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Lesz Sikorski
Executive Coach / OD & Talent Consultant / Mental Fitness Coach / Partnering with high potential leaders to find a better way
Lesz Sikorski is an experienced professional in the fields of executive coaching and human resources. He currently serves as the Associate Director at X-PM ASIA, where he utilizes his extensive background to support organizational development and transformation.
Professional Background
- Experience: Lesz has over 30 years of corporate HR experience, having worked with multinational corporations across Asia Pacific and Europe. His career spans various roles that emphasize leadership development and strategic human resource management.15
- Coaching Practice: He has operated his own executive coaching practice for five years, focusing on helping individuals and organizations enhance their leadership capabilities and navigate change effectively.14
Expertise
- Areas of Focus: Lesz specializes in executive coaching, leadership development, and people strategy. His work often involves aligning organizational goals with human capital strategies to drive success.56
- Lifelong Learning Advocate: He emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and development in his coaching philosophy, encouraging professionals to cultivate their skills throughout their careers.23
Lesz Sikorski's multifaceted career reflects a commitment to fostering leadership skills and enhancing organizational effectiveness through strategic HR practices.
Highlights
Practices to Boost Focus and Make You More Productive
Many of my clients are conscious of the increasing complexity and dynamic change in their workplace and sectors, and are looking for ways to improve their focus in the face of all the noise around them and to achieve higher productivity. In my experience, to do so involves reinforcing or building new habits to help get into a positive mindset and re-focus attention.
There are numerous practices that can be built into daily routines without feeling like they are eating too much time. Actually, practicing these diligently over a period of time will boost focus and productivity; returning more than the invested time.
▶ Morning Routines: Start your day with a consistent ritual that prepares your mind for focused work. For me, this is a stretching and mindfulness routine. It might also be journaling, going for a run or swim, or enjoying a peaceful breakfast.
▶ Setting Goals: Clearly define goals for the day, week, and month. Breaking larger goals into smaller, time-bound, actionable steps to make them more manageable.
▶ Prioritise Tasks: Each day before diving into work, take a few minutes to review where you are with monthly and weekly goals, and prioritise tasks for the day and week. This helps focus on what's most important and prevents overwhelm.
▶ Block Time: Allocate specific blocks of time in your calendar for important tasks, as you already do for meetings. This helps prevent multitasking and ensures dedicated & focused attention to important activities.
▶ Setting Time Buffers: This is a version of the Pomodoro Technique; I encourage my clients to buffer 15 minutes before a session to help them get focused for the upcoming conversation and then 15 minutes afterwards to reflect on the conversation and any actions they defined. Buffering is great for those who get caught in the whirlpool of back-to-back meetings as it helps to create space to catch one’s breath and re-set for what’s coming next.
▶ Mental Fitness Practice: Incorporate mental fitness techniques into the day to stay present and focused. This can include deep breathing exercises, focussing on one of the senses or simply taking a moment to notice our surroundings. Such regular breaks during the day help to reset and recharge our minds; they can increase productivity by preventing burnout and maintaining mental freshness.
These are some of the many practices for focus and productivity. The key is to be consistent and diligent. Not everything works in the same way for everyone, experiment with different strategies to find what works best for you and adjust your routine as needed.
What daily and weekly practices do you swear by to support you to focus and achieve high levels of productivity?
#lifelonglearning #coaching #leadershipdevelopment
Finding the (leadership) blind spots that are holding you back
When I discuss the coaching journey with prospective clients, most become more excited and engaged due to the unique and personalised nature of the experience. I explain that our working relationship will not be that of ‘teacher : student', rather that of ‘peer : peer’. It’s one where we learn from each other as we move together along the journey’s non-linear route.
I often visualise it as if we’re meeting somewhere known to the client before dawn in darkness. Initially, I have no knowledge of the client’s landscape and only have a torch which is powered by the questions and answers in our discussion to illuminate the surrounding area. The torchlight helps to bring into clearer perspective things for the client that are unseen, wrongly identified or even imagined.
This process often builds stronger (self-)awareness by helping to identify blind spots that they are not aware of or are trying to not acknowledge.
To complement such a coaching experience, leaders can also undertake the following activities to identify blind areas and ways in which they may be holding themselves back, self-limiting or even self-sabotaging their impact and progress.
▶ Seek Feedback: Actively ask others for specific feedback about your leadership style, behaviors and decision-making processes. Go further, ask “what am I consistently missing that would help me be more …? Another way to gather feedback is through the use of 360-degree surveys where feedback is collected from multiple sources.
▶ Assess Different Perspectives: List how you think others see and experience you. Ask others to share the main things they see in you. Compare their lists to yours, and ask yourself if any differences are really true.
▶ Psychometric Assessments: Take self-rated assessments such as personality, behaviour or emotional intelligence tests to gain insights into your current self-awareness. As with 360-surveys, these can provide useful pointers to strengths, weaknesses and areas where you may have blind spots.
▶ Self-Reflection: Set time aside for regular self-reflection on thoughts, actions, decisions and interactions with others can help to see patterns and themes in how our behaviors may impact others.
▶ Journaling: Regularly documenting thoughts, experiences and observations can help to gain insights into our beliefs and behaviours. This can also be a great source of reinforcing new learnings and changes in behaviour.
▶ Mindfulness Practices: Engaging in practices such as meditation or mindfulness exercises can help in calming the mind and with this becoming more attuned to our thoughts, emotions and reactions, allowing us to recognise patterns and tendencies that may indicate blind spots.
Building such practices into your leadership habits can help you to be more self-aware and constructive, ultimately becoming a more effective and impactful leader.
#lifelonglearning #coaching #leadershipdevelopment
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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