Amanda Bouch Consulting

29/12/2024

Almost at the end of 2024. Have you been reflecting on what's happened for you this year? It's an activity well worth doing, if you take the time to learn from your experiences. Feel grateful for the blessings you have received and know that the knocks you have survived have made you stronger. You are ready to face whatever 2025 brings and can make the most of your life. Enjoy!
Happy New Year!

19/09/2024

Online marketplaces need to step up and control what is being sold, so unsuspecting consumers are not ripped off with illegal and unsafe items.

16/09/2024

It's a beautiful sunny day today, I've been outside exercising, and I feel good! Have you noticed how sunshine makes a difference to mood?
We can't control the weather, but we can control our mood. When you're in a good mood, what does that feel like? How are you behaving? How do you look to others? What does your voice sound like? What impact are you having on yourself and others?

Remember and embed this experience in your muscle memory, anchor it with some gesture (eg push your thumb into your palm, flick your wrist). When you anchor a strong memory, you can initiate that mood by triggering the anchor. Then it doesn't matter what the weather is like outside, you can bring sunshine to yourself and those around you 😀.

I recommend building a strong anchored experience by using the anchor every time you are in that sunshine place and mood. When you need to trigger the anchor, the feelings will quickly flood your body and leave you feeling good.

Go for it and bring sunshine! ☺️

11/09/2024

A coach can help leaders overcome the challenges of stepping up to a new role and prove themselves rapidly. See this short case study. development

Background: The succession plan is for Ed to step up to the Board at the HQ of a franchise business. He’s seen as having the potential and has achieved some great results in his work so far.

15/08/2024

I'll be chatting with Mark Harris, the Enterprise Doctor, and host of The Business Show on MarlowFM, today Thursday 2-3pm, along with Deb Mason.
We'll discuss relevant business topics and how they could affect you and your organisation and mix that with a few tunes. Why not listen in on www.marlowfm.co.uk/
I've picked a couple of topics around leadership. One on making performance management people-centric and one about managing for stability (not constant change) - let's see which one we pick!

The website for the community radio station Marlow FM

25/06/2024

I attended a number of Coaching.com summit sessions this month. It's always interesting to stay up to date with the latest thinking around coaching and personal change.

It's difficult to pick out one session, as there were many highlights. Looking back at my notes, I'm struck by how AI is affecting the coaching world. We were encouraged to harness the speed and power of AI to help with everything from understanding topics, to automating or supporting our marketing & promotional efforts, to automating some processes.... We discussed the substitution of real coaches with bot coaches and how effective they can be.

This got me thinking about how we can differentiate ourselves and show the added value we offer. One thing that strikes me is that we have to show our human side, our vulnerability, our individuality. If we write bland blogs, we might as well use AI. It's time to drop the generic information and tips, and start to talk about real events and how we helped individuals to achieve better outcomes.

One challenge I have yet to live up to, is frequent and regular posting, so this will be quite hard for me. Being human, approachable, and sharing expertise in a way that is unique to me and cannot be cloned is my new focus!

23/05/2024

Interesting that the Labour Party have a one-word slogan for this election - Change!
Those of us in the business of change know how hard it can be to see change through to achieve its original objectives. It seems to me that Labour are focussing on only one aspect of change at the moment - Dissatisfaction. While Dissatisfaction is a strong driver and motivation for change, it is not enough.
Labour also need to get clear on and communicate the Vision for the future in some credible detail. Plus develop a plan for change and specific First Steps. Without these the change is directionless and scattergun.
This is still not enough, we need to know that the leaders are Believable, that they are aligned, have thought through an integrated approach, which is credible and practical. And that they will lead this change with conviction and commitment.
Then, maybe, they have a proposition that is worth working towards, with all the disruption and pain that change inevitably brings with it, until we have found a sustainable and better way forward.
Some of you may recognise the change formula I'm referring to here - D x V x F > R.
Dissatisfaction x Vision x First steps must be greater than Resistance and D, V, & F must be Believable.
Note this is a multiplication formula, so if any one element on the left of the equation is zero or near zero, the chances of success are nil as Resistance wins out.

What are your top tips for government-led change?

14/03/2024

Stepping up to a senior leadership role makes particular demands on you.
Unfortunately, too often leaders don't let go of the tasks they were doing before, resulting in bottlenecks and frustration in their teams. The whole organisation underperforms when the leaders underperform.
I recently worked with a client who recognised that she needed to make deep changes to fully step into her new senior leadership role and contribute to the board and the organisation in ways that would fulfil her potential.
We started with a foundation of Positive Intelligence, and this made the coaching sessions particularly creative and enjoyable. The delight is that in our end-of-programme review, she was making great progress on all her goals and felt she had developed a way of sustaining that progress.
I love helping people to empower themselves in this way!
Full the brief case study see

Executive & Leadership Coaching: Using Positive Intelligence to build skills and confidence to operate at a senior level - ABCoach

11/03/2024

We've just marked . Is it just me or do you feel that the 'noise' around this day is much less now than it was pre-covid?
Why is that? Do people think that the job of raising awareness of the capabilities and circumstances of women is done? Is it because minority groups are making more noise?
The picture in the developed world may be very different from when International Women's Day was launched, but the clue is in the title - we're talking women around the world. I think there will always be struggles. Whether that is a woman you know, who is unable to take up opportunities at work due to commitments at home. Or whether that is a woman in a developing nation, who is struggling to grow food for her family in a drought, let alone earn any additional income.
Let us keep speaking up for women.

18/01/2024

Building team morale is often an issue for new teams, teams facing changes, teams facing difficult challenges. I enjoy working with teams to help them understand each other better and work more effectively and enjoyably together.
However my purpose is to enable and empower people to deal with their own issues by providing tools and techniques they can use in the workplace.
In this article I feature cohesion and commitment as essential for team morale. Read more here...

Executive Coaching tips & ideas for building team morale, focus on cohesion and commitment among team members

02/01/2024

I'm looking forward to being on Marlow FM! I'm joining Harris The Enterprise Doctor on the Business Show on Thursday at 2pm. You can listen live at www.marlowfm.co.uk/ . His other guest in Sheila Docker, we should have some good, helpful conversations.

The website for the community radio station Marlow FM

21/11/2023

Where could we find positivity in the polycrisis? Ipsos' most recent report coined this term of polycrisis and I think it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of too much stuff going on both globally and locally. As an individual, it can feel like there is little you can do to make a difference.
I feel like that when I get charity fundraising letter after charity fundraising letter, all with heart-wrenching desperate stories about the people they seek to help. Does my donation make a difference? I have to believe it does and that all the donations add up to make a real difference to the support those charities can provide.
However, I'm now thinking more about wanting to know I'm making a small difference by doing something practical. Feeling that I can be part of the solution for one crisis, will go a long way to feeling greater positivity in this polycrisis.
What do you think or do in this situation?