Working coaches, mentors, supervisors; mid-career
When historians look back at how companies and society tackled diversity and inclusion in the first half of this century, they will most likely comment that good intentions led to far slower progress than intended. They will point out that well-meant initiatives, such as implicit bias training, not only failed to have any lasting impact,...
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Personal development plans are a great idea in theory, but in practice simply become another file at the bottom of the desk drawer. There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that all the responsibility lies with the individual to put the plan into practice. Here’s a simple, but...
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
One of my fondest memories of my late colleague David Megginson was a day in Kathmandu, where a group of coaches and academics had gathered for a Himalayan trek. The tourists around us tried not to lock eyes with the colourful characters around us, sometimes appearing quite comical in their desire not to engage. David, (more…)
Most people have some strong opinions, but these don’t normally prevent them from having rational discourse. However, some people present to coaching with deeply closed mindsets, by virtue of, for example, extreme religious or political views, or adherence to irrational conspiracy theories. What makes them so difficult to coach is their inability to accept the (more…)
A recent study* of 150 female university students provides strong evidence for the impact of same gender peer mentoring on mentees’ well-being, both during their studies and after graduation. The students involved, at the University of Amherst in Massachusetts, were in their first two years of study in engineering; the mentors, both male and female, (more…)
Many teams and organizations operate on the boundary between complexity and chaos. Managing the dance between those states can be time consuming, yet without devoting sufficient time to manage this boundary, they default – consciously or unconsciously – to the habit of multiple quick fixes. The more quick fixes they apply, the greater the propensity...
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Alan Turing’s famous test for machine intelligence was whether or not a conversation with the machine was indistinguishable from that with a human. I was introduced to the reverse Turing test by Kiersten Dierhof, one of the most perceptive observers of coaching that I know. It says, basically, that if a human (coach) cannot be...
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
A Doodle survey of more than 6,500 European professionals and executives in 2019 calculated the cost of unnecessary meeting globally at $591 billion. That’s almost certainly a significant underestimate. On average, the respondents calculated that they spent 13 days a year in pointless meetings. Increased working from home will almost certainly have added to the...
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
This fascinating question arose during a supervision group a few days ago. The stimulus was a cluster of cases, where, for one reason or another, the pause button had been pressed on the team coaching assignment. The coach(es) felt a variety of negative emotions about this, but particularly disappointment and frustration that the “good work”...
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Just as focusing on individual performance doesn’t necessarily lead to improved collective (team) performance, high performing teams don’t necessarily work together to deliver a high performing organization. In his book Team of Teams, retired US general Stanley McChrystal offers a number of examples of how functional silos within organisations or even within departments can undermine (more…)
