Its 1^st January and at last it is 2021. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

It is the year we have all been wishing for; the year when we hope that it will all be better. So HAPPY NEW YEAR and may it be a good one for you. I hope that you were able to do some celebrating over Christmas and saw your loved ones even if it was virtually rather than in person. I have never had so many texts, phone calls, FaceTimes and Zoom calls – it was wonderful!

So now we are into winter and here in Bedford there have been very serious floods. People were wonderful in the way they stepped up and helped their friends and neighbours. Thank you to them all and to all those who have been supporting others during 2020.

Covid is running rampant. The NHS is being quite amazing working very hard and we are all incredibly grateful. Our job is to be as careful as we can be to take the pressure off them, to stay home and to carry on with our lives as best we can.

So I am thinking about the new year and work. As it is January I should be writing about formulating aims, targets, objectives and resolutions for 2021 – whichever might be your preferred terminology – and a bit of me is.

However, I cannot stop thinking about Oti Mabuse. In case you were on a different planet and so missed Strictly Come Dancing 2020 she was the gifted professional dancer who partnered with comedian Bill Bailey and won the contest. She also won it in 2019 with Kelvin Fletcher and is a coach/judge on The Greatest Dancer. Why am I thinking about her at the moment? Because she epitomises an outstanding and inspirational teacher. Over the weeks of the competition, we have watched her translate this 55-year-old man into an exceptional dancer. Now let’s be honest Bill Bailey is already an exceptional performer; because of lockdown his normal work just disappeared overnight and he was suddenly available to take on the Strictly challenge. He chose to do so but he also made a very conscious decision to take it seriously. From the very outset, he accepted the opportunity to become the best dancer that he could be; he did not send it up; he accepted Oti’s teaching, support, and vision of what he could be and he worked his socks off. Week by week we watched him. He told us about Oti’s incredible teaching and her belief in what he could do; at the final, he said to her “you found something in me I didn’t know I had”. What an amazing accolade. It is the accolade that every teacher wants. Exceptional teachers see potential but equally importantly they believe in their students, make the students believe too and help to develop their talent.

Now I am not Oti but I am a mentor. It is my job to see potential in my clients and help them believe in and develop their potential. Most of that is about working with their belief and confidence. And without a doubt, it is different strokes for different folks! People respond very differently to language, to modelling, to how to use any failures to build success, to how they use success to become even more successful. It becomes a partnership and often a friendship.

I do not know what went on in that training room between Oti and Bill though I have a shrewd suspicion. However, I do know what goes on in my Zoom calls. Recently there have been business owners who have turned in results in a lockdown year that they never expected and there have also been people who have taken on new roles. These people have taken up opportunities that they never expected to open up for them. I am really good at helping people to see new roads they might walk and helping them to see them too. Then we have to prepare them to show what they can do to the “audience” that can open doors to those opportunities. And this year we have!

So Oti, congratulations on your third glitter ball – the second in succession! Congratulations on forming that bond with Bill that translated him into a dancer and brought out talents he did not know he had, for helping him find out things about himself. In a similar way, I hope that I do the same thing – I just wish my clients earned glitter balls!!

And Oti, I look forward to watching you weave your magic in 2021. I hope to weave mine too.

So if you are reading this and running a business; if you like my ideas and values; if you want to grow your business and develop yourself; then please give me a call. I love speaking with people, off the meter, to help explore the possibilities of business mentoring and whether/how to take them forward. You could be a Bill Bailey!

HAVE A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR. 2021 could be the best yet!

Liz