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.

I had to laugh at my own inability to notice what was right in front of my eyes. I’ve had two light-bulb moments recently which by rights shouldn’t have been a surprise to me at all but plainly obvious all along. The first relates to coffee which I drank a lot of until recently, well lattes anyway. I’ve always known that I don’t like coffee flavoured food – even chocolate – so I don’t know why it escaped me that I don’t actually like coffee to drink either!

Once I had made that connection, replacing it with a coffee alternative was easy enough to do. However, giving up milk was proving harder as that’s what lattes mostly are. I tried numerous milk substitutes, none of which worked. Determined to continue experiencing ‘a cup of coffee’ I persevered until I had exhausted all the options I could think of except one. If I like the taste of this alternative Chicory root drink then why don’t I try it without any milk or milk substitute at all – genius! It tastes much better than all the previous combinations put together. This is a classic example of not being able to see the wood for the trees when you are stood alone in the middle of a forest!

I experienced the same feeling when running a leadership seminar recently. I kept the content general because the audience was unknown to me and I thought that would be the safest thing to do. Strange really as I’m not one for playing it safe. My specialism is Inspirational Leadership which is one component of effective leadership. To profess to be an expert across the whole breadth of leadership would be nonsense – it is a vast and complex subject after all. I can, however lay claim to being an expert in Inspirational Leadership as I have a proven track record of doing this extremely well. Inspiring individuals is my niche area, my unique contribution – it’s why my Inspirational Leadership Programmes have that name! When I am helping individuals to become an inspiration to themselves and the people they lead, then I know I am doing good work.

A strong niche enables us to easily identify what we should be doing more of, and also less of, in our daily lives. Furthermore, it gives us permission to live our passions and our values in a lucrative, fulfilling way.

Helping success-minded individuals define their Niche is one of the ways I inspire individuals and I can do that well because I have taken the time to define my own. It’s a good job I practice what I preach!