What I love about what I do is when during a coaching conversation, a business has a “light bulb” moment that leads to a business owner taking action to achieve real & lasting change.

Such a moment happened when I was in conversation with the owner of a professional services firm about the culture of the firm he was creating.  He made it abundantly clear he established the firm with a view to putting the people in the team first even if it came at the expense of profit.  As he went on to describe what was being implemented, I could see he was committed to do things differently from the other players in the market.

However, as the conversation continued, I became increasingly concerned the actions of the business owner was not matching his rhetoric.  As it turned out, the business owner was the first to arrive every morning for work and the last to leave.  This was despite him regularly saying to the team that achieving a balance between work & life was more important than the hours worked in the day.

As a dad with a young family, I challenged him as to whether he was balancing his work & life.  He went quiet and came back that he was not!  As a result, he committed to re-organise his dairy such he will do the school run and not take any appointments until after 9.30am.  In this way his actions will demonstrate to the team what living a life in balance means to him.

I urge every business owner in setting the culture of the business to always pay more attention to what they do  and pay less attention on what they say.