Mindset matters

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled - Mindset matters.

Janet Watson is the founder of Watson and Associates, a consultancy based in San Francisco that delivers customised coaching and development for a wide range of corporate leaders. Janet was coached from a young age in competitive figure skating and from this her passion to teach started. She turned pro before undergrad school and began coaching skating where her thought was always “How can I make something good, even better?” From developing coaching programmes for athletes, Janet moved into executive coaching after being asked to teach at a university in California on their strategic communications program.

Janet works with a number of female executives and feels that women in leadership roles need to develop skills that will help them survive the rough and tumble of corporate life to secure positions in the boardroom and make a difference at a senior level. Whether it’s preparing for a board meeting or media training for a radio or TV interview, Janet feels you need to ‘hone it till you own it’ and be aware of where and what you need to improve.

Janet’s experience has been very varied – a competitive athlete, a coach, a national spokesperson on TV, radio and media tours, a consultant, a professor and an advisor. She pulls elements from each aspect of her career in custom tailoring coaching for executive business needs. For example, from her athletic career, dedication, focus and time management and from her academic role, objective setting and learning styles. She also had to decide what areas to lose and what to keep – to decide what she held in heart and was true to her

Although she now has a role she loves and embraces, life was not always so easy. 24 years ago she underwent emergency surgery and almost died. Over her 5 months of recovery she undertook a lot of soul searching as to why she had been given a second chance at life. She found being grateful for each small step forward helped carry her on to the next week. That what was meaningful to her was how she could be in service to others. She really enjoyed helping and supporting executives through co-creation – coming to a new idea together and then working on it to foster growth and expand their businesses while still feeling supported

One of the things Janet is passionate about is mindset. Mindset prepares us for some of the most important conversations in our lives. Janet looks on mindset as a key component of success that is also linked to assessing opportunities. This perhaps goes back to her athletic experience where you need to visualise outcomes. Whether it’s going into a competition or a boardroom meeting, you need to ask yourself and others good questions. What mindset do you want to go in with? Are you ready? What part of your experience do you get to share today? Putting yourself in the right mindset s important so how do you prepare for this competition so you have the best outcome or the outcome you would like?

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Janet here. Our previous podcast episodes, upcoming guest list and previous blogs are also available.

You can get in touch with Janet at http://www.watsonandassoc.com