Boardrooms of companies and other organisations shape strategy, tactics and decision-making. They act as reservoirs of wisdom and insight and provide a strength of purpose. In short, they are powerful and important.
In this blog I would like to introduce an exercise (inspired by a coaching tool contained in Geoff Watts and Ken Morgan's The Coaches Casebook) which encourages you to identify and reflect upon who is currently sitting in your own personal finance boardroom. How many people influence your financial decisions? Who has the most power in shaping your personal financial life? The aim is not to pick those you would ideally like to see around the boardroom, but to identify who is actually sitting there at this present moment in time.
Picture an imaginary boardroom in your mind and begin listing your personal finance board members. Examples might include not just people you know, such as partners, friends and work colleagues, but also other influencers, for instance individuals on social media, newspaper columnists even someone you heard on the radio or TV.
When you put this list together you can then think through a few issues. You might have found, for example, that you are overly reliant on two or three individuals. Furthermore, it might well be the case that the friend or relative who you turn to with questions about personal finance actually has a pretty negative take on money and could be helping to limit your financial confidence. You might even be energised to ask certain board members to step aside and begin to search out more knowledgeable, positive voices onto the board. It's important to remember that while it's likely some of these new voices could be supportive professional such as financial coaches or advisers, some others might be personal finance experts writing in the media such as Martin Lewis of moneysaving expert.com. In other words, you can use your imagination and inventiveness to increase the depth as well as the breadth of quality of your board.
What's important is to begin to get the right balance of knowledgeable voices sitting around your personal finance money board. Might you consider taking action now to begin filling your very own money boardroom?