Author Archives: Jim Grant
The initial thoughts for this model came from a brilliant teacher friend of mine who was perplexed about the assumptions made by leaders about people’s motives, values and desires. I then spoke to dozen people or so asking them the question “What do you want your boss to know about you?” The answers were remarkably […]
Liminal States: A COVID-19 Paradox “Every stimulus must reach a certain intensity before any appreciable sensation results. This point is known as the threshold or liminal intensity.” [1] And some of us are just impatient with every boundary, above and below. James Sully. Outlines of Psychology. 1888 I was talking to the wonderful chair and CEO of the Greater […]
Effective Conversations: Demonstrating Empathy Empathy requires you to understand another’s feelings and concerns, flowing from awareness of your own feelings, while interacting with another human being. You can literally feel as they feel. An empathic person can read emotional currents and notice nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice or facial expression and, with sophisticated […]
Effective Conversations: Thinking Together Emotionally, you can easily sense where you are ‘at’ with conversation. It is an experience of energy and creativity, of fresh thinking and feelings (as opposed to a rehearsal of former thoughts and conditioned feelings, with no one point of view holding all of the truth). You can taste and feel […]
Effective Conversations: Conversation Not Debate By using the right language, we can exchange thoughtful words that accurately represent the intricacies of thought, emotion, mood, and behaviour. Good conversations can give depth and meaning that can lead to connection, creative mood-sharing, and learning ‘together’. Great conversations, at their core, are a search for the truth with […]
Avoiding The Ladder Of Inference For great dialogue, the ladder of inference can be your enemy because not only is there no dialogue but, when discussion does occur, it is littered with preconceptions, beliefs, and conclusions. Genuine dialogue calls for the suspension of judgement and avoiding the ladder of inference. “Suspension means that we neither […]
Climbing The Ladder Of Inference Have you ever had something like the following experience? You take a much-needed coffee break and walk up to the café bar, where two of your friends are already gathered. They stop talking when you approach. The observable information you have is around their physical location and the fact that […]
Some Tips For Great Coaching To be a great coach it would be valuable to: Understand that the expression of coaching is in emotions and feelings, conscious thought, and action Think holistically about the person you are coaching Have a good knowledge of people generally Care about people, their growth and their capability and relationships […]
The Coach’s Objective. I’ve spent much the past two weeks in one-on-one coaching sessions. I am always honoured that people willingly share so much. One new client, (whom I’d never met before) about ten minutes into our conversation, said that he was surprised at how much he was revealing to a total stranger. Another, a […]
Feedback Matters. If you don’t know how you’re going, then you don’t know how you’re going! It is important to pulse, check and monitor your progress. In fact, this is key to making behavioural change that lasts. For example, without even trying, simply tracking how much exercise you do actually leads to healthier exercise patterns. […]
Practicing New Behaviour. ‘Having a go’ at a new behaviour is essential and this can be tested and supported by finding circumstances for development that are not too daunting or high-risk. Striving to get better, learning from your experiences, reflecting on what occurred and experimenting further are real experiences. In simple terms: mastery comes with […]
Don’t Forget About Strengths. It is important not to forget our strengths. Have you had the experience of participating in a performance review to be told in endless detail about all the things you need to fix and do differently, and then, as a passing afterthought, hear a few words about what you do well and […]
Owning The Change. “People’s behaviour makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs and motives.” Thomas Mann American (German-born) novelist (1875 – 1955) Have you ever been to your annual performance review only to listen to your boss waxing lyrically about a change you need to make? You may nod […]
Soft or Hard-Wired Change. Soft-wired change occurs when we make intellectual shifts about change. We ‘get it’ cerebrally and we comply with the need. It makes intuitive sense, and we go along with it because it is necessary, useful or required. Hard-wired change happens in two parts. The first level is where we ‘get it’ […]
Leading Change Series: Talking As A Distraction? Some thoughts for a leader coaching to change. Some people don’t really want to change; they just want to talk. This talk or dialogue can be contemplative and useful, or just a ‘chat’. If the latter seems to be the norm, then it would be fair to wonder […]
Leading Change: Safety In The Status Quo. “The constancy of the internal milieu is the essential condition to a free life.” Claude Bernard French physiologist, in An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865) The safety of the status quo, in and of itself, has serious temptations. Although the devil you know is not […]
The Road Is Paved With Good Intentions. Intention is a step beyond awareness (I am good at or not so good at) … it is about being direct, clear, explicit and highly conscious about what needs to change in a targeted and solution-directed manner. Self-directed processes have been around for centuries. Benjamin Franklin, for example, […]
Blind Spots. Blind Spots. We all have them. They are those things in our behaviour that others can observe in us, but of which we are unaware, including their impact. As others observe our behaviour, they usually scoot up their ‘ladders of inference’ to reach all sorts of conclusions about who we are – our […]
Self Awareness Can Be Elusive. “Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.” Thomas Carlyle Self Awareness. How often […]
Change is a Learning Process. “That man is a creature that needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his conformity and define his deviancy.” Freda Adler, American educator and criminal justice specialist (b. 1934) Change is a learning process. It’s a bit like learning […]
The Challenge of Change. “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” Henry Louis Bergson – French Scientist, philosopher and psychologist (1859 – 1941) “Behaviour change happens mostly by speaking to people’s feelings.” John Kotter – Harvard Business School. Think about how would you […]
Following our big SEVEN LEADERSHIP VIRTUES, I did a rough count over the weekend and estimated that I have worked with upwards of 200 CEOs over the past 22 years. Almost all of them spoke, at one time or another, about what made a great CEO – sometimes expressing this modestly (“How can I be more […]
Organisational culture is a particularly interesting topic, where the science is pretty clear on its impact on performance. Simply put, organisations with great culture, over time produce outstanding results – patiently, with persistence and intention. What I have learnt is that you cannot achieve a great organisational culture unless you do three things. Firstly, be […]
My job is never to be on stage – to impress people – to be the centre of attention. This not the role of a leadership facilitator. The word gives it away.
This paper is based on 20 plus years’ experience helping to develop dozens of teams and reviewing the insights of many other well-researched sources. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” Aristotle The best organisations are made up of great teams. No matter how talented people are, an organisation will limit its […]
The Edelman Trust Barometer measures ‘trust that organisations and people will do the right thing’. It says that we’re losing trust in just about everything. We’ve become so disenchanted that even illegal or unethical conduct barely fazes us – it seems ‘normal’. Lack of trust in organisations is a sadly pervasive lack of faith in […]
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