Thoughts

Do you want feedback about you when you’re at your best?   Are you wondering how you can make a difference to others in the most authentic way? Then read on.   Getting honest, affirming feedback helps you to grow your self-awareness, and better understand what you are all about. In the Havard Business Review, […]

Last week, I was reminded of the awesome, and underutilised power of leading with questions. A colleague and I spent two days together with a group of up-and-coming leaders. They’re an energised, talented group, hungry to learn and to make an impact on their organisation. A joy to work with. As facilitators, my colleague and I […]

I’ve been working with a senior leadership team of late that has, shall we say, quite a forceful executive at its head. Having been in the role just over 18 months, he’s been instrumental in reshaping the direction of the organisation and lifting its performance. Things are tracking well, morale is lifting across the board, […]

When people face something big and scary, they’ll often say “I need to muster up the courage to tackle that.” Kind of like courage is something that’s scattered around the place in small bits, and they just need to gather up all of those small bits and create a big courage ball. Then they’ll be […]

I was in Bali in June last year, chasing some much-needed sun in the midst of the dark New Zealand winter. I took a surfboard with me, of course. Like about one million other people who had the same idea that I did. I’d never surfed in Bali before, so I didn’t really know what […]

Where my driveway ends at the footpath, there are two high walls on either side. So, when I drive my car out, I can’t see who might be walking along, or maybe flying past on their skateboard. So I deliberately slow down and gently nudge the front of my car out beyond the walls, so […]

The late novelist David Foster Wallace tells a wonderful story about ‘incuriosity’ in his commencement speech This Is Water: There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish […]

As we near the end of 2016, I’ve summarised a few gems that you might find useful to dip in and out of: My Top Five Most Popular Blog Posts of 2016 A Map to Change: How to make a behaviour change by getting ‘under the hood’. Shine A Light: Show people their potential and […]

Opportunity abounds. We just need to cultivate our own agency to attract it. In my MBA class the other night, the students and I were looking at the forces and trends shaping the future of work and careers. The discussion naturally led to what the implications were for them, and how they might act or […]

  Most people find changing behaviours hard work. Our brain wiring is often set to drive a default pattern of behaviour, and unless we can get a good look at the wiring diagram, we’re going to be playing around in the dark. Here’s a tool that my clients find really useful to help them change […]