The sociopath in the workplace brings frustration and misery to colleagues and to anyone, who tries to manage them. They are manipulative, and expert at both dodging responsibility and shifting conversations to their own agendas. It often takes time to recognise them (not least because they are good at flattery and because we don’t like...
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A while ago, I asked a Government department what data it had on the gender and ethnic distribution at different levels and in different functions. Not surprisingly, it had a lot, at considerable depth of detail. Then I asked the critical question: “Can you give me a single example, where this data has resulted in (more…)
It’s evident that a coaching and mentoring strategy – especially if the aim is to create a coaching and mentoring culture – requires the sustained support and energy of an organization’s leaders. In our interviews on this topic with both HR professionals and leadership teams, a number of themes recur frequently enough to warrant inclusion...
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Just as happened with coaching individuals, as team coaching becomes more mainstream, the assumption emerges that it is some kind of cure-all for team problems. Of course it’s not, but team coaches increasingly bring to supervision issues relating to how they manage client team and sponsor expectations about what can and can’t be delivered. It...
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There are thousands of studies and books on managing change or leading change. The former tend to focus on ways to work with and overcome people’s resistance; the latter on creating a vision that people can sign up to and engage with. Of course, both these perspectives are important and indeed implementing change usually requires...
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Cameroon is one of those countries that most people have heard of (largely because it once performed well in the football World Cup), but couldn’t place accurately on a map. So when I was invited to join a small group of coaches and leaders climbing Mount Cameroon on behalf of the charity Village Aid, I...
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When Kathy Kram carried out her seminal research into mentoring at the beginning of the 1980s, she focused on a small number (22) of informal mentoring relationships, taking place within a specific cultural context – educated North Americans. She identified a number of themes that recurred in these relationships and, as she herself has readily...
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Last year I was privileged to assess one of the most well-founded and effective mentoring programmes I have encountered. This programme was not in a sector, where one would normally look for good practice in mentoring. It was in the military and, specifically, in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. People at all levels received...
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Coaching and mentoring conversations frequently run into the brick wall of blame, most often in one of two common forms: self-blame (assuming responsibility for one’s own or other people’s misfortunes) or other-blame (protecting one’s own self-image and reputation by blaming others). Both forms block the client’s ability to be authentic and to make progress. The...
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The word restorative implies “putting back” or “regaining”. An effective supervisor helps you to restore what you need to be a fully functioning coach (which may not be that different from what you need to be a fully functioning individual, although the supervisor is not expected to be a counsellor or therapist). Coaching other people (more…)
