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Leadership and Neuroscience Coach

Email: dominique@head4leadership.co.uk
Call: 07703 564451

Dominique Stillman

How Your Brain Shapes the Way You Lead:

My new book – filled with neuroscience backed insights and practical ideas.

What for you makes leading tough?

Take a situation that causes you to feel overwhelm, fear or dread and as a result. For example, you avoid a decision or make one hastily.
What you have done is to act authentically with your feelings; yet sometimes those feelings can mislead you.

What can be unconsciously hindering you?

The Authentic Leader: a guide to knowing yourself and being courageous. It gives you an opportunity be more cognitive and conscious of the (often unconscious) emotions, beliefs and values that steer how you navigate the world.

With guided reflection opportunities to adjust, update, or correct your brains processing (and its resulting habits). With the authors personal examples and those from decades of experience coaching leaders. You’ll also find models, frameworks and questions to reflect on.

Create changes in how you lead (yourself and your team) that will enhance your authenticity, courage, compassion and leadership impact.

Get your copy

Who can benefit from this read?

Aimed at newer leaders, to enable lifetime leadership awareness. Also, for those leaders who have been around longer that want to review and reconnect with their unconscious self. To check or adapt some habitual ways of thinking and feeling.

A readers feedback

‘An engaging read – unique blend of pragmatic, scientific and interactive – and a surprising page-turner.’ Eleanor Towsey, director

Forward from Dr Sarah McKay, Neuroscientist

If this resonates with you, I’d love you to take a look — and I hope it offers something useful for you and your teams leadership experience.

Available on Amazon, I welcome your genuine reviews.

Buy your copy here

#author #leadership #coaching #leadershipchallenges

#teamwork #performance #managers #hrds #execs #authenticleadership

Have you ever watched the saddest news item, and it’s had zero emotional impact?

Ways leaders can manage stress so they retain empathy.

The most caring leaders at times, lose empathy?
The reason behind that is good to understand, especially for leaders and those in situations of trust. Because, when your empathy is low you are being self protective (rightly of wrongly). Not good if you want people to be able to open up to you!

What happens when your empathy levels are low? The team you lead and your peers receive little patience, a surprising tone and dismissiveness; and as a result you can make poor decisions and damage to relationships. And, once your mood has levelled out, you feel bad and unprofessional about how you have behaved..

The reasons leaders (and your team) find their empathy has been reduced:
☹️ Negative stress, where the cortisol and adrenalin are running high through a situation that you or they deem to be threatening to them in some way … E.g. Something you are not confident or competent at what is being asked of you.


😴 Self-care stress, where you brain needs your body to be refuelled and resourced. We’ve probably all had ‘hangry’ moments (I am terrible for this). You are hungry, thirsty or super tired and that becomes your sole focus. You are driven to fulfil that physical need, rush what you are doing and don’t pay full attention to what is being asked of you.


😤 Frustration stress, where for example, you cannot see a way out or know how to help. Such as political situations, natural disasters, those sad news stories; and juggling work and social commitments.

Contact me now

Some solutions
You’ve likely picked up on one solution already. 🗣 TAKE CARE OF YOUR PHYSICAL NEEDS.
A bit like put your own oxygen mask on first. Not just for your physical wellbeing but for your psychological processing too. No vehicles run on empty. And neither do humans. Eat, drink water, sleep and move (outdoors preferably), regularly and not in excess.

Another solution, notice the impact on you state as a result of what you are watching, reading, listening to and the company you keep. If, those things are not making you feel positive, optimistic or hopeful, take a break from it or them.


Stress, when managed well, is useful, productive and can include empathy: Stress, in the right circumstances, builds mental strength and tolerance.

The cortisol and adrenalin release that comes as a result of challenging situations, can help with your focus and attention.
Your tolerance for stress can be positively impacted (and empathy levels maintained) when:
🫶 You are supported, (with the required tools, knowledge and people on your side) in what is required of you and,
⏲️ When the duration of the pressure has a known end or break. Allowing a period for recouperation and rest.
Example:
Consider a surgeon. They need to be focused when operating, much can be at stake. That need for attention and focus generally has an expected timescale that enables their tolerance for the challenge. They have a trained team, who know their role and also have a timed requirement for intense focus.

In summary:
1. Manage your empathy levels by caring for your bodies needs.
2. Encourage the same of your team, and co-create the environment for this.
3. Ensure resources, support and focus have a manageable duration attached to them, with breaks built in.

Call or email for coaching to build resilience and empathy
hashtag#leadership hashtag#coaching hashtag#neuroscience hashtag#resilienc

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You thought you were on the same page! Only to find you weren’t!

Ever had that sinking feeling when you check-in with the team or an individual and find the work is below your expectations?

It can be that they are: completely off track, behind schedule, missing key people’s input, incorrect details, off message or poor quality, for example.

The frustration for leaders and managers this causes, is understandable, yet I believe the responsibility for .how communications are received sits with the leader. Communicating has many levels and methods; and mastery of this multifaceted skills is, in my mind, on going. Requiring reflection to enable improvement.

Three easy traps to failed communication (spoken or written)

🗣 Thinking that ‘telling’, and receiving nods and yes’s in response, equals message understood. 
To clients who say they thought someone else knew what they meant… I say – you thought they did, how about knowing they did?

🚫 Not being clear yourself.
When you ask others to do work without a strong why, and what good looks like.
This, in my opinion, is especially important in regard to a first time task or new responsibilities.
When I ask clients, how does this link to objectives, the strategy or business values?
It’s not infrequent that the answer is vague or needs thinking that hasn’t taken place in advance.

😡 A blame mindset.
Putting the blame on others for a work issue, can be understandable.
Who wants to stand out for errors or mistakes occurring? Owning up to your part comes with levels of discomfort such as shame, embarrassment or guilt. Yet, ego in leadership is something to be managed well, so as not to push those feelings unfairly onto others.
When clients say to me, why didn’t they just ask?  I say, ‘You tell me? How do you make doing that possible and okay?

There is much to master when it comes to communication!

Communication is a massive subject. Subjective, situational, emotional and requires, from my perspective, high levels of compassion and courage. The difference communication work has made to me and clients is incredible. It builds clarity, trust and psychological safety for all parties

Message me

MESSAGE ME and we can work on this skill together!

Finding it hard when you can’t please all the people all the time?


I recall one of my earlier leadership positions. A colleague I’d got on well with didn’t like my decision, ‘you’ve changed’ they said, in an unpleasant way!
It hurt, because I like being liked. Yet, leadings about doing the ‘right’ things.

As leadership roles change, we know your responsibilities do too, often getting bigger and hairier!
A skill that is worth building: EMPATHY
Empathy, the ability to connect to the various impacts decisions and actions will have on others. So you can prepare people, provide messaging that shows your considerations and recognise the challenges involved.

When you know you’ve taken time to consider your decisions from all angles, it’s easier to hold your line with confidence and kindness; and not be as deeply hurt by the criticisms of the disappointed.

What can help build this? Coaching naturally, but if that’s not in your plan, my advice, SLOW DOWN

⏰️You have more time than you think because slowing down doesn’t take as long as you imagine.

🪞Take moments to ‘be’ those others that your leadership choices effect, and check your thinking in advance with someone you trust who can question it and help you fine tune it.

If coaching is in your plan, message me to find out how we could work together

Messsage me for more info

You want to lead others, ‘be careful what you wish for’!

Said another shop manager after gaining my first role!

‘Be careful what you wish for!’ were the first words said to me by another shop manager after gaining my first manager role. I was twenty years old and to be honest I was a little unnerved by those words.

Many years, industries and roles have passed since then.
🏅 There have been times when I have felt absolutely on it!, loved it and wholly supported. AND,
⚠️then there have been times when it has felt overwhelming and lonely.

I, like most newly appointed managers and leaders don’t ‘wish’ for overwhelm, mistakes, performance dips or loneliness. Yet, it’s at these times that you have the best chance to learn the most about yourself.

What I learnt from these experiences – that I can find challenges hard and emotionally draining (one included the closing of a business).
But also, that I do have it in me to keep going, re-routing and adjusting what I do and how I feel (e.g. starting/running my coaching business since 2014).

🪄What I wish I’d wished for back then? To be more prepared in readiness for when the going gets tough! To have had dedicated time to knowing my vulnerabilities. To be ready for their appearance and know what to do with them!

✨️My ‘wish’ for you is to give you with a HeadStart✨️
– A standalone HEADSTART session (or you can arrange optional ‘add ons’ for a more taylored programme)
– Creating awareness of your resilience levels (your propensity to perform well under pressure) and
– Access to development ideas and tools to aid you and those you lead.

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