What We Do For Your Business

"We wanted to make a real difference to performance levels and how performance was managed across the business. We wanted our managers and team leaders to understand coaching and to have practical coaching skills that could impact immediately. Peter Mohan implemented this work across a team of twenty managers over three months and the impact has been very positive."

In the day-to-day running of your organisation:

• Is everyone involved clear on the purpose of the organisation?
• Is there a shared understanding of the results you are seeking to achieve?
• Are motivation levels high for everyone working within the organisation?
• Is everyone clear on the performance level expected of them?
• Are you and your colleagues self-motivated to review performance and to come up with tangible ways of improving?

These are some of the questions we tease out when working with you. Our approach is based on listening closely and then asking the key questions that get to the heart of the challenges facing your business. Underpinned by cutting edge understanding of brain science and the dynamics of human nature, the ClearMind approach is to support your business in maximising the degree to which the work works.

When the work works, everybody wins… customers, employees, stakeholders and business owners.

What We Do For You

"Peter Mohan has many abilities which can add value in most personal and organisational settings. Among these abilities is a unique ability to analyse a complex situation and to untangle it and bring clarity to what needs to be done to move things forward. Possibly the best listener I have encountered in my professional career."

In relation to your day-to-day role:

• Are you looking to be more effective as a leader in your organisation?
• Are you seeking a performance edge to help you succeed in your role?
• Do you wish to make better use of your own innate potential?
• Are you at a crossroads in your career?

Developing your leadership capability, clarifying what personal success means for you and making decisions on career can be challenging tasks. At ClearMind we work with clients to help them understand their key personal goals and identify what motivates them and drives them forward. We have a long track record of working with individuals in this way.

Frameworks: Storytelling

"Working in Internal Communications I am continuously searching for a more effective way of engaging with people. I was lucky to have the opportunity to attend workshops with Peter Mohan on Working with the Power of Story in Organisations. Gaining insights on personalising stories, working on the structure of stories, and exploring how to use them in communications in Electric Ireland has really helped me to improve my engagement skills at all levels in my organisation. Peter's great listening skills and facilitation inspired me to find my inner storyteller. He has a great ability to help you get the best out of yourself."

At their core, all organisations are human, and humans naturally tell stories. When organisational leaders use storytelling in business communications they can then engage others in a more human way and bring more meaning to their work.

The ClearMind approach to Working with the Power of Story taps into spirit, emotion, and imagination to connect people to each other in ways that have shared meaning. This helps people to come together to work towards a common goal.

Sessions on Working with the Power of Story typically include some or all of the following elements:

• Sharing short stories of experiences had and lessons learned
• Reflecting on how story sharing impacts on the group environment and linking insights to corporate initiatives on communication and engagement
• Crafting personal stories that will engage and energise colleagues, key stakeholders and/or clients
• Applying storytelling skills to business presentations

Frameworks: Hero's Journey

"I was fortunate enough to take part in a Hero's Journey workshop facilitated by Peter Mohan for our team. It was a powerful experience that awakened something in me. Looking back now I realise it was the start of a personal and professional transformation process which has led me to evolve my role into something that is far more valuable for the company and meaningful for me. The way Peter used storytelling techniques, coaching and visual prompts helped me to stay engaged, energetic and inspired throughout the 2-day workshop and well beyond."

ClearMind has developed a range of workshops based on the stages of the classic story structure of the Hero’s Journey. We run public workshops for individuals, as well as bespoke programmes for senior leadership teams. Participants get the opportunity to work through the following stages of the Hero's Journey:

• Taking stock of current circumstances
• Identifying an important Call to Action
• Recognising the factors that may get in the way of answering the Call to Action and coming up with practical ways of addressing these blockers
• Clarifying the goal (or reward) being sought
• Reflecting on the desired difference they wish to make to others by taking on this Call to Action

During the workshops, the stages of the Hero’s Journey are brought to life for participants through a combination of thought provoking questions, quotes, movie scenes and music.

Frameworks: Positive Psychology

"Peter Mohan worked with our senior leadership team over the course of a 9 month period. The programme helped us to deepen and strengthen team relationships, understand our motivations and the link to performance, helped us clarify our purpose and vision and understand the critical elements of leadership as they related to us individually, and as a team leading an organisation going through significant change and challenge. The impact of the programme was that we emerged stronger, closer, more motivated and productive – there was a definite significant step change in team dynamic and performance. Also it was a lot of fun – we really looked forward to our sessions and thoroughly enjoyed them. I recommend Peter as an individual coach, or to support team and leadership development. He is passionate about his work and in an often crowded field of specialists in these areas, he clearly stands out. We are very much looking forward to working with him again in the future."

For any individual, team or organisation, achieving better results requires improved levels of performance. ClearMind's Positive Psychology framework enables individuals and teams to tap into more of the best of themselves in order to strive for the goals and take on the challenges that matter most to them.

Our work is based on working with some key 'givens' of human nature. It draws on cutting edge knowledge of brain science and emotional intelligence as well as inspiring examples from the world of sports psychology. It is focused on the following areas:

• Developing self-awareness
• Enabling clients to better connect with their own innate resources, knowledge, skills and experience
• Improving performance to deliver better outcomes and business results

Recent Projects: Clarity

"Previously my head was getting 'fried' with the possibilities and advice. This coaching session helped me to clear my mind on what was really important for my decision making."

This individual had set up a new business 3 years earlier. The business was very successful and he had expanded significantly. In light of his business success and the quality service provided, he had been offered a senior position with his biggest client. If he took the position he would be required to sell off his business interest so as to avoid a conflict of interest. He had got advice from a few people but this was not helping him to get to a clear decision. His brother suggested to him that if he had a coaching session with Peter Mohan, this would help him to clear his mind.

Approach Taken

At the start of the meeting, Peter's initial focus was clarifying the client's main goal. He said that his aim was to get clear on the basis for making a decision that he had conviction about.

Peter then asked the client to give an overview of how he had developed his business and some of the key milestones along the way. As he did this, a number of factors emerged that were important to him. Four factors stood out which were:

• autonomy and freedom
• challenge and achievement
• working with others
• fun and enjoyment

Peter checked with him as each of these points emerged. Peter then checked if the client wanted these to be true of whatever decision he made. He confirmed that this was the case.

The session moved on to looking at the possible options. Only then did the conversation move towards decision making. The client whittled the four options down to two and after reviewing the conversation, said that he would like to "let it all settle" and then he would be able to decide. The meeting took just 90 minutes to get to this point.

Recent Projects: Performance

"We are more effective performance managers as a result of the very skilled and careful facilitation and tutorship of Peter Mohan – clearly a master of his trade"

As part of their drive to create a high performance culture across their financial services organisation, Peter Mohan was engaged to work with the client company to help their leaders develop coaching skills for their day-to-day interactions with their colleagues.

Approach Taken

The approach taken consisted of two one-day workshops and a follow-up learning review session. The first workshop covered:

• Getting a common understanding on what is meant by coaching for performance
• Introducing some core models
• Skills practice with role play scenarios and real cases as appropriate
• Planning for application of learning

After completing day one, each participant was expected to work on 2 cases of coaching for performance. The intention was to apply the learning from the workshop, and to be ready to relay the key learning points from these cases at the follow-up day. The following question framework was given as a guideline:

• What is the performance issue?
• What feedback (if any) has been given on this issue to date? If feedback has previously been given, what has been the response?
• How will you open the performance review discussion?
• How will you handle each of high performance, under-performance and learning and development needs?
• How will you close the performance review discussion?
• How will you know if this performance review discussion has been successful? What will be different?

In preparation for the second one day workshop, each participant was asked to consider the performance review sessions in terms of what went well and what could be improved. Four weeks after the first workshop day, the follow-up day covered the following:

• Sharing learning from implementing ideas from the first workshop
• Reviewing the core models covered on Day One
• Customising the rest of the workshop based on participant views on their individual priority areas for learning and skills development.

Action Learning Group follow-up session

Action learning is an approach that encourages reflection and learning by providing small groups with the support to enable them to learn from their own experiences and from each other. The benefit of this approach is that what is learnt is more likely to be transferable to other situations. The key aspects of the Action Learning Group (ALG) process were:

• Each person must have a real business challenge on which they want to work
• Each group member gets a set time period within which to present and work on his or her specific challenge. The focus is on action – what he or she has done and will do – together with reflection on the action.
• Other group members, when they are not presenters, help their presenter colleague to think through the issues, create options and decide on follow-up action. For each individual slot, the focus is on the presenter taking responsibility for action.

Recent Projects: Leadership

"I worked with Peter Mohan on a one-to-one basis over a period of 6 months. I cannot speak highly enough about how much I benefited from my monthly meetings with him. He has a powerful ability to bring out your core strengths and values whilst overlaying them with new techniques and learning. He is an inspired business coach. He works you hard but delivers outstanding results and without doubt I would recommend him to anyone wanting to develop themselves."

The client is a senior manager in one of the major banks in Ireland. He wanted to work on gearing up to move up to the next level in terms of his leadership style and his management role and responsibilities. The main areas of interest were:

• Leadership style
• Increasing self-awareness
• Handling difficult situations

He saw one-to-one coaching as a good fit for helping him to address his overall objective.

Approach taken

In the context of the overall objective of improving his ability to move to the next level, each coaching session began with the contracting questions of:

• What would you like to focus on today?
• What would be a good outcome?

On one occasion the chosen focus area was managing performance among his team. Specifically he had a performance review meeting with a direct report which was scheduled for straight after that coaching session. In discussing the client’s desired outcomes with respect to the performance review, it became apparent that he needed to be much clearer in his thinking and his communication. Otherwise his approach to the review conversation was going to give mixed messages and therefore he was guaranteed to get an unsatisfactory outcome. After working to get the aims clear, the coaching session included some practice runs (with Peter playing the part of the direct report based on the pen picture provided by the client). These practice runs consisted of short trial runs at key parts of the conversation. This discipline served to sharpen up the client's approach so that he was better prepared for engaging in a constructive, 2-way conversation with the direct report on possible issues that could arise. Later that day the client reported that the performance review had gone very well and he credited the clarity achieved through the practice runs with having a key part in the positive outcome of the review session.

During this series of coaching sessions, additional information was taken from a number of profiling questionnaires including the following:

• The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
• The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument
• The drivers questionnaire (based on Transactional Analysis, this is a way of getting insights into an individual’s behaviour drivers when under stress or pressure)