Having watched King Charles’ address the US Congress earlier this week has led me to reflect on the nature of courage and its essentiality in leadership and life. A quality of the heart, it is a quiet sort of power supply that carries us into the most difficult situations – places we probably wouldn’t choose...
Last week I had a day in London with 3 separate face to face meetings…and I have to say it was a treat! Nothing noteworthy there you might say but for me there was. It was powerful. Being ‘out there’ – away from the laptop screen – seeing and being with real people. Why? Because...
There’s little predictable about our world right now. Conflict. Political uncertainty. Shaky business confidence. You’ll have your own examples. Predictable, stable looks like an ever more distant continent. I confess I am comfortable with predictable (it’s probably the same for you). And yet, volatile is attractive too. Great leaps forward come from volatility. The discovery...
At the start of any coaching journey the road signs probably point to insights, released potential, new and more polished skills, personal and professional development. Quite rightly, they are a useful frame for the process. Coachee and coach have already agreed they’ll make the journey together, armed with some goals for the destination. All seems...
With the increased talk about war, I was reflecting on the role of business leaders and business in general to play a role in establishing peace. We are so used to delegating the responsibility for peace to world leaders and politicians. Or the United Nations. Or NGOs. But don’t we all have a part to...
Maybe ‘un-gifting’ sounds a bit strange as we enter the season of gifting. Yet it might be just what we need. From personal experience, we tend to hold on to things too long. Ideas, ways of working, our expertise, career milestones. They give identity. At times they’re lifebelts. But what if these tethers have got...
Routines, habits, life-acquired filters. They’re helpful in managing the day to day. On the other hand, rigidly adhered to, never examined for value, they become blinkers, or worse, blindfolds, blocking the light of higher possibility. The world shifts, its issues ever more pressing, our perspective stays stuck. We operate solo, and as organisations, on autopilot....
On the whole when discussing the many aspects of leadership we don’t speak much about true intuition or the help that might be available to us by ‘reading the tea leaves’. Walking the cliff path in Cornwall this past week and using the time – while battling the wind and ‘enjoying’ the steep inclines and...
I heard about a local school the other day whose mission is about pupils becoming DHBs (Decent Human Beings) through their education at the school. Not a new idea but an inspiring one. It got me thinking about this in the context of organisational life where values are often mentioned though not always with the...
Most of us are familiar with the change curve and the stages we go through when facing a change – whether one we have chosen or something imposed on us. These days we are most likely experiencing wave after wave of change curve scenarios and finding ourselves at different places on each wave. This can...