Thoughts

My coach asked me a good question the other day: “What’s your aspiration?” I recoiled from the question. “Why the reaction?” she asked. “It’s that word: aspiration. It speaks of striving, of a gap to be filled.” I realised in that moment that I’m over filling gaps. It’s exhausting. And I’m not sure it serves […]

Remove the peripheral to get to the real. Jenny Brown-Zikic   Last week I went out to dinner with some friends for the first time in eight weeks. After an extended hiatus, the anticipation was high, and I wasn’t disappointed. Meeting face to face rather than through Zoom brought a totally different quality to the […]

I was watching my son’s rugby game on the weekend. They took a hammering. And I reckon I know what happened. First, there were the ‘set pieces’. That’s where the game pauses for a bit, usually due to a penalty being given, or a try being scored. The team with the ball takes a moment, […]

I’m often asked by leaders how they can harness the collective energy of a group of people to achieve great things. It seems to be a point of frustration and stuckness for many, so I thought I’d share a story about a meeting that I was lucky enough to be a part of last week. […]

I was watching a guitar tutorial on YouTube a couple days ago. The instructor was really good, both as a player, and as a teacher. (By the way, he’s teaching one of the coolest songs you can play on acoustic guitar, ‘Never Going Back Again’ by Fleetwood Mac). Towards the end of the tutorial, the […]

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, […]

When I was about 14 years old, I joined my school’s Army Cadet corps. It was attractive because I’d heard they did cool things out in the bush. I was having a bit of a hard time at boarding school, and I thought it would a great respite. It wasn’t what I expected. The rule-bound […]

  Lurking in our language, there’s a number of naughty words that we have conveniently categorised as “Four Letter Words”. You know what I’m talking about. Most of us typically utter these offensive tones to express our dislike of something, or someone. If you’ve ever been the unlucky “someone” on the receiving end of such […]

In the not-so-distant past, I got feedback that some people around me didn’t know what I stood for. Ouch. No one wants to get feedback like that, especially when you’re in a leadership role. It would have been so easy for me to get defensive and make it their problem. But I sat with the […]