Category Archives: self awareness

Tips for creating meaningful goals

“Life is the art of finding or building a bridge with great determination every time you come across a precipice!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan January is, for many of us, the month we think about our goals for the year ahead. I love the process of setting goals and am constantly exploring ways to do it […]

What I Want My Boss To Know

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 […]

Effective Conversations: Demonstrating Empathy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 […]

Leading Change Series: Feedback Matters

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. […]

Leading Change Series: Practicing New Behaviour

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 […]

Leading Change Series: Dont Forget About Our Strengths

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 […]

Leading Change Series: Owning The Change

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 […]

Leading Change Series: Soft or Hard-Wired Change

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

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 Series: Safety In The Status Quo

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 […]

Leading Change Series: The Road Is Paved With Good Intentions

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, […]

Leading Change Series: Blind Spots

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 […]

Leading Change Series: Self Awareness Can Be Elusive

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 […]