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While the dictionary says that the word relax means “to make less firm, tense, or rigid” and to “seek rest or recreation”, how come there are so many people who go on a holiday and don’t relax? While seeking the rest and recreation they desire, the firm, tense and rigid reminders of work linger, diminished only by welcome intervals of escape. If you think this portrayal of running on empty may describe you, here are three reasons why this happens and some possible solutions.

You Have a Tired Soul

Whether you know it or admit it, your soul is so tired that even a holiday won’t do it for you. You’ve been running at a high level of emotional intensity for too long. It often shows itself in people who work with people. To keep investing at this emotional level, your body uses adrenaline. That constant heavy demand produces stress and further adrenaline draw that pushes you to do even more. It’s like an addiction and it just wears you down.

A CCN Coach Might Discuss:

In order to thrive again it’s time to sit down and actually write out on paper how you got to this point. You need a major change. Major change means totally reconstruct the way you do your work, do something else entirely or get rid of the largest cause of the problem if can be dismissed. Put a limit on the relationships that drain you. Set boundaries around how others may access you and relate to you. Work with a personal coach to gain clarity about yourself and your situation and transition to better actions. You take control.

You Have a Tired Body

Obviously I’m not addressing a slacker who’s trying to get out of doing their honest share of work. In fact, you’ve kept a physical pace well beyond your norm, haven’t you? Remember the biblical pattern of work and rest. Somewhere this pattern of pause for renewal has been abused by yourself, by others or by your perception of what others want of you. That costs.

A CCN Coach Might Discuss:

Look at your life as a whole, not as separate pieces of work, home, relaxation and service. God gives you the responsibility to take care of your whole self. Again, get out a sheet of paper and list the reasons you continue on with the hours that you do. Develop a new schedule. Decide the hours that you will work and stick to it. When tempted to work longer, work smarter. Do tomorrow’s planning the day before. Start to appreciate time out, or get out and do something different.

If there is work you absolutely cannot get out of doing (and I put the stress on “absolutely cannot”), look carefully at your discretionary hours. How do you spend them? Perhaps you need to consider changing the pace here. Take that time to renew. Watch your commitments.

You Have a Tired Spirit

You’ve been so emotionally overloaded or physically extended that you have neglected your connection with God. To come back into harmony with the One who created you could be the very thing you need to change every aspect of your present experience and give it life and vitality again.

You may even be someone who is at the pulpit, a camp or on a mission, speaking about spiritual things all the time. You’re bringing others spiritual food, but you know your own diet is an undernourished one.

A CCN Coach Might Discuss:

Allow God back into the loop. Pray. Ask for insight around your tiredness. Perhaps arrange some personal retreat time to do this. Read the Bible. If you don’t know where to start, try 2 Corinthians, a book for tired workers. Read and ask God to speak to you. He will give you insights for your own health and spiritual well being. From this new approach you’ll find strengthening that flows from the inside out. Much better you draw your energy from Him than trying to draw it from circumstances around you that you cannot have complete control of.

Gary Wood
Executive Leadership Coach
G. E. Wood and Associates

Gary is the Director of Christian Coaches Network

GR had only two modes of operation in his interpersonal relationships at work. One was so thick and treacly it provoked nausea. The other was cutting and vicious. Was this a happy place to work and did it inspire committed, enthusiastic and innovative staff?

On the other hand, Josh, a rescue team leader of integrity and humour, was straightforward and slow to anger but quickly responsive to issues as they arose. If Josh asked the team to go through fire they would do so with a song on their lips and smiles on their faces.Was this a good experience for the team’s members ? Certainly! Did it encourage innovation, participation, commitment and a desire to be better? You bet !

I have experienced both environments and can tell you where I was happier and which I preferred!…………and yes, the names have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent.

For many, the quality of the workplace experience is very much a function of relationships. Whether we enjoy going to work depends on whether we have buddies there and how well we are treated by peers, supervisors and subordinates.

But who would have thought that there is a direct connection between the quality of our relationships at work and productivity, profitability, staff retention and customer loyalty? Yes, folks, that is what the research says, it’s the soft skills which make the difference and no longer is there an excuse for those of a strictly bean-counting persuasion to deny it.

The jury has now returned its verdict many times over. If you are looking for superior profitability, productivity, staff retention and customer loyalty then your first step is to figure out how to create a corporate culture which nurtures people and their relationships.

What does this look like? Start by looking for opportunities to express appreciation of your staff and do so! Start by ensuring everyone understands what it is they are expected to achieve. Start by looking at your vision, your mission and your values and determining whether they are understood, whether they inspire, to what extent they remain relevant and are incorporated in the day to day activities of your people.

………And start doing this today!

Martin Sawdon,
Life Coach,
Coaching-Works!

Martin is a Christian Coaches Network Member Coach

So many companies today have been downsized without comprehending the long term implications for ongoing corporate success or even survival for those left behind with vastly increased workloads and for those simply left out.

Ensure that your company is more than a survivor but a leader, a model of continuing high profitability and inspired staff.

1. Spend your time on the big picture and delegate everything else to incredibly capable subordinates. Be a visionary, develop your intuition and creativity, read the runes, anticipate product and service cycles to ensure your company’s economic future is always bright.

2. Have a well developed corporate mission and vision expressed around ethical values. Ensure that these are embraced, practiced and spread by all your people, particularly executives, managers and supervisors, to permeate the whole corporation. Help those unwilling to wholeheartedly endorse and practice your company’s expectations find employment elsewhere.

3. Have all your executives, managers and supervisors trained as coaches or work with their own coach. In today’s workplace there is no longer time for the traditional, overseeing model of management. With downsizing and a shrinking management structure, more and more people are supervising others in different professional disciplines. Coaching provides the tools to deal with this and ensures that your employees continue growing as individuals, both personally and professionally.

4. Know the amount of work to be done monthly in your company, and the number of people necessary to do it and hire them – the best! In today’s economy many companies have been downsized by the bean-counting model, leaving insufficient staff resources for the amount of work to be done, let alone done well. When the staff:work ratio is right your people will rise to the extraordinary challenge every time, without burning out – but every day is too often!

5. Tell the truth. Increasingly we hear, for example, the importance of family life being acknowledged in the workplace. In those same places where family values and the importance of life outside of work are being touted, days of 12 hours or more, 6 days per week, remain the norm. Is there a contradiction here? Tell the truth in this and every other respect.

6. Acknowledge your staff. Endorsing your people’s achievements person by person may be the best investment of your time you will ever make. For many, acknowledgment is a need, one they cannot be their best without … and if that is not enough motivation, we read that for many, acknowledgment is as important as a raise.

7. Actively promote team building. Teams have to be built at every level – shopfloor, through departments to senior management and board of directors. The strongest structures are round. If we imagine our organization as a circle of metal loops welded together, then its strength depends equally on each link and the welded connection between them. The links may be strong but the structure still falls when the welds fail. Ensure that everyone on your team is pulling in the same direction. This means exchanging information freely and being unfettered by interdepartmental or interdisciplinary protectionism. Help anyone who is unwilling to participate with enthusiasm join someone else’s team, somewhere else.

8. When something goes wrong, start by assuming the best. When something does go wrong (rarely, we know!) how often do we jump into the fray, pounding the desk, frothing at the mouth and shouting to know who is responsible for this incredible incompetence? … only to discover that at best it was something we had not trained our staff to handle, at worst, something we had said which was ambiguous. Assume the best, honour your people and avoid embarrassing yourself!

9. Pay fairly. Pay is only one of many factors contributing to the sustainable workplace. Your company does not need to pay top dollar but it must pay a fair dollar. What is the range of compensation for this type of work and what else contributes to making your company one of the Top Ten best employers?

10. Be a responsible corporate citizen. Some employees will love you for it, others will have no interest at all, but do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do and it comes with advantages which you will recognize.

Are you satisfied with the number of clients you have? How often do they return for repeat business? Do you make it easy and enjoyable for them to do business with you? If not, a business coach helps  analyze your business’ moments of truth to create positive, lasting impressions of you and your company that will turn the most skeptical client into your company’s biggest advocate.

So, what is a moment of truth? It’s a sliver of time when clients or prospects interact with you and your business and decide whether or not to do business with you, to share you with their network, or to use your products/services again and again. Jan Carlzon, in his book, Moments of Truth, defines them as “anytime a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, [as] an opportunity to form an impression.”

The role of a business coach is to ensure your business makes the right impression when interacting with clients and prospects. By strengthening the moments of truth in your business, a business coach focuses on accelerating your business’ growth by ensuring your clients remain on the continuum of the “Nine Steps for Building Virtual Trust.” The result is an increase in client acquisition, retention, and sales.

A business coach advises business owners to be aware of common moments of truth, such as:

• When someone views your Web site
• When someone receives your business card or brochure
• When you answer the phone
• How you interact with a prospect during a sales appointment
• What you post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites
• How you handle a customer complaint
• How and when you respond to requests for information
• When a client receives your billing statement

Moments of truth can seem insignificant to a business owner when they’re happening, but clients may have an entirely different reaction. For instance, if a potential client calls you and you don’t give them your full attention because of an office distraction (whether you think your attention is diverted or not), his or her impression may be that you are unfocused, unprofessional, and perhaps unworthy of his or her business.

A business coach brings clarity to your business by creating strategies that address your moments of truth. Immediate feedback on how you present yourself during these moments of truth can also be provided by a business coach.

Since they interact with so many business owners, a business coach has seen and heard it all. And, since your business coach is your advocate, his or her objective evaluation can be the difference between having a great experience with a client and landing that next big sale.

Some common questions your business coach asks to define and improve upon the way you handle your moments of truth include:

• What are the various touch points (such as your Web site, meeting at a networking event, sending an email, leaving a voicemail message, etc.) during which a potential client has an opportunity to “experience” your business and develop an impression?
• What is the current impression your clients and prospects experience?
• What is your intended impression?
• What changes need to be made to ensure each impression is the one you want your client to experience?
• Who will make those changes?
• By when will those changes be made?
• How will you measure the effectiveness of your changes?

Regardless of the moment of truth that’s holding your business back, a business coach uncovers your moments of truth to ensure you make the right impression. As clients benefit from a consistently positive experience, you can count on them returning for repeat business.

© Jackie Nagel, Inc. DBA Synnovatia® Used by CCN with permission.

Author:  Jackie Nagel is the founder and president of Synnovatia™, a strategic business coaching firm that collaborates with entrepreneurs and business owners to realize accelerated business and personal growth. Learn more about growing your business by visiting www.Synnovatia.com or calling 310.519.1947.