Since I did my coach training some ten years ago, I have read a lot of books and articles on mindset, behaviours, happiness, positive psychology, coaching, leadership, culture and a variety of ‘self-help’ topics. One thing that has struck me time and time again is how much of what we are ‘discovering’ now was already […] Read More…
“Where did coaching come from?” This was the question posed by Leni Wildflower at the beginning of her talk on ‘The Hidden History of Coaching’ that I attended last night. It hasn’t just appeared out of nowhere, nor has it developed from ‘a friendly chat’. It has, as she explained and has detailed in her […] Read More…
My love of Venn diagrams comes from my background in Product management. It’s sort of compulsory, it’s the way we think. Most of us don’t think about Venn diagrams in relation to ourselves but I did because of a James Altucher post, in which he talks about focus (see point II). The conventional wisdom is […] Read More…
If, like me, you are a fan of Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why and his idea of the Golden Circle, you will be familiar with the concept of understanding your Why. If you aren’t, then check out Simon’s hugely popular Ted talk or his Start with Why website. I have been using Simon’s online […] Read More…
If you’ve ever worked in a cubicle farm, surrounded by beige and grey, starved of daylight and penned in like sheep, you’ll know that office design has an impact of how you feel and how you work. Now, Herman Miller, who hosted the excellent workshop “The Art and Science of Wellbeing” that I wrote about […] Read More…
There’s a lot of talk today about happiness in work. Organisations are urged to make their staff because happy people are more productive and happy businesses perform better. Individuals are told to follow their passion, to pursue happiness because they will be more successful doing something that makes them happy. There are any number of […] Read More…
Most organisational change projects fail to deliver the desired outcomes. Many transformations fall short of their goals. A couple of years after they have ‘delivered’ it is often found that many of the old cultural values, behaviours and hierarchies have reasserted themselves. The reason for this is that these projects are applied to the mechanics […] Read More…
There are more opinions on leadership than you can wave a stick at. So here’s another one. This is how I view leadership. As leader, I see my role is to create an environment in which the people I lead can thrive and perform to their very best; and then to make sure they are […] Read More…
My wife and I went snorkelling on our recent holiday and marvelled at how the instructors seemed to move so easily through the water. We splashed around like fury and they seemed to make hardly any movement at all but zoomed around all over the place. Less effort and more effect. That’s true for many […] Read More…