Thoughts

A lot of people say that networking is hard, and they’re not good at it. And, we know (or at least, we hear) that a healthy network is good for us. So there’s this tension that we live with. If you’re one of those people feeling that tension, let me help you ease the pain. […]

  Lately I’ve noticed a little trap that people can fall into. One they set themselves up for. Like so many barriers to our own success, it comes down to a choice of words. That choice is between ‘confidence’ and ‘courage’. Example: A client says she needs to build up the confidence to put a […]

  Late in 2015, I published ‘Three Things I’ve Learned This Year’. The most popular of those three with readers was the idea of ‘Be The Flower, Not The Bee’. In essence, strive less. I’m going to build on that idea here by showing you how to see and work with patterns to be more […]

Here are five simple questions to keep you on track over the next twelve months:  How do I want to spend my time?  What do I want to learn?  What do I want to achieve?  How do I want to be?  What’s my theme for the year? This last one is powerful. In many ways […]

Do you ever feel like the way to get better results is to try harder? Here’s a story that might give you reason to rethink that approach. I’m training for a mountain bike race right now, putting in the time on the bike, using an app (Strava) to track my times. Last week, I went for […]

Before you check out for the year (at least in the southern hemisphere, where summer holidays beckon!), now’s a good time to reflect on what you’ve learned in the past 12 months. You’ve come a long way since January. What has living another year taught you? Here are three things I’ve learned this year: Experiment […]

A couple of weeks ago, I got some feedback I didn’t want to hear. I’ve been working with a group of smart, ambitious, mid-career professionals over the past couple of months, teaching them strategies to define and maximise the next stage of their careers. I love this work, and I love working with those types […]

A colleague asked me recently why I stayed so long with my last organisation, when clearly I was better off as a free agent. It would have been easy for me to rationalise my answers: the job wasn’t done, the market wasn’t right for me to move, I wasn’t ready. But, in truth, I was […]

This morning, driving through Wellington’s hilly terrain, I was playing ‘I-spy’ in the car with my eight-year-old son. He was trying hard to guess my word starting with ‘H’. After a few attempts (“Head”, “hands”, “horrible monsters…”) I decided to give him a clue: “They’re outside, and we are surrounded by them”. After a few […]

I’ve just spent the past week meeting with a range of leaders to debrief their 360-degree feedback. They work for the same organisation, which is going through a sustained period of huge turbulence and change (sound familiar?) As the week unfolded, I noticed an interesting theme emerging: the leaders who were rated the most effective […]