Working coaches, mentors, supervisors; mid-career
When I reflect on what I am grateful for, high on the list is having a son with Down Syndrome. Today (21st March, 2024) is World Down Syndrome Day – an annual event to celebrate the benefits that people with learning difficulties can bring to the world. A few weeks ago, my son Jonathan competed...
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When I first heard of coaching sessions, where both coach and client talk as they knit, my first thought was someone was trying to pull the wool over my eyes. There’s enough clack clack going on in many coaching conversations as it is. However, a recent paper from the Serbian Institute of Applied Coaching Psychology (more…)
Dialogue in mentoring, and in related disciplines such as coaching, can be regarded as having seven layers of increasing depth and impact. This short paper provides some guidelines on how to develop the skills of dialogue at each level. Transactional conversations are not really dialogue at all. They are, for example, the kind of conversation (more…)
Somewhere in my files is a note on a piece of research a few years ago, which explored how people’s response to the world evolved as they became more senior in the corporate world. It suggested that decreasing direct involvement with stakeholders and increasing exposure to numbers reduced people’s humanity. It’s another take on “all...
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Creating a personal balance between the work-related and non-work-related parts of our lives is becoming increasingly difficult. There are fewer and fewer places I can go, where no-one one can reach me by text, email or telephone. And while I enjoy some solitude, I want to stay connected to my family, so I’m reluctant to (more…)
One of the first things I often ask when getting to know a team is: “What’s the point of this team?” followed by “So, how does it add value and who to?” Almost without exception, this conversation leads the team to question its priorities and how they work together. It’s a shift from thinking about (more…)
A survey I conducted three years ago found that 80% of CEOs and HR directors thought that the emphasis of reward, recognition and development needed to shift substantially away from the individual employee to the team. One of the main reasons was that, in a VUCA world, collective learning, adaptation and action were far more (more…)
Imagine coming to work each day and putting on an act, in order to fit in. Smiling at jokes that seem unfunny, putting up with background noise that interferes with our concentration, yet pretending it’s OK, because no-one else seems to find it a problem, nodding as if you understand exactly what’s required, when you (more…)
A study from Oxford Brookes University found 40 topics that occurred frequently in coaching assignments. In order of frequency at first meetings, they were: Notably absent from this list is systemic thinking, which may represent the lack of relevant skills among the coaches surveyed. The survey also did not address how the coaches responded – (more…)
Two coaches working together with a client team need also to be a team. Indeed, they need to role model good teaming behaviour. It’s now increasingly common for pairs of team coaches to seek supervision together, especially if they have not coached as a pair before. The range of issues they bring to supervision is (more…)
