“I don’t have enough time”
Or White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland : “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date! No time to say “Hello, Good Bye” I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”

How many times a day do you hear that kind of sentence in your head ? Or from your team ?

Reality is that we all have 24 hours a day !

All we can change is our perception of time, and our management of time.

Our relationship to time is a hot crucial topic in our professional and personal lives. 
This time pressure topic emerges in discussions with almost all my clients, be they managers, CEOs, coaches, Teams… 
Namely, through the observation that urgencies, operational tasks, flooding email boxes, overwhelm schedules, depriving leaders of moments to think, pause, reflect. 
Whereas, paradoxically, those moments when you slow down, think, pose and reflect, are crucial to being a performant Leader – manager, CEO, coach- or a performant Team.
In other words, taking time to pause, think and reflect, makes you gain time afterwards.

The connection to time is inevitable, since we are living organisms, on a living planet, with cycles : day and night, weeks, seasons, years, birth and death etc.
And there is a difference between the rational time and our sensation of time.

How do you articulate your connection to different times : the rational time, the “felt” time?

Rational time is the one that can be measured by a clock or a chronometer and humans have agreed on a unified way to measure it : the international time measurement system.
Sensation of time is time you feel in your body, telling you without looking at the clock, what time it is or for example how many minutes you still have in a meeting.

Our sensation of time is altered by all the  devices’ notifications, that connect us to rational time, and slice our perception and attention. 
On top of that, when we are in the FLOW state, we are feeling pleasure, we are connected to the instant, with a highly creative mind, a higher rate of mental fluidity and a high connexion to harmony or whatever feeds us, deeply and naturally. 
In that FLOW state, time seems to expand irrationally. 
Whenever we leave that state, we might ask ourselves “what time is it by the way?”, reconnecting to rational time.

Here are some exploration questions :

• What are your latest experiences of 1 hour feeling like 5 minutes ?
• On the other side, 1 hour feeling like a day ?
• What are the ingredients of those moments ?
• In your day, full of meetings, calls, todos, emails, etc.., how do you make room for those precious FLOW moments, where our performance is peaking? 
• How do you set boundaries, to “loose time” so that you can gain time afterwards?

The steps to increase performance in time management are :

• Find your answers to the questions above
• Become aware of the powerfulness of time management, through your own experience
• Become aware of the dead ends of time management
• Imagine your fresh strategies to play the game differently
• Train
• Train again
• Celebrate daily the differences brought by your new stratégies

You have 60 minutes with your Team

Gather your Team.
Timing depends on the size fo your team.

• Phase 1

Ask each member for the team to write down what they appreciate in at least 3 of their colleagues.
Stand in circle, each member the team receives one by one their colleagues words, fully tasting their flavour, in silence.

• Phase 2

Same process, starting with “in 2023, I invite you to increase…”

• Phase 3

Same process, writing what they appreciate in the Team.
One by one, stick the Post-Its on a board, reading out loud their words.

• Phase 4

In the remaining time : How are you going to settle together what has emerged for the Team ?

You have 10 minutes for yourself

• Phase 1

Settle down with a sheet of paper and a pen -material details are important, because they stimulate better brain connections !-
Start a timer for 4 minutes.

Write, continuously, in the flow, -without re-reading or correcting-, starting by ” In 2022, I celebrate…”
When timer rings, just finish your sentence.
Then, during 1 minute, close your eyes, connect to you inner feeling, the circle the 3 most important words to you.

• Phase 2

Same process, starting by “In 2023, I wish…” 
In 30 seconds, connect to you inner feeling, and circle the 3 emerging words

• Phase 3

In 30 seconds, write down a sentence with the 6 circled words.
Keep this sentence thought 2023, up to the next 10 minutes you will offer your self.

You have 60 minutes for yourself

• Phase 1

Settle down with several sheets of paper and a pen -material details are important, because they stimulate better brain connections !-
Start a timer for 20 minutes.
Write, on the front of the sheets, continuously, in the flow, -without re-reading or correcting-, starting by ” In 2022, I celebrate…”
When timer rings, just finish your sentence.
Then, during 1 minute, close your eyes, connect to you inner feeling, the circle the 3 most important words to you.

• Phase 2

Same process, starting by “In 2023, I wish…” 
In 1 minute, connect to you inner feeling, and circle the 3 emerging words

• Phase 3

In 1 minute, write down a sentence with the 6 circled words.

• Phase 4

In the remaining time : How are you going to settle what has emerged ?

This article complements the articles:

• Coaching & Quality
• Certification, Accreditation, what are we talking about?

Professional coaches work from who they are.

I coach as I am – I coach as I am

This reality is absolutely fundamental.
The tools of the coaches are also essential.
However, it is mainly the way they are used that has an impact. And the variety available to the coach, allows to get out of the adage “for a hammer, everything is nail”.

Thus, the competency frameworks of professional coaches make it possible to evaluate skills on explicit and shared criteria.
They are also benchmarks that allow the coach to measure his progress in his professionalization and his ability to accompany coaching situations of increasing complexity.
These abilities of the coach are also related to his own development, in the sense of adult development.

The two professional associations of coaches ICF and EMCC have written standards, which, if they present differences, are also very consistent.
In addition, the ICF standard was rewritten in 2020, in order to be in better adequacy with the results of the research conducted by the association.

Are you a coach? How do you appropriate these skills, to live them on a daily basis?

Are you a coaching client or buyer? How do these skills resonate in your choice?

This article completes the article: Coaching & Quality

LinkedIn profiles are full of terms describing the skills of Coaches, and this is good news: the profession works to ensure that its members, working according to the rules of the art, are recognizable.

However, the terms used do not always mean the same thing, according to the source. Here are synoptic illustrations to find your way around quickly.

The next article will detail the 8 key competences.

The professional development criteria are for ICF the number of hours of training, the number of hours of coaching, and for EMCC, the number of hours of coaching, the number of clients, years of experience.
As can be seen in the synoptic illustrations, the thresholds for passing from one stage to another differ.
However, they participate in the visibility of measurable elements of the coach’s development.

The challenge of the profession today is to link even better measurable elements to the maturity of the coach.

Want to know more?
Contact Agnès Grisard freely for a discovery appointment of coaching or supervision.

How to choose a coach?

A previous article took stock of the choice of coach, from the point of view of the beneficiary of the coaching. Here, we wonder about the choice of coach, from the point of view of the buyer of coaching.

The buyer is for example a human resources manager, a department/company director who has the related budget, a training manager, who builds a training course, including coaching.

Faced with an identified coaching need, how to choose the coach(s)? So that their service corresponds to the needs of the company?

To take a parallel, when you buy a yogurt, you expect a product of standardized composition and that has been kept in compliance with the cold chain. What about coaching?

What are the rules of the game of the professional coaching profession?

Professional coaching is a self-regulating profession.
Advantage : it is responsible for its own benchmarks and its dynamism and evolutions are correlated with the market.
Disadvantage : the repositories are multiple and it can be difficult to navigate.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the terms used and what they correspond to.
It clarifies the two main references of the professional coaching profession: that of the International Coach Federation ICF and that of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council EMCC.

The ICF and EMCC Associations in numbers

EMCC was founded in 1992.
It has in France 22 foundation practitioners, 115 practitioners, 45 seniors, 10 master’s degrees.
And worldwide 190 foundation, 825 practitioner, 979 senior, 90 master.

ICF was founded in 1995.
It has in France 334 ACC coaches, 403 PCC coaches, 49 MCC coaches.
And worldwide 14,770 ACC coaches, 14,536 PCC coaches, 1,565 MCC coaches.

NB: these figures are those recorded on the day of writing the article on the directories of the two federations.

Common objectives

These two associations work together to develop the professionalization of coaches, via quality training -independent, delivered by organizations whose mission it is-, and processes of labeling the maturities of coaches, through their professional development.

For this, each association has its own criteria and levels required.

However, the logic is the same:

• support professional development, through coach training and supervision
• give explicit quality benchmarks for coaching buyers : skills are observed in the field, by qualified people independent of training schools

Be careful, the RNCP, a system of qualification of training on french territory only blurs the understanding, because it uses terms identical to international standards, but with different contents, such as that of “professional coach” or “certification” -see the diagram-.

The indicators of professional development or “stages” are 3 at ICF, and 4 at EMCC.
Certificates and accreditations are renewable for 3 years for ICF and 5 years for EMCC.
These elements will be detailed in future articles:

Certification, accreditation, what are we talking about?
The skills of coaches according to ICF and EMCC

The challenges of the professional coaching profession

Today the challenges of the coaching profession are:

• to support the professionalization of coaches and
• to develop the professionalization of supervisors.

Supervisory competency frameworks exist, and training organizations are actively taking them up.

We often hear about assertiveness, in a professional context or in a personal context.
But what does this title cover? And how to assert oneself individually, in a collective functioning, being in a fair balance between the individual point of view and the collective point of view?

Let's start from the heart of self-affirmation: the individual.

Assertiveness can also be called assertiveness.It is a posture in which we take a position, in front of a group, in front of a system. In this posture, we are neither in aggressiveness, nor in flight, nor in manipulation.

Let's take an example.

You are attending a meeting that starts late. This does not suit you because you have a lot of files to deal with and no time to waste. If you adopt a posture of aggressiveness, you could, for example, blow, sigh, ostensibly look at your watch, strongly reproach the organizer of the meeting for its delay. If you adopt a manipulative posture, you can proclaim out loud "Yes usually with such and such meetings are late…If you adopt a flight posture, you don't say anything, you attend the meeting and you do something else during the meeting, such as checking your emails or processing your files on your computer or smartphone.

What would then be an assertive reaction?

It could be to simply say that the delay of the meeting upsets you, because you have other important topics to deal with. You can also come up with a solution that would be good for you and others.

What makes it sometimes difficult to assert oneself?

There are many parameters. First of all, there are educational and cultural parameters but also parameters that are more related to the moment, such as the level of serenity or stress in which you find yourself. The atmosphere of the group in which you are is also a parameter that will vary your spontaneous affirmation.
The cultural or educational side makes us integrate a number of values. If throughout your childhood you learned that being late was not allowed at all, you may be very responsive in the situation of a meeting that starts late. If, on the contrary, you have learned to manage hazards, you will immediately have a much more flexible posture.
In addition to the question of your values, which are personal, the emotional state in which you are, at the start of the meeting, also has an impact. If you arrive in a relaxed state, there is more chance that a meeting delay will not affect you or little. If you arrive in a stressed state, especially by questions of deadline on your other topics, the delay of the meeting is likely to upset you.
Finally, in a group with "strong personalities" it can be more difficult to assert oneself.

So how to improve your assertiveness or assertiveness?

It should be noted that, culturally, women are more often encouraged to take care of others, and therefore to put their needs after those of those around them. Assertiveness, or even impostrix syndrome, is therefore more frequently a subject of personal development.
The very first step of assertiveness is to become aware of what is at stake for oneself and for the group: the values that can be achieved, the emotional state that can be heckled, a particular group composition. In short, take stock of its internal compass. Then, in a second step, express in a calm and calm way what we really want. For example, using turns of phrase such as: It is important for me to…, I need…, I would like…, etc.

How to progress?

Start by identifying the topics that usually make you react. Try to understand what is affected in your home. And, every day, practice trying to overcome this automatic posture, in order to develop another more adaptive posture, which will help you to be more comfortable in your group interactions and to deploy your leadership, have more impact, less suffer situations while taking others into account.