Challenge or opportunity? You decide…

By Karen Amos

As a small business owner, I don’t always have the luxury of lots of spare capacity or fall-backs when things quickly change.  Such a thing happened recently when one of my support team decided to take up a new job opportunity.  Whilst I’m gutted to be losing a key support, I do understand their reasons for moving on and wish them every success.  Inevitably though, this still caused pressures within my business.

After my initial OMG moment, feeling like I should be a model for a Munch painting, I remembered what I did for a living, gave myself a shake and put my coaching hat on.  This helped me to re-frame the situation and ask myself:

Is there another way to see this? 

It was hard not to focus solely on the multitude of upcoming challenges – our brains are wired to concentrate on perceived dangers, so that’s our default setting.  Once I’d named what was going on, there were also many positive opportunities for my business that I might otherwise not considered.  These included building future capacity, re-prioritising my offer to clients, revisiting my pricing policy and many others.  It’s easy to just go with the flow, particularly when things are going well, rather than giving things a bit of a shake up.  Let’s face it, who doesn’t like a bit of comfort zone now and again – again, we can thank our brain for this – keeping us out of danger and seeking safety.

It’s so easy for businesses and organisations to just grow organically in response to our market or circumstances, in good times and bad, but now and again we need a good reason to go back to the drawing board.

I would just like to add this isn’t about being all Pollyanna about things.  As a slightly grumpy, middle-aged Yorkshire woman, Pollyanna isn’t my default setting I can assure you!  As good old Tony Robbins says, ‘There’s no point standing in the garden chanting “There are no weeds, there are no weeds” when you’re surrounded by freaking weeds!  The only thing that will help is to roll up your sleeves and pull them up!’

So let’s start to see the challenges as practical opportunities for change and getting out of our comfort zone and make the most of things!

If you’re struggling with a challenge or change, ask yourself the following coaching questions:

• What are the opportunities, or positives in this challenge?
• Is there a way to slow things down a little to create some thinking space?
• If so, what are the priority things and what can I put down?
• If I was starting from scratch here, what would I choose to do?

Have you turned a challenge into an opportunity recently?  Let’s share the positive mindset!

If you’d like to find out how our 1-to-1 and team coaching programmes and training can help you get ‘unstuck’ and move forward this year…

Check out our website:  www.bright-bird.co.uk

Call us: 07714 855757

or click HERE to book in a short, no-obligation chat

 

 

Karen Amos is an executive coach and founder of BrightBird Coaching & Training. She supports leaders and managers to get the best out of themselves and their teams. She brings a down-to-earth, practical approach to improving working lives through better leadership, communication and working relationships.