Schools today need governing bodies to effectively question and challenge.

Your staff flourish in an environment where they feel valued and supported.

I am currently undertaking a series of pro bono visit to governing bodies giving you and your team the opportunity to learn how to use your personal knowledge to enhance the effectiveness of your governing body

In exchange for 30 minutes of your time you will learn about powerful questions and how to improve the effectiveness of the questions you ask of your head teacher and senior management team.

See what Ofsted had to say last year about the school I have been a governor at for over six years and what my coaching clients say about me today:

“Staff and governors know how well the school is doing, share a clear understanding of what the school needs to do to improve further and have a good capacity to bring these improvements about. The governors provide good support and challenge and have been fully involved in the strategic development of the school.” Ofsted, South Marston CofE Primary School, February 2008.

“Hannah have given me an invaluable opportunity to reflect on my own practice and really move ideas forward for a coaching culture throughout my school. It’s a friendly form of accountability that works.” Alison Evans, Kingsdown School, Swindon

To book your ‘Robust Conversations introduction’ contact me on 07545 141 774 or Hannah@BlueKiteCoach.com .

You can also read more about my learning from the “Coaching Tips” tab on the BizMeet Home Page or at www.BlueKiteCoach.com.

You can read the blog feed by clicking on the “Inspirational” tab on the BizMeet homepage

Arjun has cleverly linked the blog from my website www.bluekitecoach.com to the bizmeet site - Thanks Arjun

I use my blog to jot down notes from my learning journey as a small business owner and coach and would love to hear from you about anything you have learnt about yourself or about owning a business.

If I were not in India on Tuesday 25th November (starting 3.30pm) I would have been attending a Sucessful Branding Seminar at the Liddington Hotel near J15 of the M4.

Details attached from Swindon Business News dated 11th October 2008

If anyone goes, I would be very grateful if you would you take some notes and pass them on to me afterwards.

Thank you

Hannah

Defying Gravity, from the hit musical Wicked, has become ‘my song’ in recent months and regularly provides me just the right amount of motivation and confidence I need to get me doing those things for my business that are hard, routine or that, at the outset, appear risky. 

The following lines in particular resonate with me:

“Something has changed within me, something is not the same.

I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game…”

A hard look at what my family and I need now and in the future, coupled with what I want to do with my life, prompted a change within my head and my heart. This has set me on course for a future where I am the boss and where I write the rules.

“I’m through accepting limits ‘cause someone says they’re so.

Some things I cannot change but till I try I’ll never know…”

I have never been good at following valueless rules or procedures. I am not afraid to question rules that I feel are unnecessary or unjust. Just because something has been done a particularly way for years, is no reason why it should continue to be done that way. I enjoy change especially when I can see clear and far reaching advantages in making that change. However I am good at procrastinating and part of this is because I dislike failing.

‘Defying Gravity’ inspires a very empowering emotion in me. It is undoubtedly helping me to sustain my drive and determination to secure the future happiness of my family and me through business ownership rather than corporate employment.

Lyrics of “Defying Gravity” © 2003 Stephen Schwartz

I hadn’t until recently when I decided that I work best from about 08:00 - 12:00 and 15:00 - 18:00. (although 0600-0800 can also be very productive when I don’t have children needing my attention)

Knowing this allowed me to plan my working day better. My team of 8 in India work 24/7 within three daily shifts.

Last time I was in India I planned my day in two blocks so that I could be in the office for 4 hours either side of two change over times. This meant going in at 12:00 until 16:00 and then again 20:00-00:00, leaving me 4 hours in the middle of the day for ‘me’.

These sound like odd times to work but there was method in my madness. In working these hours I could keep my body on UK time which is 4.5 hours behind India. So I get up at 10:00 and go to sleep at 02:00, thus fooling my body that it is still in the UK!

On this trip I am doing the same and yesterday the penny dropped when I realized that the times I have chosen to work correlate with my most productive hours if you consider that my body is working on UK time while I am in India.

Wow, I can’t believe how much there is to learn about yourself when you take time to ‘listen’!

At the moment I am sharing my business ideas with as many people who want to listen. I am sharing them openly, honestly and without fear of someone �stealing� my idea and I am seeing their response, whether negative or positive, to be a hugely beneficial learning opportunity.

It is amazing how sharing my ideas has had the effect of providing more options and possibilities than I ever imagined could be identified in a 10-15 minute conversation. I am so amazed that I have created the following phrase to describe this affect �an idea shared is an opportunity multiplied^��.

In trying to work out where and why the �multiplying magic� happens I have concluded that your initial ideas are limited by your set of experiences, however broad. But, when you share your complete idea with someone else, they see your idea through different eyes, often backed up with a very different set of life and work experiences. What other people do is apply their experiences to your idea and come up with an improvement on the original be it another application of your idea, added breadth or depth or perhaps an obstacle that you hadn�t previously identified.

I often find that listening to other people talk about themselves and what they do is a great catalyst for developing my own ideas and I frequently have �light bulb moments� in these conversations, but they pale into insignificance next to the power of other people using their thought processes on your idea.

History tells me that I work well when collaborating on an idea. Collaboration, for me, ranges from just speaking my idea out loud to another person to a full blown formal brainstorming session and over the years my husband and family have got very used to being an impromptu sounding board.

On reflection what has stopped me from realizing the �multiplying magic� of sharing ideas is that I didn�t share them openly enough through a lack of self confidence in my �big� idea combined with a fear of a negative reaction or of my idea being belittled in some way.

I would love to know whether it is the conscious or subconscious mind that is able to produce such powerful results, but until I can afford myself the time and space to devote to such thinking or research then I am just happy to remain in awe of the power of sharing ideas.�

If you learnt that for every 10 new small businesses, 8 fail within the first 24 months, what would you do?

This is a shocking fact and enough to stop many in their business pursuits. However, I saw this as a challenge and quickly resolved that my new business would not become just a statistic in two years.

When I was told this I was buoyed on by the fact that I had already done a number of things to avoid failure, but quickly realized that there was a lot more still to do.

I set myself the goal of detailing what my successful business would look like in 2 years so that I know what to aim towards. I also embarked on the following:

• Get support from an expert in establishing small businesses
• Learn about great companies and what they do
• Learn about common causes of failure and plan to avoid them
• Capture all my ideas in one place and use this list to plan my activities

To me one of the biggest benefits of being a coach was that I get to justify being coached myself by experienced coaches in their areas of expertise. I have decided that I need two coaches: one to support my coaching and another to support the first six months of establishing my business. I love to learn and I love to get things heading in the right direction from the start. The combination of these two coaches will accelerate both these loves and help me get off on the right footing.

I have a step by step approach to producing a business plan (from the Business Link course I attended) and in writing up my notes I have detailed some simple exercises to ensure I do all of the required thinking in preparation.

I am also reading books, listening to podcasts, speaking to established coaches and sharing my ideas with as many people who want to listen.