“Seeing is believing” has been well used since it was first recorded in 1639. However, what we see will probably be different from what someone else sees and the ‘facts’ are not easily interpreted. Wikipedia, where I found the above nugget, refers to this as a ‘sophistry’. In fact, just the opposite is true. Believing [...]
A while back I had the exceedingly pleasurable experience of being ready and waiting in the right place and the right time. It was a small day at The Pipe (our local break) and a group of surfers hung around in-shore, competing for little waves. I had seen a big set when I paddled in [...]
A standard approach to project initiation workshops is to get people to discuss their concerns, expectations and assumptions in small groups. This conversation surfaces all the issues the team need to consider as they set a clear objective and map out a plan. Last week I facilitated a workshop in which the sponsor asked me [...]
So what is this coaching business all about? What is your coaching model? This is the question to be answered in a contracting session with a coach. "What is your coaching model?" In the rush for recipes and quick fixes, I found the book “Coaching – evoking excellence in others” refreshingly intense and hard to [...]
team build games are an excellent way for teams to learn new skills and behaviours. But how do you go about setting up a successful team game
There are many different approaches to strategy out there. Ever since I have been facilitating strategy workshops I have been looking for strategy models to make sense of all of the different views on strategy. Well I have found a good one. I am reading “Strategy Safari” by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel, who collectively bring [...]
There is a shift in the balance of power that happens in a typical coaching, mentoring or managerial relationship. The model offers a passage through four quadrants each of which offers clues to how to manage a relationship conforming to the quadrant.
There are many models describing change. Here is one offered to us on the I-Coach masters programme. I used two pictures because the formal 'four-box' picture just does not get near to describing the confusion, frustration and despair that accompanied the learning process for me. I would like to have extended the 'despair' block right [...]
We all know that we live in an environment of constant change. "The only constant is change" is now a worn (out) cliche. However it is true that changes need a calm area in order to flourish. Years ago, many office notice boards had that quote from a sometime-BC Greek seaman about how they worked [...]
When enough individuals in the group embrace the anxiety associated with change, making a conscious effort to take back their projections, the resulting process of change is chaotic, painful and deep. The change model shows four areas of change and the four transformations that take a group through these four steps. There is a vortex [...]
