Category: Career Development

Time for change…. do you need help to take that next step forward?

If there is anything the last 12 months has taught us it’s that as humans, we are adaptable and resilient to all manner of threats. The pandemic has impacted all of us and some of those impacts have led us to question how we spend our days; working, looking after ourselves and our families and also how we relate to and help others.

Some of us have really questioned our relationship with work, our job or career.

Maybe your work relationship has become dysfunctional, maybe you have just fallen out of love with what you do, or maybe you just want a change of direction, or a better balance in your life and how you spend your time.

Others have had unplanned change forced upon them through redundancy or their own business has sadly had to close. These are all real scenarios.

It’s a time to reflect, re-focus and re-energise ourselves.

During my own reflections it became apparent to me that some people need help in uncovering what they want from their career.

I have informally been helping colleagues, friends and family with career coaching for many years and so while chatting with Steve Halsall an old friend and former business partner, we decided to create Red Tiger Coaching.

Our aim is to help people clarify what career success really looks like and what a healthy relationship with work could be.

But is coaching really for me? Of course it is! Coaching is for everyone!

Coaching is for anyone who feels they need support, direction and guidance to achieve change and improve their situation. Working with a coach will help you benchmark where you are, identify your options and help you create a clear a plan of action of how you could achieve your ambitions.

However, we all know a plan is just words on paper without activity and accountability. Your coach will support and guide you to create that accountability as you make progress towards your objectives.

If you would like to hear more about the benefits of coaching and how it could help you clear the fog and set you on a personal and professional path for success, please email me on andy@redtigerconsulting.co.uk to arrange a free, no obligation Clarity meeting with one of our coaches.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

What is resilience? And why it’s not just ‘manning up’!

I wanted to share my thoughts on #Resilience – I’ve heard the word mentioned a lot and it’s taken me a while to get my head around what I feel resilience means – if you are interested in my thoughts – read on:

The Oxford Dictionary describes resilience as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness”.

Many of us have grown up witnessing first-hand the very British trait of having a stiff upper lip! Often being told to ‘Not let things to get us down’, ‘pull ourselves together’ and to ‘just get on with things’! You might assume that these skills might help a person recover and get over problems quickly. However, the opposite is true for many of us.

I’ve learnt that resilience most definitely isn’t being told or telling yourself to “Man Up” – my experience has shown me it is more about habit. Habits take on average 66 days to form and this is why it can be difficult to change your ways. Some people are lucky in that they don’t form these bad habits and have something I would term “natural resilience”.

I have so far successfully used Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) to reduce my stress level/s and it has shown me that my mind had formed bad habits in the past – basically shortcuts to thinking such as “Something bad is about to happen”, “Fearing the worst” etc – if you do this a heck of a lot through the day, it is very tiring! 

By writing down my stresses and working them out I am gradually re-training my mind to practise some better habits – so rather than instantly thinking negative, I am able to think about the stress and then break it down to various elements that CBT teaches you.  I am not yet at the stage that this is a habit (Only about 40 days in) but the affects I have felt are fantastic.  If you don’t feel yourself, feel stressed and aren’t sure what is wrong, do get some professional advice and if you try CBT or Mindfulness – remember to consciously work on it for at least 66 days – this is what resilience feels like!

I have also used Strengthscope (https://redtigerconsulting.co.uk/significant-seven-strengths/) to understand my strengths to try and work out what stresses me – this has also been very useful.  One example is that because I have strong Empathy and Compassion and I am Results Focussed I can feel real emotion and understanding for people who are struggling with stress (Hence this post). What I need to do is not take too much responsibility on – just start to signpost people to the professional help they need.

Do you think you’re resilient? Or do you have some negative thinking patterns that you could do with addressing? I really can highly recommend CBT as it has already really helped me.

Finally, it’s not a quick fix, it’s something you need to work at and probably revisit throughout your life. We should all invest more time into our health and wellbeing and I’m definitely seeing the benefits in doing so. Contact me today to discuss our coaching options on paul@redtigerconsulting.co.uk

Significant Seven Strengths

As part of our new coaching service we work with the Strengthscope program. This is a strengths-based assessment tool that seeks to identify the core capabilities of employees and ensure each individual is utilising them in the correct manner and/or in the correct role, to develop both their personal performance levels and the collective output of the organisation.

Our coaches all took part in our Strengths Discovery exercise, and found out what their seven most significant strengths are…

Andy

  1. Empathy
  2. Optimism
  3. Self-confidence
  4. Creativity
  5. Critical thinking
  6. Flexibility
  7. Decisivity

“Unfortunately as with the others no real surprises…. I think it’s a good reflection of me and my behaviours, especially the decision making e.g. critical thinking, creativity and decisiveness…. My optimism strength has very much been challenged by the situation of the last 12 months and I do think I have used this a lot to help others who don’t naturally feel optimistic about the future, however uncertain that future that may be!”

Steve

  1. Relationship building
  2. Collaboration
  3. Empathy
  4. Compassion
  5. Leading
  6. Optimism
  7. Initiative

“For me I’m not sure any were a surprise – the surprises come when you look further down to those that aren’t in my top 7. All I would say is the my Significant 7 are well aligned to my ‘new’ chosen professions of Recruitment and Coaching.”

Steph

  1. Creativity
  2. Developing others
  3. Empathy
  4. Enthusiasm
  5. Leading
  6. Self-improvement
  7. Strategic mindedness

“The one that I go into overdrive on most often is enthusiasm – especially when it’s combined with creativity & strategy. But I can get so carried away with enthusiastically providing white boards, coloured pens and mind maps and being exceptionally creative – that I might not always spot that others need a slower pace, or a different style of engagement. Then I’m at risk of being frustrated and so are they. Not ideal.”

Paul

  1. Compassion
  2. Empathy
  3. Developing others
  4. Results focus
  5. Courage
  6. Collaboration
  7. Leading

“To be honest, none were a surprise, but it’s a great exercise to understand myself more not just professionally but personally too! I am using this to manage and understand my stress levels which really works. One thing I notice is as I am Results Focussed – I get stressed when I don’t have good people lined up for interviews quickly and it can play on my mind sometimes – I need to step back and just keep going, and also focus on ways to work smarter/improve our process to speed things up where possible and let go of the pressure…”

We work with clients to help them understand their key competencies, optimise these and use them to achieve their career goals and objectives.

If you’re interesting in finding out more about your key strengths and exploring career coaching we’ll be sharing more over the coming weeks.

Contact Steve Halsall on steve@redtigerconsulting.co.uk to find out more.

We have a number of new job roles: March 2021

We are really excited to share some new job opportunities:

Insight Manager (Property Landlord), London

  • Working with the development and portfolio teams to develop a commercial proposition based on data and insight.
  • Use both qualitative and quantitative research methods to generate insight that will deliver the assets business plan; drive asset performance & improve customer satisfaction.
  • Run data analysis, this will include providing strategic insight & opinions to help decisions ranging from investment to commercial support.
  • Experience of consumer research development and execution needed.

If interested, please email paul@redtigerconsulting.co.uk

Senior Insight Manager (Property Landlord), London

  • Working with the development and portfolio teams to develop a commercial proposition based around data and insight.
  • Develop and manage a research programme that will deliver a clear vision and proposition for the repurposed assets.
  • Need experience in consumer research development and execution.
  • Wide range of experience with a variety of data sets and research methodologies (both qualitative and quantitative) driving actionable insight.
  • Need strong communication skills and ability to liaise at all levels.

If interested, please email steve@redtigerconsulting.co.uk

Portfolio Insight Analyst ~ Client-side, Field Based (head office in SW one a month)

  • Develop sales and margin forecasts to enable robust investment recommendations and decisions.
  • Includes Location planning within the role.
  • Help maintain network plans, taking account of changing consumer behaviours and expectations, whilst providing achievable targets for potential acquisition and financially viable opportunities.
  • Prepare impact assessments of future competitor store openings to inform commercial and marketing decisions on nearby branches.
  • Need a strong understanding of spatial analysis methods (e.g. Gravity Models).

If interested, please email paul@redtigerconsulting.co.uk

Retail Consultant, Flexible (UK) with travel to London 2x a month post-COVID

  • Great opportunity to progress your career in a well-respected and growing team.
  • Opportunity to work with a variety of clients.
  • Must have location planning and data analysis experience – ESRI and/or Alteryx skills are a bonus.
  • Opportunity to learn or progress technical skills like Python.

If interested, please email paul@redtigerconsulting.co.uk

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

The life of an Apprentice

It’s now been 5 months since I started at Red Tiger and to celebrate National Apprentice Week, I thought I’d share an update with you on my progress so far. Even though the majority of these months I have been working remotely at home, I have still learnt so much and thoroughly enjoy my role at Red Tiger. Obviously, in an ideal situation, being in the office would have been much easier for me to settle in and develop my skills, however the team have been brilliant at keeping me on track, training me in new areas and ensuring I don’t feel too isolated.

Before starting my apprenticeship, I was an A-level student at Runshaw college, studying Geography, Business and English Language. After my second year coming to an abrupt end in March of 2020, I received my results in August and started at Red Tiger in September.

Why I chose an apprenticeship…

Despite always being quite academic, I’ve always known that University wasn’t the right path for me, however I still wanted to get some qualifications after finishing college. For me, I didn’t want to go straight into a regular job, however I still wanted the aspect of learning within my role and to gain experience, as well as gaining a qualification. After looking into the different options, I decided that going into an apprenticeship was the perfect balance of work experience and learning new qualifications that I was looking for.

My monthly responsibilities…

My usual roles include creating and posting social media posts, updating the customer database, and responding to emails and taking bookings for our excel courses. As well as this I sometimes help out with recruitment, take minutes during meetings and write blogs, so have gained experience within ‘WordPress’. As I’m working remotely, I have regular calls with the team, including ‘catch-up’ calls and ‘operations meetings’ with Paul and Steve, and ‘marketing plan and strategy’ calls with Ruth. However, as well as the work with Red Tiger, I also receive monthly assignments from my college- usually linking to an aspect of my job- which I then have monthly review calls about with my mentor, Anna. I usually complete these assignments within work hours (Thursday & Friday afternoons), so I’m given plenty of time to balance college work as well as my jobs within Red Tiger.

How my mentor helps…

My mentor at Runshaw is great at explaining the individual units and learning outcomes that I have to complete, as well as giving me productive feedback once submitted. I get assignments every 4 weeks, where me and Anna have a call and she thoroughly explains the areas of which I’m writing about and what range to include. Every 8 weeks, we have a progress review, where me, Anna and Paul have a meeting to discuss my progress and how I’m finding my role. For me, these calls help me stay focused on my learning and help me reflect on what I’ve learnt so far in my role.

Over the past 5 months, I feel I’ve become much more confident in my role and responsibilities, and have gained a range of knowledge and skills throughout. I’m excited to continue in my job and develop my skillset, as well as hopefully being back in the office!

Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels