Member Article

Top Tips To Becoming A Magnetic Leader by Best-selling Author and Global Executive Coach

Best-selling Author and Global Executive Coach, Sarah Farmer, from Surrey, is celebrating getting another step closer to her goal of empowering 10,000 leaders in the next 10 years to create positive and safe cultures where everyone can thrive, having become a best selling author. Despite ‘being rubbish at English and a troublemaker at school’ her book, ‘Leader Unleashed’, stormed the Amazon charts.

Sarah who helps senior leaders and business owners to become the best they can by creating the right mindset and confidence for success, has tackled the question of how to lead in a way that inspires and empowers. Her goal is to improve productivity (through fulfilment), increase chances of personal growth and promotion and consequently aid retention. Taking readers through techniques on how to recognise and control Imposter Syndrome, and develop an unshakeable self-belief without the ego, Sarah’s mission is to help unleash true potential without the fear of retribution or failure , so we can all become the most effective version of ourselves.

Having worked with ‘so many awful leaders’ throughout her career, and experienced workplace bullying, Sarah has taken it upon herself to be the voice for those who are not listened to, as she knows the scars that are left by being overlooked, or belittled by others. Sarah has incorporated her background of sales success in the Pharmaceutical industry and the best professional development programmes she experienced there, with her learnings from more negative experiences of toxic work environments within the IT and O&G industry and combined these with her leadership development training to bring a range of techniques that can help us all to thrive as confident and effective leaders, using her signature five-step EAGLE system: Evaluate; Analyse; Generate; Learn: Evolve.

Having developed severe anxiety through working in the cut throat ‘dog eat dog’ IT industry, Sarah, founder of EMR Consulting, who works with C-Suite, D-Suite, Senior Leaders and HOD’s, knows how it feels to be engulfed by limiting beliefs.

Recently named As One of The Top 10 Coaches To Follow For Game-Changing Success in 2023 up until only 7 years ago Sarah was suffering from severe stress and anxiety. She said: “I was sweating, going red all over my face, neck and chest – pretty much any time I was spoken to. It made meetings very hard as I couldn’t concentrate as I was so busy worrying about going red then trying to conceal the fact I’d gone red…..my brain was ‘full’ of self-doubt and fear so I couldn’t perform at my best. Irrespective of that, I did smash all my targets but the stress and energy used to do that was starting to take its toll. I couldn’t sleep, I was barely eating and I decided enough was enough…it was time to get help. This is when I had my first experience of counselling support and after 6 months I realised that I was worth more than any paycheck could ever reach. This was the first time I realised how it felt to feel empowered …..After a few more months of deep work, I handed in my notice, with no job to go to but my self- esteem intact and my health rapidly improving.”

“I realised my passion lay in helping others thrive and to be as impactful as possible I needed to work from the top down- starting with the leaders…..helping them develop the skills and tools to help them be better at what they do so they can create environments that inspire high performance through high fulfilment and attract others”.

Sarah said: “Writing a book was a huge deal for me - I told myself a hundred times I couldn’t do it, and it did take blood, sweat and tears, but we can make the world a much nicer, more enjoyable, more pleasant, more fulfilling place to be if everyone understands themselves a bit better and learns how to be more emotionally self controlled and value what they do without the need for ego. I need to spread this message far and wide, and can only get so far 1:1 - the book had to be birthed!”

She added: “If you get your mindset ‘right’ by really understanding yourself, knowing how to manage your emotional response to situations and understand how to positively impact others, then you are super charged to inspire your team and get the best results possible”.

“Whether returning to work, an existing leader, moving to a senior leadership role, a job seeker or a new starter, the book offers something for everyone from Interview Success, Onboarding Excellence and Advanced Leadership Skills though to Elite Leader development for Senior Leaders and Leadership teams.”

Sarah continues “A great leader is able to lead themselves first and as a result, inspire others so they can feel fulfilled and empowered to deliver outstanding personal and organisational results. A leader who is trusted and extends trust, is supportive, visionary, and able to provide useful feedback and coaching for continuous improvement and professional growth will create a high-performance culture where goals are consistently exceeded - the type of environment that attracts top talent.”

Sarah has worked with over 500 hundred leaders and their teams helping them achieve outstanding results such as growing the company value from £5M to £30M and improving profitability by 40% - an additional £10 Million in revenue, as well as helping leaders who have found themselves job hunting get back on the market, with client results including attracting 4 job offers in 4 weeks from none in 9 months..

She specialises in working with senior leaders and C suite executives returning to work post redundancy or transitioning into new roles who are highly competent but suffering with Imposter Syndrome. It’s on her agenda to change the way HR departments prioritise and solve what she believes to be ‘the best kept secret in the boardroom- Imposter Syndrome’.

Sarah’s top tips to becoming a magnetic leader include:

• Before you do anything else, learn more about you - Learn to lead yourself before you can lead others. Take the time to learn how and why you think, feel and do what you do. What triggers you, how biassed your current thinking is and how this impacts every decision you make. Learn what your fears are and how they keep you paying small or wreak havoc on others. Then learn to recognise it when it’s happening, manage it and do something more ‘helpful’ instead. This is the essence of an emotionally intelligent leader.
• Have a crystal clear vision of where you are going as an organisation and as a team. Make sure it is inspiring and has the ability to connect emotionally with all those who will make it become a reality. If we don’t know where we are going and why, the chance of us getting there and enjoying the ride along the way (which is hugely important) is vastly reduced and leads to casualties in the form of attrition, profitability and business results.
• Make sure the strategy and goals for each individual player are clear, concise and achievable but with a ‘stretch’. Keeping things the same for too long leads to complacency and lack of fulfilment which always negatively impacts performance. Once you have agreed the goals check in regularly to assess progress, provide effective feedback and help keep employees engaged and on track.
• If you have never learned to give feedback or coach - learn to do this before starting to avoid causing more harm than good.
• Know your team members personal goals and aspirations.The only way you’re going to do this is by showing an interest and asking! When we know what personal motives are driving an individual we can easily align success between the organisation and each individual contributor. This leads to an increase in fulfilment and productivity which always leads to improved business results.
• Be fair and transparent. Leaders who withhold information or only share with their ‘favourites’ create a feeling of fear and uncertainty in the rest of the team’s minds. This leads to dysfunction, poor performance and the impact on attrition, absenteeism, presenteeism is high! This costs business money they did not need to waste.
• Catch people doing a good job often. Don’t wait for the official feedback sessions to give feedback. Catch people doing things well, ask them to explain how and why they did these things so it embeds the good behavioural thought and action process in their brains which will make it repeatable. So often we just do things without knowing why or how we were successful….capture it, embed it and re-use and share!
• Do not micro or macro manage - get it just right. Consider the person, the task they are doing, the experience they have and how much support and direction they actually need from you. It’s easy to assume someone who has a long tenure in the company can do everything brilliantly and needs no support or direction from you….this is not true. We can also wrongly assume that someone new to the team or business knows nothing and micro-manage them so they do it our way (which must be the best right?) which is just as bad.

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