If I was given a penny for each time I read or heard that humility is key to authentic leadership, my accountant would be one happy lady indeed. Humility: [mass noun] The quality of having a modest or low view of one’s importance: ‘he needs the humility to accept that their way may be better’ […]
Twenty years ago John Kotter published his famous article on organisational change, Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail (you can read it here). Kotter sets out the steps required for successful transformation in organisations, and explains the common pitfalls that cause 70% of change initiatives to fail. In summary, these causes of failed change according to Kotter: […]
Clients who arrive for coaching or mentoring sessions may not realise it, but what they will be getting is disruption. For those clients who have opted to find a coach or mentor themselves, this is almost always a welcome discovery: they were ready to have their usual way of going about things disrupted. It takes […]
When I opened The Guardian this morning, I was greeted by the headline: Jeremy Clarkson joins Guardian drive for fossil fuel divestment. Of course – it’s April 1st today! The hammed-up, amusing piece brought back to mind a conversation about humour I had a few days ago. Earlier this week I had an impromptu coaching session […]
Coaching clients sometimes ask me to recommend books or articles for them to deepen their learning and exploration triggered by our coaching sessions. Books and other good reads for coaching clients Here are some of the reads I’ve recently recommended to coaching clients. Counselling for Toads, by Robert de Board (1998) The title of this book always […]
Conversation is an umbrella term referring to the many ways people talk with each other: Conversation con•ver•sa•tion [kon-ver-sey–shuhn] noun The interchange of thoughts, information etc. by spoken words; oral communication; talk. A deliberately transactional and neutral definition such as the above doesn’t quite cover the subtleties and different purposes of conversation however. Three different conversations, three purposes […]