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How to get the most out of coaching: A guide for coaching success

When I had coaching several years ago, to deal – I hoped – with a lack of confidence in a new, more senior work role, I didn’t really know what to expect. I enjoyed the sessions, but by the end of the third one, I had the awful realisation that I was wasting the coach’s time. I was so busy that my attention wasn’t always fully focused on my coach and our conversation, and between sessions, I didn’t reflect on what we’d discussed enough to ensure each session built on the previous o...

Can't move up? How to progress your career anyway

It’s easy for women in their 30s and 40s to feel stuck in the public sector at the moment. You have years of relevant experience, a relevant tertiary education qualification or even qualifications plural, and the respect of those you work with. But if the more senior job you had your eye on was cut, and advertised jobs at the level you want to move to are few and far between, what’s the solution? How do you progress your career without promotion?The current environment in New Zealand public ...

Is coaching right for you? Answers to questions women ask before starting

You’ve been in your role a few months or even years. It’s going fine, and you like working in the public sector, but you want it to feel more than just “fine”. For your work to feel easier and less like pushing boulders uphill. To be able to adjust or change your work so it’s more meaningful, without changing job or organisation. To have more energy at work.Work in the New Zealand public sector can definitely be challenging. There are lots of options for gaining support and helping you...

The 5 hidden work stressors draining public sector professionals

Five months after I started, excited at what could be a great role for me with leaders I got on well with, my manager resigned and left. It was the first of multiple resignations in my team, due to uncertainty about what would happen in the restructure.It didn't end up sinking, as it happens, the team or the organisation, but staff had to sit with low-level, always-there uncertainty for about nine months as a result of the 'reshaping'.What I've come to realise is that this kind of job insecurity...

A simple weekly reset for work - for public sector professionals feeling snowed under

You know how there are times where you end up at the end of your day with only one thing achieved? Or, maybe worse, five different things, all started and none finished? Yip, me too. That's work.What about when you have a whole week like that? It can be pretty disheartening. And in the New Zealand public sector, particularly at the moment, needing to do vastly more with fewer people almost guarantees this. It's frustrating, some of your motivation for work will ebb, and you might feel like pulli...

Why burnout looks different for women in the public sector

Burnout has had a lot of air-time over the last couple of years. Whether that's in the press, on social media, in TED Talks. You may even know someone who's been through burnout, or been through it yourself.But much of what's out there about burnout treats it as an experience that's the same for everyone, with the same causes, and solutions that work the same for everyone. That's not accurate. As one immediate example, work by prominent burnout researchers Maslach and Leiter suggests that burnou...

From surviving to thriving: what career wellbeing looks like

"So how's work?", your friend asks. "Good", you say, "really good". But as you walk away from your coffee date, you're wondering if that was really accurate.It's Wednesday afternoon, and the day's been OK. You've attended a couple of meetings, you've checked and replied to lots of emails, you've got tasks in your calendar that you've been working on.  Which is fine, right? You've been productive, and you're productive like this most days. But you also have a nagging feeling that it's n...

Why public sector people are my people

Most coaches will work with any client. In this blog post, I'm going out on a limb! I've made a deliberate choice to specialise. As well as having a particular interest with solving work-related challenges, I specifically love helping people who work in the public sector, especially women.I’ve worked in different parts of the New Zealand public sector over 20 years – four Government departments, three universities, and two Crown entities… which means that working in the public sector is w...

Recalibrating work: the most helpful books I've read this year

Whether we like it or not, work keeps changing. Whether it's the tasks we have to complete in our role, or the different aspects of our work environment. Or it might even be us that's changed - maybe we had a child or got them off to school, or we decided to study again to enter a new profession, or our work now has to fit with caring for a mum or dad who's not doing so great.And as long as work, our work environment and we keep changing, we have to keep adjusting and reinventing ourselves, and ...

Self-confidence at work: quiet your chatter and push off from hard moments

Let me share with you, if I may, a blow-by-blow account of the highs and lows of my self-confidence at work last week. I could probably draw it as a graph. It would look like a rollercoaster.Monday, blessedly, went without a hitch. The rollercoaster started on Tuesday. I happily embarked on my usual start-of-the-day admin stack. (I was feeling good. I'd had a great sleep and the before-school routine was fight-free.) Email - fine. Calendar - all still do-able. Website inbox - no replies needed. ...

What does job satisfaction mean to you?

Job satisfaction is not something I've written about here on this blog yet. Which is kind of remiss of me - it's at the heart of why I started this little coaching business.Job satisfaction has a lot of different facets to it. Feeling you did well in the work tasks you filled your day with. That your work was for something or someone - a cause, perhaps - beyond yourself. That your job enables you to work in line with your identity. It could simply be that it enables you to earn enough to cover y...

Walking in nature to reduce your work stress and boost your thinking

I have always walked - as an adult, anyway. I live in Wellington, New Zealand, which may not seem an ideal walking location. It is as hilly as it is windy. But I walk almost every day, even multiple times some days. I do express walks at lunchtime to clear brain fog after hours of staring at a monitor. I walk to the school gate for the afternoon pick-up. I walk with friends on weekend mornings for exercise and a good, solid chat.I mostly walk through built environments, on asphalted footpaths, p...

The importance of making progress at work

I really hate behavioural event interviewing. That's when an interviewer asks, "Tell us about a time you encountered conflict at work…" or something like that. They can be so hard to answer well. At one interview a few years back, I was asked, "Tell us about a time a roadblock appeared in the way of your project. How did you get past it to get to project completion?" Ugh, what a question. And, ugh, roadblocks.I am someone who is strongly driven to finish things. In one work personality test I ...

Symptoms of burnout: What you need to know

A couple of weeks ago, a friend told me she was exhausted and completely burnt out. I wasn't surprised – between a busy job and everything else on top, she's juggling a huge amount. But I was a bit worried. Burnout in its most serious form can stop you in your tracks – and it feels as if lots of highly capable people are falling prey to burnout these days. So, I thought I'd devote this week's post to burnout, what it is, why it's a big deal, burnout symptoms to look for and how to respo...

Working with your wiring

Last week, a friend and I were exchanging WhatsApps about my recent long weekend holiday away. I had sent 10 or 11 shots of one of the most beautiful parts of the country: trails through virgin New Zealand bush, the jewel-like clarity and sparkle of the water in a natural spring, a vast expanse of dune and sea at a picturesque beach. And all of that was stunning.Then I sent a picture taken on the deck on a sunny morning, with my green tea on a table in front of me, and a view of the sea in the d...

It's the little things

Do you have little things you do as part of your work day that help it to go more smoothly? Or at least feel better? Things that inject a little bit of who you are, what you like, that help you to be your best self? You could call them rituals. When I hear the word ritual, the first thing that comes to mind is someone lighting a candle before they do yoga. Or the ‘Ding!’ of a bell at the end of a meditation.I’m sure those things are rituals, but they’re not really the type of ritual...

Being overwhelmed at work, and what to do about it

I had a job a while back that stretched my understanding of what ‘busy’ could look like. I led an important piece of work, which, when it landed on my desk was already behind schedule, in a newly set-up team in a chaotic organisation. But I had recently started in the role and wanted to prove my mettle. I had a couple of colleagues who were feeding several hours each into the project each week, for which I was incredibly grateful, but which also added a ‘coordination overhead’. The ...

Got time anxiety? Chris Guillebeau can help

Have you heard the term ‘time anxiety’? You might have. I might just be late to the party – it was new for me! A book written by Chris Guillebeau, published last year, Time Anxiety discusses that not-at-all-new feeling many of us have from time to time that there isn’t enough time to do all we need.  It also refers to the feeling we might have, that while we’ve already done quite a bit of living, time’s running out to be and do and achieve all we dreamed of....