I was given my first Swiss Army Knife over twenty years ago as a birthday present. I don’t go out hunting wild boar or fishing for marlin – not much cause for either in London – but I’ve certainly changed plenty of plugs, cut my nails and taken the lid off a beer or two.… Continue Reading
I wanted to take the chance to share more coaching information with you and bring together some of the key insights from the blog and some new thoughts too. I also wanted to offer you all of that in an easy format. So, I have taken some time to create “Please Mind the Gap: How… Continue Reading
Back in the day, when I was still in training as an International judoka, I was given a good deal of advice that seems so typical of an Eastern dualistic philosophical tradition. An example is, “Slow down, in order to speed up” which has echoes of “More haste, less speed”. In a judo sense that… Continue Reading
“I’m going to democratize the automobile,” Henry Ford said in 1909. “When I’m through, everybody will be able to afford one, and about everybody will have one.” I would humbly like to update the words of the great man: “Let’s democratize great business performance … when I’m through everybody will be able to afford it,… Continue Reading
I had the pleasure of attending the 9th Annual Coaching Conference at Oxford Brookes University Business School, last week. It is an ideal way to keep up with current thinking, meet like-minded folk and learn lots about how to do high quality research (which thankfully everyone presented in a way that was easy to grasp!!).… Continue Reading
Within the last month I have heard at least three senior managers admit, when asked about the obstacles to improving their listening skills, that they stop listening when they get bored. Their mind wanders and they start to think about a range of topics other than the words coming from the person they are supposed to… Continue Reading
If you are commissioning a coaching organisation to run a workshop for your workforce focused on introducing or improving coaching skills, there is one element which has got to be right. It’ll make or break the success of the programme. It will also determine the extent to which any classroom learning is successfully transferred back… Continue Reading
I love holidays for all the obvious reasons but I also love them because it helps widen my knowledge and appreciation of other cultures, ways of life and parts of the world. It reminds me that my ‘world’ is only one version of an almost limitless number of realities that exist, including the one that… Continue Reading
I have heard the story of the artist Picasso and his ‘pen sketch on a napkin’ told in several ways and like many such stories I remain unsure if it was true or a convenient and amusing way to highlight a worthy point. With all that said, let me repeat a version of it here… Continue Reading
It is frequently said that of all the tools available to a coach one of the most powerful is silence. It is the time when the client is able to: wrestle with understanding the question consider their reply think through options and new perspectives be creative pause for a ‘mental break’ It can also be… Continue Reading