News & Blog

Read the latest business news, blogs and thought leadership articles from our members, as well as updates on the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce's work in the city.

News & Blog

Why I’d like you and I to ‘Get a room’…

Posted: 15th June 2018

I am changing the way I work and I’d like to tell you about my new one-to-one executive coaching service, with an Acting Up twist, which I am calling Get a Room.

picc

The title of this new offering of mine is both a little provocative and also a bit literal, just like me. I’m not trying to be smutty as such, though I do sometimes enjoy the interplay of appropriate language with inappropriate language, as born out by the fact that Gail’s Shoes, the monologue at the heart of my successful behavioural Health and Safety session, walks the same politically incorrect line in some senses and yet is essentially all about corporate behaviour…so no, I’m not intending to offend by calling the service Get a Room but I am trying to get your attention. I’m also sort of borrowing the title from Virginia Woolf’s essay, A Room of One’s Own and I’m thinking about intimate spaces too, mental as well as physical spaces, where what matters can come to the fore.

With Get a Room I’m seeking to provide a service which I see is needed; a non-judgemental ear, an observant and discrete friend, a supportive stranger. Get a Room will be a private space where you and I can put the [corporate] world to rights; it will be a chance for you to tell your story, to describe where you want to take it next and to work with me to design a map showing you how to get there. Tell your line manager it’s Executive Coaching if it helps with the paperwork…but know that it will have the potential to wander into relevant less conventional mental territory, as suits. You can be as boring as you like, or you can reveal your more colourful side. You can shape your leadership ambitions or you can tell me your whole life has been a lie. It can be formal or informal. The important thing is that we speak human together. It’s the human in the corporate agenda I want to save. People before process, that’s my bag – for it is my belief that when you get the human working in harmony with the system, feeling understood and motivated, you will see success too. That means a better bottom line and happier people.

Get a Room is a virtual or live service offered to the individual professional to fit in with a busy day. I like the idea of the virtual because it makes efficient use of time. It can be a phone call if you like. Or we can go old-school and meet face to face, and literally get a room.

For those of you who don’t know me, I have 21 years of corporate fieldwork under my belt, I am an actress, a writer and a trained coach too, but for the last few years I have been on a personal quest to establish an antidote to the chaos of my own life. I have asked for help from friends and professionals to overcome a variety of difficult emotions as well as a need for professional inspiration. I am not evangelical about my own experiences; in offering this service to others I will be empathetic and will continue to ask myself some of the big difficult questions of life. Like all of us I will be attempting to balance what I see as the vital pillars of success as a human:

BELONGING – we need to feel part of a community

TRANSCENDENCE – we need to be able to escape and unhook from reality sometimes

SERVICE – we want to feel needed and useful

ORDER – we want to set goals and organise our progress as well as our physical spaces

SELF KNOWLEDGE – we need to find our truth and understand how we tick

CONNECTION – we want to feel understood and seen

email: emma@actingup.co.uk or call +44 7711697081 – let’s arrange to have a free, no obligation ‘Discovery Call’ to see whether I could be a useful part of your professional and personal development

Business Comment

Business Comment is the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce’s bi-monthly magazine. It provides insight on Edinburgh’s vibrant business community, with features on the city’s key sectors, interviews with leading figures and news on new business developments in the capital.
Read more here