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Coaching For Creative Leaders

@craftcoachinganddevelopment

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Business coaching for creative leaders & founders.
Evidence-based tools.
Proven results.
🔸Led by Ami | 18 yrs experience
✨ Book your Discovery Call ↓

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Next week, I get to spend a WHOLE week with these amazing leaders (and 2 new dazzling leaders who aren’t shown here but the group is sooo excited to welcome!)
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These are some of our clients, most of whom have been working with us for so long that we know their businesses and teams SO deeply that they feel like an extension of ours.
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Women who teach me so much daily.
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Who coach one another with wisdom, experience and insight that often renders me speechless (in the best of ways).
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Who I would choose to spend time with, even if it wasn’t my job (look at their bright smiley faces; I can’t believe I get to work with them!!?).
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Who are fascinating, full of worldly substance, are world changers and work from a place of excellence.
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Who care about their teams and their impact on the planet.
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Who are able to laugh, cry, think strategically, face themselves in the mirror and do better all in the same day.
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Who really…are the pinnacle of my career to spend time with.
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This week, we plan to develop our Emotional Intelligence, our Future Teams, help each other with our biggest leadership challenges, learn about Bunurong country while bushwalking with @wearelivingculture, ocean swimming, talk HR with our HR coach Jessie Harris, soak in the @peninsulahotsprings, bask in the vibes of @yoga.with.jordan from @soulhavenyoga.pilates, find flow in our daily creative hours, eat nutritious food and rest together.
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You can join us on our next retreat by applying (just DM for the link).
You will be matched with a group that you’ll have the most in common with - this matching makes our retreats one of a kind and we don’t stop until we KNOW you’ll love, learn from and gel with your retreaters.
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If you aren’t ready for that step just yet, why not join us on the Create Program which starts in the same week online?
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We can take 1 more participant.
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Link in bio. taken in Red Hill, Mornington Peninsula by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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4 years ago

Founder Burnout is a common reason a client comes to coaching.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Burnout is the short or long term depletion of mental, emotional and physical energy.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The main culprit of burnout we’ve noticed?
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➡️ Launches.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Traditional launch models are detrimental to mental health.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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They can compromise the sustainability of our work. We've been taught to market in a way that triggers our adrenals.
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•Intense spikes in output.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
•Long hours.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
•Push and hustle.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
•Our sense of achievement hinging on external validation.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
•Methods that are often values-compromised for the purpose-led.
•An activated fight/flight response in ourselves and our audience.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
•Prescriptive rather than creative.
Aaaand….a crash at the end.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Because of this, we *actively* discourage clients from adopting a traditional launch approach to promote their offer.

Here are some prompts to create more energy (that are just as impactful) when sharing your next idea:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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🔸Less is more: Focus on places that resources make a difference through a mindful marketing plan underpinned by your values and purpose.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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🔸Consistency: Identify 3 key messages that you continue to come back to. Schedule posts, run 'set and forget' ads and write blogs leading from your authentic voice.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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🔸Partnerships: We are stronger together. Join hands with purpose-aligned partners to serve each others circles.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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🔸Understand people: Connect with your circle in the way they want to receive. Get to know them. Anchor into data through surveys and interviews.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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🔸Test and learn: Creativity is our greatest asset as business owners. Innovate. Try things, and fail. Experiment. Find your way.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Has launch mode been feeling draining for you?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Reach out if we can help design your way. 🧡 by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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5 years ago

A reminder on the eve of a new week…
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What you may need to do to lead your team and sustain this work?

Is to sustain yourself.

(Swipe left 👈) by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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4 years ago

Success isn't just about what we're achieving.
It's also about how we're feeling while achieving it.

I want to share something we're incredibly proud of at Craft (story and results shared with permission).

2 years ago, a business owner came to us exhausted.
She was talented, ambitious, sought-after and fully booked. But she was burning out every few months and worried she'd built a business she couldn't sustain.

So, alongside our work on her business strategy, marketing and mindset, we started measuring her wellbeing.

We introduced better boundaries, sustainable working practices, deliberate rest and recovery, and strategies that worked with her natural rhythms rather than against them.

And we kept measuring.

2 years later, the results are extraordinary.

Her overall wellbeing score increased from 52% to 92%.

Her resilience more than doubled, from 37% to 80%.

Her flourishing and self-determination scores both reached 100%.

But what excites me most isn't the numbers. It's the story they represent, and the changes I've witnessed in her along the way.

She is now someone who is confidently self-coaching between sessions, building the capacity to lead, make decisions, achieve her goals and create a business that supports her life.

This is why we're so passionate about measuring the impact of coaching. We measure your wellbeing markers when you begin coaching, and throughout our time together so you can clearly see the ROI.

Achieving goals absolutely matters. But so does building the resilience, confidence and wellbeing to sustain that success long after coaching ends.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is helping a client work differently, so their capacity to achieve incredible things skyrockets. by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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3 days ago

As the Founder of the business, if you are the final QA department, you will have a little problem called a “bottleneck”.

Work gets done.
Someone reviews it.
It moves through the team.
And then, just before it reaches the client, the founder or senior leader has to look at it.

They spot the things everyone else missed.
They’ll want to fix the detail.
They attempt to elevate the thinking.
They may tighten the work, and catch the risk.
Or? They may not have the time to look at it at all.

And it’s an important check point because, let's face it, no one can do it quite like the Founder.

Except, that’s a very experienced and busy person acting as the final safety net.

And the flow on effect is…the team doesn't fully learn what “ready” looks like because the senior leaders are ‘catching' it, and accountability for the end result becomes very blurry.

And the Founder starts believing:

“See? I can't step away. Look what happens when I do.”

If this is you in a growing business? Not to worry, it's every Founder in a growing business :)

Because as a business grows, quality can't live inside one person's head.
Otherwise…you haven't really scaled at all.
You’ve just scaffolded a bigger business around you.

We work with this situation all the time. Jump on board for a call if we can help you swim away from the weeds. by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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11 days ago

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18 days ago

Recently, on a weekend away, 10 friends and I got stuck in a lift.

A very small lift. 😬

It was funny at first. Until it wasn’t.

It got incredibly hot. We could barely move. And it quickly became a social experiment in what people do under pressure.

Some took charge. Some led communication with the outside world. Some kept the mood up. Some stayed quiet and calm for the majority.

Everyone looked after each other, in their own way.

And I…made everyone origami fans 🤷‍♀️.

One by one, with paper being passed through the tiny gap in the door by our 3 friends on the outside 🤣.

Crisis makes me calm, weirdly enough. Call it resilience, dissociation or pure grit. Apparently my response is to assess the environment, work out what people need… and start making goddamn fans.

We laughed about it afterwards, but it got me thinking.

There’s a strong narrative around putting ourselves first.

Protect your energy.
Look after number one.
Do what works for you.

And sure, there’s wisdom in that.

But what happens when looking after ourselves comes at the expense of connection, community, belonging - something bigger than us and our individual gain?

There’s something deeply cool about looking beyond our own immediate needs and asking:

What does everyone else need right now?

Not because our needs don’t matter, or because we should endlessly give to people who only take.

Maybe the lesson isn’t to care less.

Maybe it’s to become more discerning about where we place our care.

A huge part of my work is helping people become successful without losing their humanity along the way.

Because looking after each other might just be one of our greatest strengths.

Sometimes, we just need to make sure we’re making fans for the right people. taken in Byron Bay, New South Wales by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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a month ago

A loving message to Founders who are struggling to delegate… by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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16

a month ago

I’ll often suggest that clients pay attention to how often someone says “I”.

It’s a useful leadership signal.

It’s interesting to observe, especially when an individual is in a group setting (as in a group, they will be less conscious of their response, and you’ll get a clearer insight into why they are there).

A lot of “I” language can tell you a person’s focus is sitting with their own experience, feelings and needs. That their thinking is more protective, centering on the self over the collective, and lacking perspective and understanding of how they impact others.

But…not always.

Sometimes using “I” a lot is about how someone learns (this is why getting your team to do the Learning Style assessment is so valuable, because you will know for sure!). Type 1 learners make meaning by connecting new information back to their own lives and experiences.

Sometimes lots of “I” is how someone survives. Trauma narrows our field of attention as well as our window of tolerance outside of ourselves. Our capacity for perspective-taking, curiosity and connection decreases.

And sometimes, it’s a stress response. We go inward to deal with the outward stressor, and focus on our own experience as our pre-frontal cortex shuts down, and our connection to the outside world weakens.

Lots of “I”s is an Invitation. An invitation for you to get curious, and ask:

Can this person also get curious about you and others?
Can they hold another perspective or viewpoint?
Can they move beyond their own experience?
Do they have the resources they need to move through their stress response?

Language gives us clues.
Patterns give us context.

Behaviour gives us the bigger, whole picture.

If you’re leading a team and reading these signals daily, this is the kind of thinking we work on together in coaching.

Book a call if we can help.

Ami x by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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0

a month ago

We could tell you our Growth Retreats are special.

But perhaps it's better if the people who've actually been on one do that for us. 🤍

We design these retreats to give you time to think deeply about your business, and space to do the work while you're there.

Conversations that deepen around the dinner table.
Practical ideas to apply immediately to your business.
And, most importantly? The right people in the room.

We are incredibly thoughtful about who we invite.

People we believe will challenge, champion and genuinely enrich one another. They arrive as strangers. And leave as a *cheer squad*, *kindred spirits*, and feeling *seen, worthy and welcome*.

And somewhere amongst all of that, businesses move forward too.

Goals get clearer.
Decisions get made.
Energy returns.

If we can get the right group together, our next Growth Retreat is this November. If you've been wondering whether it might be for you, consider this your tap on the shoulder to reach out so we can match you. 🤍 by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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1

a month ago

Your brain loves a good business case.

Especially when you’re asking it to let go of a story it’s spent years gathering evidence to support.

A client of ours is stepping into something new at the moment.
Becoming more visible. Finding the courage to put her thoughts and expertise out into the world. And right on cue (as it does for us all) those questions began:

*Who am I to do this?*
*I’m not capable enough for this.*
*There are so many amazing [insert profession] out there - I couldn’t possibly be one of them.*

This is where coaching is helpful.
Because I could tell her she’s brilliant (and I do).
We could work on thinking positively, and send her off with a pep talk.

But that’s not really the path to long-term change. Instead, we could get curious about the story itself.
Because we can tell ourselves some really interesting stories to get what we want sometimes.

The brain loves an efficient pathway.

If you’ve believed something about yourself for long enough, you’ve probably become very good at noticing the evidence that supports it.

You’ve created a path of least resistance.
Sometimes that pathway keeps you feeling safe.
Sometimes it helps you make sense of something that doesn’t sit comfortably.
And sometimes it’s simply familiar. And easier.

So rather than asking this client to magically *feel more confident*, we start gathering evidence.

What has actually happened recently?
What have clients trusted her with?
What have people whose opinions she respects reflected back to her?
What has she already done that the old story says she shouldn’t be capable of doing?

Essentially, we started **building the business case for her brain to think differently.**

And that’s a pretty good example of how we work with our coaching clients - we’re interested in understanding what’s getting in the way, why it’s there, and what we can do to create a different response. Because confidence comes from giving your brain enough evidence to question a story it has believed for a long time.

And then... doing something differently with it. by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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1

2 months ago

Waiting until you’re drowning to figure out how you’ll cope means you’ll work out whether you’ll cope while you are drowning.

Read that again.

One of the conversations we had with a clients team recently was about preparing for their busy period.

And interestingly, the answer wasn’t to hire more people. Go harder.

Instead, we worked backwards. We asked:

🔸What is the sustainable number of jobs each week (to ensure long term, sustainable success)?

🔸Where are the pressure points likely to be?

🔸What can we automate and streamline NOW (before we are busy)?

🔸What work is taking up our time (that shouldn’t be)?

🔸Where do we deliberately leave breathing room (to recharge)?

🔸How will we know if someone on the team needs support?

🔸What conversations and check-ins need to happen regularly (even when we get busy)?

Growth isn’t going to feel successful if the way you achieve it leaves your team exhausted, your life depleted and your systems stretched.

Sometimes the best time to work on your business is when things are a little quieter.

Maybe that’s now.

And maybe it’s time to book in a call with us. ☎️ by @craftcoachinganddevelopment

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2

2 months ago