Purchasing Coach: Advent Window 15: Intention

25 coaching and facilitation tools to surprise and delight

As I wrote on LinkedIn earlier in the week, one persons unconventional is another person's weird. I should have added, one person's conventional is another persons unconventional.

Today's coaching and facilitation tool is very conventional and ordinary for many, and yet for others it's straying into weird.

It's a tool I've used since the late 90's. I remember hearing a number of years after I'd left Lloyds Bank, that the team still used this tool when they were struggling in a meeting, usually after someone had just asked "What would Alison have done?" It's also something we often start workshops with.

Setting an Intention.

Yep - it's simply about starting the day/meeting either thinking about the qualities needed to make the session a success, or about the outcome, in terms of how you'd like to feel, or what you'd like to be saying, or doing, at the end of a successful session.

You can do this on your own or as a group.

You can do this logically - thinking of your own answers to the question.

You can pull a word out of a hat/bowl.

You can ask others for a word for you.

You can open a book or magazine and pick the first word you notice - like we did behind window 12.

You can have one word, or many.

You can even have sentences.

You could add a picture or two.

You can build it up over a week - reinforcing the intention every morning

No rules as such, just a desire to focus your mind on how you'd like the outcome to be. Because rushing about like a headless chicken, and worrying, and focusing on the negative, or even worse what you don't want to happen isn't helping your mind support you in getting to your desired outcome.

As with all the tools in this advent series, it's going to make much more sense if you try it for yourself.

Do please let me know how you get on.

Alison Smith
Unlocking procurement potential - using conventional and unconventional tools
Procurement and Business Speaker, Coach, Trainer, & Facilitator
alison@alisonsmith.eu +44 (0)7770 538159

Earlier in the year I applied some of the unconventional tools shared in this series of advent posts to common procurement challenges - more here.