Monday Morning Business Coach, Author at Carpenter Smith Consulting, LLC

Nourishing Your Spirit is Important to Your Leadership

October 20, 2014

There are a lot of reasons why it’s important to nourish your spirit, but the most important reason is so you will have more of yourself as you navigate the opportunities and challenges in your life. In our leadership model, The Leader in You: Three Steps to Claiming Your Power, Influence, and Impact, the second step focuses on knowing yourself. This includes: Knowing the kinds of things you fear and how you show up when you are at your best…

Nourishing Your Spirit

October 13, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

The past couple of weeks, we have been talking about articulating your passion and identifying the things that get you up in the morning. In response to those posts, we have heard from a number of you that it was difficult to consider what gets you up in the morning because you are barely able to get out of bed! Many of you said that you are finding yourself deflated and worn. So today, we thought we would talk about…

Another Way to Think About Your Passion

October 6, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Last week, Jill Banks, our Director of Career Services, wrote asking you to think about your passion and success. We heard from quite a number of you in response to that post. There were a lot of comments about the challenges of articulating your passion in a way that can guide your efforts and your decisions. One CEO wrote that he quickly identified his passions and he used the phrase, “these are what get me out of bed in the…

Your Passion and Success Matter to Us

September 29, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

We want to start this week’s post by thanking our incredible Monday Morning Business Coach community. Your questions and comments continue to fuel our thinking and shape what we think about each week. In the past couple of months, quite a number of you have written to ask why we are sending out, free, these powerful tips to claiming your power and stepping into your leadership. So this week we wanted to take a moment to tell you how much…

“How can I be this old and not know what I want to be when I grow up?”

September 22, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Many of our clients hit a point in their work life when they question their choice of career. This happens for a number of perfectly sensible reasons but it can leave them feeling foolish and asking, “How can I be this old and not know what I want to do when I grow up?” We remind them that the question, when asked of a child, was meant to be answered with a simple and static answer: “I want to be…

Are the Rules You Have, the Rules You Currently Need to Succeed?

September 15, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

It’s a simple question but it’s one that we all need to be asking ourselves if we are to be effective leaders in our work and in our lives. We all operate with a certain set of “rules” that guide our thinking, decisions, and actions. We have rules for our kids, ourselves, our family members, as well as rules for our teams and our staff. It’s important to regularly assess if these rules support our current needs and goals or,…

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal…”

September 8, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill This quote by Winston Churchill speaks to us as way of being in the world that we find distinguishes great leaders. As executive coaches, we have the privilege of working with many great leaders, leaders who have experienced huge successes and great failures. In fact, they often come to work with us on the heels of those successes and failures…

Your Words are Just Part of the Communication

September 1, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

A number of you wrote describing your efforts over the past years to communicate effectively and clearly—and how, despite your efforts, others didn’t hear you accurately, got reactive before you even finished, or just didn’t get it. Communication can be frustrating. No matter how thoughtful and clear you are there are times when others will not hear the message you intend to send. If we take a moment to think about what we know about humans, you might begin to understand…

“Can’t they just know what I’m thinking?”

August 25, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Over the past few months we have had several executives say (in almost these exact words), “I’m getting grief for not communicating effectively—but I don’t have time to explain every thought!” We are in a time where every person we talk with describes feeling frazzled, overwhelmed with demands, and say they barely have a minute to breathe, let alone pause to consider how to communicate with the people in their lives. We understand the sentiment—it can be a challenge to…

It’s About Team Work

August 18, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

While personal talents and individual contribution are important in the new economy, the ability to engage collaboratively on a team and contribute to a successful team outcome is equally, if not more, important. In today’s economy sharing information in a team setting is vital to generating new ideas and solving complex problems. Organizations want to make the best use of their resources and so they are asking employees to not only do their individual jobs effectively but also to join…