It’s impossible to be effective in a sustained way unless we’ve taken the trouble to find out what inspires us as individuals, to do what we do in the first place. A bold statement, maybe, and I’m convinced of its authenticity none-the-less.

I learned early on in my career that getting results through people (I’ve yet to come across a better way!) required me to be on top of my game, both personally and professionally. If I couldn’t inspire myself to focused action then my chances of motivating the team to deliver results for the Company were seriously impacted.

I remember a conversation with a fellow retail manager when I was three years into my career. He said that he hated retail - specifically the hours and the need to work Bank Holidays and weekends amongst other things - and he said it was negatively impacting on his marriage. I asked him why he didn't choose to do something else. He replied that retail was all he knew. He seemed resigned to stay in a position in which he was deeply unhappy.

I made a pact with myself there and then that I would not settle for any position, however lucrative, if it didn't fulfil me and if I lost my enthusiasm for the work I was doing. As a responsible workaholic by nature that was critical to my sense of success in my career!

I think that was also the day I made it my mission to become a source of inspiration for dissatisfied managers like my colleague. I understood how challenging it was operating at that level within a tough environment. So, 15 years on when I designed the Executive Breakthrough, I did so to help individuals in positions of responsibility to discover what they really want from their career and to identify the changes they can make to achieve that now.

I engage individuals in Business Coaching to support Executives to put their mission and purpose into effect. And more recently, I developed Inspirational Leadership Programmes so that business leaders can discover and develop their personal leadership style.

During my career I have become a master at being my own source of inspiration. One of the many outputs of that has been the development and delivery of meaningful services to top professionals who wouldn’t appreciate me telling them how to do their day job, but may be questioning how they ended up there in the first place.