Independence day

Many of you know, thanks to LinkedIn’s algorithms, that I have now been an independent consultant for four years.  In fact, a number have written their congratulations.  It does indeed feel like a time to both celebrate and to reflect. So here are some thoughts as well as some tips on the subject. When you first tell people that...

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Change the way you lead change

When it comes to approaching change there are, it seems, two types: people like us who are forward thinkers, ready to embrace the opportunities of technology, and new ways of working and thinking; and them, who are happy with the way things are and perpetually stuck in old-fashioned ways. Joking aside, it is a topsy-turvy world where...

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Listening is the new talking

I was recently asked to put together a session to coach a group of senior executives to improve their communication skills. They are responsible for cascading important messages throughout their organisation and, it was felt, they could do with some support as often messages landed badly due to the way they were presented.  The coac...

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Back to School

Don’t you love September? I’ve always found its arrival a time for contemplation.  With over half the year gone, it’s now downhill all the way to Christmas and the next set of New Year’s resolutions.  The days are getting shorter, the cricket whites are put away, and the rugby season kicks off.  In other words, it always f...

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Sabotaging one’s own brilliance

In coaching, one of the most powerful tools is visualisation.  Often people find it relatively easy to explain what’s wrong with their current predicament but they struggle to define what good looks like for them.  Asking them to visualise their future state and look back at themselves from that viewpoint can help them to see tha...

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Silo thinking, silo politics

  The UK General Election in May 2015 produced a result that few had expected.  One of the outcomes was the virtual disappearance of the LibDems.  At the time I predicted that it could mark the re-emergence of a new political force based on the original Social Democratic Party of the mid 1980’s (the fact that there are no s...

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The Pursuit of Happiness

In my mid-teens I was given as a present the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.  I started to read at the beginning and worked my way up to letter C where I arrived at Churchill.  I was hugely enjoying reading his famous motivational and inspirational quotes when I read: “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of qu...

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Changing one’s mind (again) Mar28

Changing one’s mind (again)

Much of my business life is spent coaching and supporting people through change, both personal and professional.  One of the many reasons people seek me out is because I’m viewed as being someone who is comfortable with change; somebody who is able to navigate complex, uncertain and ambiguous environments where events seem to be c...

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