Welcome to the second edition of this monthly blog, built around the framework from Mentor Coaching: A Practical Guide: mentor coaching keeps us sharp; supervision keeps us safe and sane. Each month I share reflections from my mentor coaching and supervision work, organised around those three themes. If you missed the first edition and want
Tag: coaches
Staying Sharp, Safe and Sane: A New Monthly Blog for Coaches
Something new is starting here, and I want to explain what it is before diving in. For a while now, I have been thinking about the best way to share what comes up in my mentor coaching and supervision work. A lot of it ends up on LinkedIn, but things get missed there, and the
Love over Fear
What an extraordinary series about love in coaching this has been. I’d like to thank all my guests for their best thinking. It’s certainly been shaping my practice. How about yours? It’s also helped me to midwife my next book, working title Love as a Revolutionary Coaching Practice, which will be out in the Autumn.
Guest Blog: Love is Acceptance. Love is a Catalyst.
I saw a wonderful New Year’s message on LinkedIn last week that I’ve adapted: Wishing for a year in which we, as a collective humanity, have the courage to act for love, justice, fairness and peace. With that in mind, we have two more guest posts about love in coaching and then a wrap-up post
Guest Blog: As a coach, it’s all about you
Love is important to me, as you know by now if you’ve been following this blog series! And it appears that I am not the only one who is sharing their love of love out loud and into this coaching space. I want to build momentum through this beautifully loving community, so have invited those
Coaching in Healthcare has a Positive Impact
This is the second post in a series about the systemic impact of coaching in different industries. This week, I’d like to welcome Helen O’Grady, outlining coaching in healthcare. I was touched as I read it, considering the huge difficulties faced by our healthcare professionals. Before I became a coach, I was a paediatric nurse for 15
Want to attract new talent? Leave the kids alone
I’d like to share with you some blog posts about the systemic impact of coaching in different industries. We start this series with a post from Dave Stitt, who has been working in the construction industry for over 45 years and has been coaching within the industry for at least half of that time. This is a
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
Mastery in Change
Last time, we looked at how to master your thinking – how to think deeply and through different lenses. But in coaching, we don’t think for its own sake. We think for the sake of making decisions and doing things differently. My definition of coaching is “a joint endeavour to discover new thinking that energises
Mastery of Thinking
Since I became a Master Certified Coach a few weeks back, I have mastery on the brain. But not mastery for coaches, mastery for thinkers. How can you, as the thinker, master your thinking? William Buist writes about Intentional Mastery. He suggests that: Mastery is enhancing and honing your wisdom. It’s about who you are
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
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 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 4
The thinker is “creative, resourceful and whole” (Whitworth et al, 1998) and the coach’s job is to strengthen their thinking muscles, not do the thinking for them. The coach’s responsibility is for the process, the thinker’s responsibility is for the outcomes. You may not believe in your capacity to think when you enter into a
The Thinker’s Mindset – Part 3
Curiosity is for the benefit of the thinker’s new thinking, not the coach’s understanding. When your coach asks you a question, there is no “one right answer” and nor should they be asking you questions that fill them in on the detail [see previous blog]. They are asking you for your own benefit, to get
