stressors from men and tend to react in different ways to stress. This means you have different challenges than men do. Women are often more emotional, want their position to be heard, and seek understanding. Men are often more rationale, want to jump right into problem solving and seek to fix the issue and get on with it. This can create all sorts of problems when neither side feels understood.

Recognize that some ingrained behaviors can create problems when working with your male co-workers in a corporate culture. For example, when your ideas are not heard you may feel ignored when it actually may be how the idea was presented.

After work, when you return home, your reactions still are based on how you have been trained to react at an early age. Understand that you and your male partner have very different ways and means of reducing stress when unwinding from your time at work. You may need to talk or get dinner ready. He may need to relax in front of the TV or read the paper.

Allow yourself and your male partner to engage in stress reduction activities that work separately and differently than what the other needs.

2. What We Tolerate Grows

Are you surprised that you are getting what you tolerate?In medicine, we look at how "well tolerated" a drug will be related to its side effects. At work and at home, many people evaluate new opportunities related to what can be well tolerated.

There can be a temptation to ignore some of the more upsetting aspects of life and work with the idea that we just don’t need the aggravation. Seeking painless solutions to life’s tensions, repeating your own behavior that hasn’t worked in the past, or taking the safe route for fear of a negative response is just not realistic. You don’t need to be the bad cop or the intolerant parent. What you do need to do is take action.

Stay on top of problems by confronting them early.
Have a Plan. Don’t respond out of anger. Structure how you will raise the issue, name the troubling behavior and discuss the implication. Deal with the individual in a positive manner.

Ask what steps the person will take to address the issue now that it has been identified. To have the person respond favorably it will be important for you to stop talking and start listening. If you don’t listen to them, it is unlikely they will listen to you.

Schedule time to regularly give feedback, it will reduce the anxiety that often surfaces when issues need to be addressed.

3. The Pathway to Happiness

"I'll be happy when...." is the way many people think they are living their lives.

Happiness is being aware, not only of the positive events that occur in your life but, that you yourself are the causes of these events--which you can create them, that you control their occurrence, and that you play a major role in the good things that happen to you. " Happiness ," said Benjamin Franklin, "is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by the little advantages that occur every day."

Happiness isn't off in the future, but in living in the "now" and loving the moment of our daily experiences. Happiness is not something that happens to you. Happiness is inside you now. You are motivated from within. You only have to allow happiness to surface. You can use the power of your thoughts to focus on potentially positive outcomes, instead of potentially negative ones, and change your life.

The Happiness Formula = K (knowing who you are) multiplied by D (discovering your life's work) multiplied by L ( learning not to tolerate what's not important).

4. What’s First, Not What’s Next

Instead of focusing on what's next, let's think about what's first. Personal and business success starts with the question, 'What should I do with my life?'

People don't succeed by moving from one 'hot' industry to another, being a copy cat of some hero leader or following a certain career-guiding formula. They succeed by unleashing a productive, creative and focused energy that flows from the inside-out working at things they love doing.

We live in an economy where we don't have to tolerate jobs we hate. For the most part, we get to choose. But that choice isn't about a job search so much as an identity quest. So, don't be cursed because of your tremendous ability and infinite choice of jobs. Decide what you can devote your life to and then live your dream.

Source: Po Bronson, author of 'What Should I Do with My Life?' (Random House)

5. Seeing ourselves clearly does many things:

. It allows us to control impulses and select the most appropriate behaviors.

. It shows us how to avoid reacting in negative and potentially self-limitingways.

. Knowing our strengths and limitations makes us more understanding of others.

. Gaining an understanding of issues reduces conflict in us and in others.

Throughout life we continuously learn about our personal style and preferences, leadership development, interpersonal communication, stress management and coping skills. Becoming more self-aware gives us great leverage in consciously exhibiting the type of behavior that gets us where we want to be.

Interested in taking an online self-assessment? Just go to: http://www.SelfAssessmentCenter.com

6. Why do some talented executives fail?

And why do others often fail to be effective, or as successful as they shouldbe?

In their book, “Maximum Success: Changing the Twelve Behavior Patterns That Keep You From Getting Ahead,” James Waldroop and Timothy Butler identify twelve behavior patterns - what they call 'Achilles' heels' - that can harm, or seriously hinder, a person's career development . In their roles as consultants and executive coaches to many Fortune 500 companies, they offer invaluable job-saving advice on how readers can modify their behavior to get things back on track.

For five stories of behavior patterns that can be highly destructive to your
career, go to: http://coachedtosuccess.com/coachthee/Archives/whydoexecutivesfail.html

Reading these executive failure stories can help you avoid similar behavior.

7. Do You Hate Networking ?

If you hate networking , stop networking and begin to share knowledge.

By sharing your knowledge with others, you earn trust and build your reputation. Learn how to share knowledge with fellow workers to add value to your organization and your recognized worth within it.

The manner in which you connect with others is important. How you connect to a community of personal and business networks will determine if you obtain needed resources when you need them. By making the 'invisible structure' of personal and business relationships visible, youwill work more effectively by increasing your personal bandwidth.

Information is energy but useless unless it flows around and combines with other information in the minds of those you work and play with. So be sure to make knowledge-sharing collaboration part of your everyday tool kit.

8. Work/Life Integration

Leading a balanced life requires a very personal determination, according to life coach Jerry Lopper. He maintains that what feels like balance to one person may feel way off balance to another. But essentially, lack of balance in any area will cause you to be over-whelmed, whether in your career, your family life, or both. It feels as if something is missing, as if there's a void in your center and you have no idea how to fill it. Lopper believes that this kind of existence lacks meaning and purpose, and as a result, you may feel depressed, lethargic, or deeply sad that "this is all there is."

By contrast, Lopper says hopefully, a balanced life just feels right, as if things are exactly the way they should be. Despite the normal ups and downs in an average day, when your life is balanced, you are an active participant, fully engaged, and finding meaning in all that you do and in who you are. Lopper has designated "the five P's"as the fundamentals of life:

Purpose - - finding your mission in life
Passion - - finding what you love to do
Powers - - exercising your unique strengths and abilities
Principles - - discovering what you value
Perspective - - discovering what you believe

Copyright © 2010 Lucinda Bassett, author of The Solution: Conquer Your Fear, Control Your Future.

9. Pay Attention to Your Intentions

Your word has as much power as you give to it. If you say one thing and do another, you dilute the power of your word. To empower your word, you must align your attention with your intention.

For example, if you are an incessant gossiper and want to stop gossiping, simply set your intention. If you find yourself lapsing, give no power to the unwanted behavior.

Every time you bring your attention to your intention, you amplify the power of your word. Your word has the power to change your life.

If it is love you want to express, set your intention to be more loving. Turn your attention inward, and recommit yourself to your spiritual intention: "I set the intention to be more loving in my speech."

Align your attention with your intention, and watch as the power of your word transforms every area of your life.

Source: Science of Mind, July 2003

10. Self-Awareness Facilitates Change

Being unaware, we unconsciously engage our default behavior.

Only when we become aware of something, are we able to make choices as to the action we wish to take.

Sometimes, just being aware, allows the problem to solve us--rather than requiring us to solve the problem.We really don't know how the world works. We only perceive how the world works and our unique perception is based upon who we are and what we are aware of that is happening around us.

Here is a mental model to use in your world:

Beliefs influence perception.
Perception structures reality.
Reality suggests possibilities.
Possibilities generate choices.
Choices initiate actions.
Actions affect outcomes.
Outcomes impact beliefs.
Awareness facilitates change.

For more career women coaching tips, check out these books :

“Women and Time,” “Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge,” and “When Doing It All Won’t Do: A self-coaching guide for career women” by John G. Agno and Barbara A. McEwen

• Barbara McEwen: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge
• John G. Agno: Women and Time• John Agno: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women
• Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition