As an engineering leader or business owner in the industry at the moment - building and showing the traits of a resilient leader is so critical right now.

The people around you need someone to steer the ship. They need someone who is calm under pressure and who makes decisions quickly when they need to. 

Your team and your business can't afford to have someone at the helm who is unsure, hiding and cracks under pressure.

Now resilience is a difficult skill to master - particularly when you are trying to navigate your own emotions, thoughts and feelings through this busy period as well as being there for your team and your business.

Today I want to give you 3 strategies to become a more resilient and more effective leader during these busy times.

1) Build Awareness

The first step is building awareness of yourself, your thoughts, your feelings and your emotions in any given moment. The easiest way to do this is to set reminders for yourself on your phone throughout the day as a...

Today I want to explore with you an area that a lot of engineering business leaders and business owners aren't getting right at the moment.

Everyone is rushing around so busy, with a million things on their action list and just trying to get enough done to keep their head above water.  

Because of all the rushing - rushing to do BD, saying yes to everything, rushing to get projects done, rushing the delegation process to internal teams etc. - no-one is pausing long enough to get clarity on what it is that they're actually supposed to be doing and actually trying to achieve.

The problem with rushing and the problem with taking action without clarity - is that it leads to mistakes, it leads to rework, it leads to unhappy clients who may start looking elsewhere, it leads to wasted money and resources and it leads to not profitable projects - all of which is completely unsustainable.

If you're looking to thrive right now (which I know you are) then you need to be ensuring that...

Recently I realised there were a few areas of my life and in business where I wasn't 'all in' - meaning areas where I wasn't 100% committed to what I was doing, the outcomes I was looking to achieve and the effort I was putting in.

I also realised that these were the areas of my life and business that I wasn't get great results in. And because I wasn't getting great results or outcomes, this just further added to my attitude of "why bother" & "there's no point" & "why put effort in here, when the outcomes aren't paying off".

But I also realised that these areas where I wasn't getting great results was actually my choice! 

I wasn't putting the effort into these areas of my life - so how could I expect the results to be stellar?

So I decided to make a commitment to myself, my family and my business - to be 'all in' in every facet of my life.

When I'm with my wife and my kids - I'm all in! I'm right there, in the moment playing, engaging and being open and present.

When...

So many conversations I’m having with clients and leaders in our industry at the moment go something like this:

“I’m struggling to get to all the things – there’s not enough hours in the day”

“I have so much to do, I don’t even know where to start”

“I feel so overwhelmed right now that it’s impacting my ability to get stuff done”

Sound familiar?

Team, it’s no secret that it’s busy right now.

So many opportunities to pursue. So much current work on to deliver in insane timeframes. Trying to think about the future & strategy, whilst also trying to manage and deliver what’s already on your plate.

Overwhelm and burnout are very real factors on the table right now.

Right here, right now – I just want you to do one thing… breathe…

Just slow down and breathe…

Now, today I want to address with you that if you don’t do the things you need to do to look after yourself...

We recently had an amazing ‘Hot Seat’ session with Em in our group coaching program where she was sharing with everyone all about her wins & learnings in her business building journey.

There were so many great takeaways and learnings for everyone in the program.

There was one discussion point that came up, which became a bit of a hot topic with the group and got a lot of good discussion going.

It was this concept that, as leaders and business owners, we're really committed to and can see the absolute importance of investing in client relationships and really putting the effort in to nurture them over the long term.

The discussion moved to the fact that it can be quite difficult to actually instil these same qualities and desires within your team and the people around you, who don't necessarily care as much as you do in terms of that client relationship.

Particularly when your team and the people around you are just so focused on project delivery and getting stuff...

When you’re trying to be “all things to all people” and trying to please everyone all the time – you don’t tend to have the time for yourself to get any traction on your priorities. 

However, when you get really laser focused on a small, but important number of strategies – that’s when things really start to take off and you can move everything forward with confidence. 

This is exactly what happened with a great client of mine, Chris. 

You see, when we first started working together - he had a tendency to jump in, take over and do everything for his team when things got tough or weren’t going according to plan. 

This meant that he was constantly in reactionary mode and putting out fires and he had no time left in his days or weeks to actually focus on business development, client relationships and his teams positioning in the marketplace. 

So once we got Chris comfortable delegating to his team and holding his...

I was talking to a client this week who was struggling big time with his energy. He was constantly getting to the end of his workday completely exhausted - leaving nothing in the tank for him to spend time with and connect deeply with his family when he got home.

It was becoming an issue because his children were growing up and he was worried that he was missing out on important quality time with them. He simply didn’t have the energy when he got home to be completely present - and family is one of his highest values.

His career path, his role and the company he works for isn’t the issue that needs to be addressed here - he feels incredibly rewarded and fulfilled in the work that he does.

This is an issue of self-awareness, self-worth and an inability to set boundaries with his team.

I’ll address self-awareness first.

The reality is that no two people in this world are the same. Everyone has different needs, different wants, different drivers and different belief...

So many leaders & business owners get caught up in pricing wars and feeling like they’ve got to be cheaper than everyone else. They feel like they’re going to lose the work or not be able to build a project pipeline if they raise their prices or are more expensive than their competitors.

Today I want to flip this viewpoint and this discussion on its head. 

I’ve been doing a lot of work recently with clients in my coaching programs around pricing, the value proposition and their positioning in the marketplace. 

You see if you get your positioning wrong in the marketplace, meaning that you've positioned yourself as a generalist, that you can do everything and that you’re all things to all people AND you don’t talk about the value that you add or how you solve your clients’ problems or how you deeply understand your client’s world, then of course you have to be the cheapest!! 

But if you completely flipped this on its head...

I hope you’re having an amazing week. 

I've just finished a kick-off coaching call with the next intake into my 12 week coaching program. And I have a question for you. 

Do you have a new client onboarding process, a new client journey? 

Do you have an outcome, or a feeling or something that you want your new clients to experience when they first start working with you? Something that gets your clients who are new to working with your team & your business, really excited to be working with you? 

So in the kick-off coaching call for my 12 week program, we cover all the logistics of working together and that kind of thing. But then the main outcome that I want my clients to experience when they come out of this kick-off coaching call, is a sense of excitement.

A sense that we've achieved something together on this call, that we’ve got them clear on their next right thing, that we’ve got them moving and that they feel less stuck and excited to...

Today I want to talk to you about the importance of being intentional and consciously choosing the "mode" in which you are working and operating out of. 

I find that we tend to be quite reactional in nature in our day-to-day working environments. And what I mean by this, is that we always tend to react to what is happening around us and allow external influences to affect our thoughts, our behaviours and how we are operating in that moment. 

This is a very ineffective way of working and often means that we get to the end of our day and we really aren’t sure about what we actually achieved over the course of our day. 

So, what I encourage you to do is become very conscious and very intentional about choosing the mode in which you are operating out of in any given moment. 

For example, if you know you need to get something done that is incredibly important and you know that it’s going to take you 1 or 2 hours of uninterrupted time to get that particular...