Are you ready and eager to get to know yourself better? Would you like to explore what is blocking your performance and functioning, creating false ceilings or barriers in your professional and personal life? Are you open to delving a bit deeper into your inner world and taking a closer look at those underlying deep-seated patterns that may repeatedly draw similar circumstances or dynamics into your life?
Personal or executive development may then be just right for you. It helps you to explore and understand the way in which you operate from a psychological perspective. It helps you evaluate where you are in your professional and personal life and enables you to remove personal blockages that may be affecting your performance, functioning or well-being.
Personal Development
Initially, you will be taken through a comprehensive, in-depth assessment process usually taking several hours and sometimes spanning more than one meeting. This takes stock of where you are in your professional and personal life, the experiences and key people that have shaped you, the coping strategies you have acquired, your personality preferences, the resources that support you and the journey you have created for yourself so far in life. This assessment may also include the use of specific testing material, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or others to maximise understanding of who you are and how you function. The results will be shared with you and a bespoke development programme will then be designed for you. This helps you address and modify unhelpful underlying patterns or blockages or focus on resolving other issues that may have been highlighted by the assessment process.
The most comprehensive personal development road maps draw on a wide range of psychological and therapeutic modalities and deeply attuned insight aimed at unlocking your hidden potential to help you attain greater fulfillment and enhanced functioning in your personal and professional life. Those who have engaged in personal development have frequently experienced this as hugely rewarding as it has not only enabled them to enhance their professional performance but has also had a considerable positive effect on their personal well-being.
“Your inner strength is your outer foundation”
― Allan Rufus
Executive Coaching
Executive coaching is designed to help you address specific issues or challenges that you are facing as part of your leadership role or particular management responsibilities. It can help you examine and make sense of the underlying psychological dynamics of a particular situation, setting or problem and enable you to find a more informed solution and constructive way forward.
It can be very helpful to take time out and reflect on particular challenges away from the location and people involved. This allows you to examine the issues in a more objective way and helps you consider aspects from a different perspective to the one you may be used to taking. A thorough executive coaching programme achieves this by first taking you through a very comprehensive, systemic assessment process, examining in detail those factors that are important to understand, and consider the specifics of your particular issue or situation. This will be individually tailored to your unique circumstances and the issue to be examined. Following this a facilitation process can be designed, drawing on a range of psychological and therapeutic models.
Frequent issues that business leaders grapple with relate to five key areas (but are not exclusive to these):
- Leadership style and skills
- Managing stress, uncertainty and change
- Effective team building, improved communication and performance
- Conflict resolution and relationship building
- Personal confidence, career development and life fulfillment
The benefit of approaching business from a psychological perspective is that it can provide you with a totally new evaluation and approach to whatever issue is concerning you and enable you to come up with different solutions and ways forward, derived from a totally objective and deeply-attuned facilitation process.
Executive Coaching sessions are usually one-to-one but can be convened for small groups of key people if the issue to be explored requires this. One-to-one sessions usually take half a day (up to 4 hours) and group sessions may take a whole day. Several sessions may be required depending on the complexity of an issue or to monitor and assess the progress regarding a particular situation over a longer period of time.
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing that solutions don’t come from individuals, but rather experiences.”
– Shannon I Alder
It is not necessary to have a specific psychological problem or condition to benefit from a psychological approach
Lots of people are attracted by the idea of furthering their own personal development and want to engage in a path of inner growth in a safe, confidential and comfortable setting. If you would like to get to know yourself better or if you feel unfulfilled with the way your life is at present, psychological therapy could be very helpful to you.
Personal development work often starts with an initial assessment process which enables you to review your life, your life choices, your particular coping strategies and evaluate where you are at present. The right therapist can help you identify your personal strengths and resources and areas of potential growth as well as strategies that may currently block or hold you back.
Personal development work can provide a way to understand yourself better, to like and accept yourself more and to make more informed choices about important areas of your life such as career and personal relationships. A holistic approach to the treatments involved can maximise your emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
Personal and Professional Development with Dr Claudia Herbert
Dr Claudia Herbert has decades of experience across a range of psychology and therapeutic approaches. She has been using her expertise to help people flourish both personally and professionally throughout her time practicing psychology and you’re invited to join her as part of your own journey. Visit her dedicated therapy website to learn about how she might be able to help you with your next life changing steps.