The Spectrum of Love Through to Tough Love Last time, we explored how love struggles to find its place in business language. Today, I’d like to examine how love actually manifests in coaching relationships, especially in the context of the question I posed at the end of the last post “Where are all the coaches
For leaders
Love in Coaching Series – Part Two
Reclaiming Love’s Language in Business Last time, I ended with some questions for you about love in your coaching, and I promised to follow up with my answers. Not that mine are any more correct than yours; these are my answers and they may inform your views, but I hope you had the chance to
Making time for career conversations
Back in my corporate employee experience days, we carried out some research which showed that people prefer to talk to their friends and peers about their career, rather than speaking with their manager. Given that this should be a role that line managers fulfil, we wanted to understand what stopped people from talking with them. What do
There’s no magic wand
Coaching unlocks a person’s inner wisdom to guide them towards transformative growth. This blog explores the premise of non-directive coaching and how it empowers the thinker through self-discovery. What is coaching? Coaching is a special relationship, unlike any other. It is a meeting of equals, a partnership, where the coach creates a brave space for
How do you show up to coaching?
It struck me, as I finished off the series about mastery in thinking, that it might be useful to provide you with a questionnaire to help you to decide how you show up to coaching and whether you could get more from coaching if you were to show up differently. So this questionnaire – for
How to Think as a Team
We’ve focused in this series on how to come to coaching as an individual, to do your best thinking. Today, we look at how to come to coaching as a team, so that the team can do its best thinking. You might think that it’s just a case of each individual coming as themselves, being
Coaching is only as powerful as the thinkers themselves
“The most significant variable in coaching is the readiness, willingness, and ability of clients to change in ways that are meaningful to them” (Drake 2023). So coaching is only as powerful as the thinkers themselves! Everything we have seen in the past few blog posts about how you (the Thinker) turn up to coaching is
Thinking Accelerators
How can you accelerate your thinking (whether that’s for the purpose of being coached or outside of coaching)? There are five major accelerators. The idea for accelerators came from the work of my friends at Accenture, particularly Dana Koch, who talks about them as learning accelerators. The five are: Sleep, exercise, attention restoration, nutrition, and
The antidote to derailers in coaching
The Art of Possibility is one of my favourite books….as much for the title as for the content. Coaching is all about possibilities. Looking for new ways of doing and being. But in order to find those new ways of doing and being, you need to believe in the art of the possible. I’m not
Derailers in Coaching – Part 2
As we ponder derailers further, let’s turn our attention to something called Thinking Traps. These are ways of thinking that can keep us trapped in unhelpful patterns. You may not be aware that you fall into one or more of these traps, but working with a coach (or therapist, depending on what you are working
Derailers in Coaching – Part 1
I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of the derailment of career trajectories and what might cause it. It first came to my attention when I worked in leadership development and I discovered the research by the Center for Creative Leadership which found five derailers that get in the way of leaders’ continued success: Difficulty adapting to change (the most
The Thinker’s Mindset – Part 7
What are your thoughts about the mindsets we have discussed in this series? We (coach and thinker) are co-travellers, travelling into the unknown together, designing the map as we go, because there is no map for this person’s unique journey. Link to blog here. The aim of coaching is to move the thinker beyond known
The Thinker’s Mindset – Part 6
We coach the person, not the problem (Franklin 2019, Reynolds 2020), meaning we focus on “who” the thinker wishes to be at an identity level, such that they can “do” things that match up to this person they wish to be, coming from a place of grounded beliefs, values and mindsets. To coach the person,
The Thinker’s Mindset – Part 5
We access the wisdom of multiple intelligences, not just the cerebral rational intelligence. Be prepared to get creative in coaching. Your cerebral, rational intelligence will not have all the answers, or it might get stuck or be lost for words. Your coach may invite you into experiments that might feel a little different from the
The Thinker’s Mindset – Part One
Having written about the mindsets that a coach must unlearn in order to be an extraordinary coach, I got to wondering about the mindset of a thinker. How might the thinker show up to coaching in a way that would enable them to make the most of the thinking time. Because that’s what coaching is:
Planning your time with the moon
Our series about how leaders can create a better employee experience is coming to an end. I hope it has been useful to you. I recognise that there are so many aspects that leaders need to pay attention to when it comes to your people. But they are your greatest asset and you can’t do
