From a corporate life to starting my own business

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From a corporate life to starting my own business

Chris Rawden is a consultant, executive coach and mentor providing services to international organisations and executives in global roles. After 25 years working in senior leadership positions in global accounting networks, study of mediation and coaching, he brings his unique blend of know-how and empathy to supporting executives in the challenges important to them. Also an accomplished musician, Chris shares his performance skills in helping his clients step out of their comfort zones. He is based in Brussels and provides support both in person and online.

Email: chris@liveyourperformance.com

Telephone:+32 486 515004

Website: https://www.liveyourperformance.com

Brussels, Belgium

I was delighted when Rebecca invited me to share some thoughts on what I’ve learnt so far in the journey of starting my own business. That in itself has been a lightbulb moment, because I can think of times when such an invitation would have seemed more a burden than an opportunity. Why? Because there is so much learning and keeping faith involved with developing a burning desire to build a business, and sometimes it’s the learning and keeping faith that consumes my energy and other times it’s remembering the burning desire that drove me to do it in the first place.

It’s easy to become distracted by the noise of what other people are doing with their businesses, including what I distill from social media as being “the right way” to set milestones and make and measure progress. So it’s important to hold all those ideas and thoughts as possibilities that can inform my choices and direction, while remembering that ultimately I have to set my own direction based not just on mainstream concepts, but on my intuition, too, based on conveying what I believe is my unique offering and expertise in a way I am comfortable with.

In considering my own business challenges and how marketing helps with them, I have found that it is so important to find what’s at the core of my wish to help people and organisations as a consultant, coach and mentor. What can I draw upon from all my professional experience that may be useful for others starting out on international careers or facing similar challenges in roles like the one I had running the European region of a global accounting network? Reflecting on this makes it possible to formulate the essence into a narrative which I can share when speaking to new prospects and clients that I experience has them become interested, because it is about making a connection on a personal level first of all.

And for me, I find that it helps to make outreach conversations to prospective clients the traditional way, particularly when I already have some knowledge of who they are, or we have connections in common. I write to them, introduce anything we may have in common, what I would like to share with them, and invite them to have a call. I find it far more productive to do that and I feel much more energised by it than by writing social media posts. Having said that, if I approach writing social media posts as a practice in strengthening a muscle, around something I feel strongly about, then I feel empowered and less concerned about how many reactions my post gets.

Marketing often gets people to focus systematically on finding clear answers to key questions like “why are you doing this?”, “who’s it for?”, “how will you deliver the service?”, “what are the benefits?”, “what makes you different?”, etc. I have found it helpful to work continually on defining who my target market is, finding that this evolves subtly and new ideas come to me constantly that seem obvious when they pop up, but I could not have predicted or seen them at the beginning. It is definitely not a one-off exercise. That’s been another lesson – everything has its time and pace. I cannot know and do everything at once, but it helps to have compassion for the evolving journey and work patiently with what I know now. Just as I will with the next goals that lie around the next corner.

How has it come about that after 25 years working in global accountancy networks and associations, that I am so passionate about personal/professional development and working as a consultant, executive coach and mentor?

Years ago, as a music student at the University of Nottingham, I was privileged to be taught by the English composer, Nigel Osborne. A man of remarkable intellect, able to speak over 20 languages fluently, he breathed life into his accounts of cultural life in early 20th Century Vienna, speaking of contemporary composers and those of that period (Debussy, Stravinsky and the like) as people he had somehow known. History came to life in those seminars through the telling. And one thing he told me privately was that my own ability lay beneath the surface. How could I harness and articulate something that was not readily laid bare for all to see? And yet, I knew I needed to find a way to do that, rather than compare myself to people whose ability was more visible to the naked eye.

Fast forward all these years and what I’ve learnt is that I don’t need to take up other people’s time telling them about me and what’s below the surface. I can bring that to life by asking them questions that focus them on engaging with their deeper issues, motives for why they are focused on one particular solution to reaching their goal, why they prefer not to look more widely even when doing so could potentially open up a new world of options. This goes to the heart of why human beings – however much they passionately believe they know and do what is best – are constantly sabotaging themselves by the limitations of their own blind spots.

From working with people in this way as a coach and mentor and inviting them to explore their motivations, I have been rewarded by seeing people make profound shifts as they discover new perspectives on what is driving (and often limiting) their effectiveness. What shows up are behaviours such as limiting beliefs, triggered by a decision about something in the past (“I’ll never be able to do that because…”). While the past event cannot be changed, knowing what we decided about it back then helps us to see that we can view what happened in more than one way. That creates a new sense of acceptance and, with it, a found new ability to let go and move on. 

An effective coach is one who can help their clients with multiple things:

·          Enable them to see their own world view currently, making them conscious of the typical way they view life and what is possible (or not possible)

·          From seeing that – like turning on a torchlight in a dark room and seeing what’s actually stored there – choice becomes available. The client gets to see, “I have that set of options in life, but I can see there may be others, and I am driven to discover what those may be”

·          The client can feel safe to explore this new world view with a coach who has no set agenda or conflict of interest, who respects the challenges this enquiry may pose the client in setting aside their previously sacred truths about how life works, trusting that this new perspective is helping them to take a step outside their comfort zone into new territory

·          The coach helps the client identify and explore what’s important for them, however far off this may currently seem, focusing on some goals and moving from vague goals to well-formed ones.

·          Providing self-reflection processes and tools that the client can use on their own to connect with their learning, evaluate it, capture insights and use these to inform the actions they are going to take.

·          For business-related coaching and goals, achieving desired outcomes is so often about connecting the person with their unique strengths, by seeing these more clearly and using them unashamedly to lead with authentic confidence rather than by a particular leadership fad.

·          Leading from the inside out is something we hear a lot about, but it is a powerful concept. Rather than focusing on external factors and circumstances to guide the way forward, we can focus more effectively on what is within our own control and imagination. Why hold back and wait until knowing if others will endorse a course of action? Embrace the moment and engage others in a conversation about your idea for increasing momentum on a project. You may get resistance, but by being curious, you can reframe this as valuable feedback on how to refine and improve your idea further for the next discussion.

Live Your Performance is all about living rather than surviving your performance moments, whether as a speaker/presenter/facilitator or as a musical performer, which is where I learnt about the difference between living and surviving. I am convinced that these are mindset skills that can be learned by anyone who is courageous enough to go to work on their own blocks to their self-expression. If I’ve been able to learn to release my self-expression, so can you! It’s a topic I’m always delighted to connect about and explore.

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