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  • Because ‘toast lands on the buttered side!’

    Parkinson's Law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." - The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." - Baruch's Observation is "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." - Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology, “there is always one more bug.” - Ducharme's Axiom, "If you view your problem closely enough you will recognise yourself as part of the problem." - Executivecoachingguru says, "people will believe anything if you lean in intently and whisper it"

  • Brand You – Top Tips

    1. Accessorise so the top boys see you as one of them, don't over reach, just go for the next level. I know it sounds superficial (and it is), but you have to look like you belong in the club. But always remember 'subtle classic elegance' always beats 'trendy, flash and loadsa money'. Your accessories are reflecting your reliability and common sense and for heavens sake there is no point having a £500/$900 suit if you have a £50/$90 watch. 2. Have an elevator pitch of the benefits of what you are doing, not just the activities you are doing. Rehearse it, with eye contact and emotional content. 3. Understand who your boss is sucking up to and do it better. 4. Only put yourself forward for things that will succeed. 5. If you're responsible for it, then you should be in charge of it. 6. Seek 'face to face' feedback, tell them what you are going to do, do it, ask for feedback. Continue forever. 7. Have integrity. Stand for something. You don't have to be right, but you do have to have an opinion. 8. Be seen, press the flesh, have a tangible presence, take the long way everywhere, so people know you're around. 9. Practice your reactions and behaviours untill what isn't natural becomes natural, the first time to find out what you sound and look like when challenging someone, shouldn't actually BE the first time! 10. Don't gossip! Ever! I mean it! It'll kill your career faster than a bullet!

  • Life is a one shot deal, leadership is only truly authentic when you lead as a whole person

    "If I had my life to live over again, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments. And if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those people who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies." - Attributed to Nadine Stair (85 years young)

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  • “I have come to the frightening conclusion…

    That I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” - J.W.Goethe

Leadership Learning: Know Thyself

Posted on February 15, 2010 by executivecoachingguru

Ferran Adria the godfather of molecular gastronomy and the owner of what many consider to be the best restaurant in the world (fully booked already for 2010) El Bulli, has decided to close and take a sabbatical for 2012 & 2013, so he can “think and create”.

I have no doubt that you require a certain financial status to do this, though when you are booked up a year in advance and have been working 15 hour days, maybe you deserve it; actually as an executive coach I know quite a few executives who are financially secure, booked up for a year and work 15 hour days!

Granted the idea of 2 years off might not be doable for all of us, but you know a week end a way at the beach is; 2 whole days with just yourself (you can take the dog), not even a friend or a partner – Pure YOU TIME!

This is an invaluable activity once a year: The beach, the hills, the lakes, it doesn’t matter, but it does something to you when you create ‘pure space’ devoid of any interference, be that electronic or relational.

  • The opportunity to have a conversation with yourself.
  • To listen to your own thoughts.
  • To Filter out the debris of the everyday life.
  • To revisit the focus and value of your life.

The value to those that rely and look to you as a leader, partner, friend, colleague, parent will be as marked as the value you receive on a personal level. I guarantee that two days a year of ‘pure space’ will add value in the clarity and focus of your thinking ‘operationally and personally’ that you will pull on all year untill you do it again!

Challenge: Open you diary, pick two days, put in “Away Days”, tell everyone that needs to know that you are going to be away, go on the internet (don’t get your PA to do it (make it personal), find a little Bed & Breakfast/Family Lodge and GO!

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Leadership Thoughts: One Hit, One Kill

Posted on February 13, 2010 by executivecoachingguru

In the martial art Karate there is a term: Ikken Hissatsu, which I am reliably informed means “one hit, one kill”, the idea being that you try to ‘finish off’ the opponent with one overwhelming strike.

Some of you may know that I teach martial arts/self defense to quite a high level and for many the idea of the ‘one punch, one kill’ was frowned upon as being impractical for most people.

Untill a gentleman well versed in the noble art of Karate explained to me that most people can’t expect to take out an attacker with one punch, but that Ikken Hissatsu is the idea that you want to!

Ah ha! Well there’s a thought, I don’t know if there is an equivalent term in Japanese for this, but perhaps the idea of coaching someone is very much like this, you go in with the idea that one intervention will suffice; but understanding reality you have the patience and wisdom to be prepared to continue past the first blow, sorry session.

Perhaps it is the willingness of an executive coach to continue, that enables you and the coachee to sense the momentum of a conversation, to sense your commitment to the output and thus in many circumstances this acts as its own force in gaining commitment to change.

It is a powerful thought: “That your authentic presense is in itself part of the solution” and that as a leader or executive coach the technique you use will only be as valuable as the intent you have.

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Leadership Change

Posted on January 26, 2010 by executivecoachingguru

One of the key aspects of a leader and the development of a leadership culture is the capacity to deal with constant and unremitting change. It is often the primary ‘confusion’ for many leaders who engage an executive coach.

A great scenario to pose to yourself and to others is this: If this conversation was an interview for a new job and the job description was a description of this scenario:

  1. How would you plan to approach it?
  2. How would your emotional state differ to how it is now?

Two very simple questions that can go along way to reframing your approach and feelings to what in another context might be a highly motivational scenario.

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Leadership and Technology

Posted on January 24, 2010 by executivecoachingguru

I have a relative whose daughter started to look down on her due to her inability to navigate the latest mobile phone she received. Later on as she started to get the hang of it then the more she grew in terms of her daughters credibility; this is unfortunate but not unlike many senior managers who operate in a non IT literate world.

3 years ago I was the executive coach for a CEO, we had been discussing the poor results of the companies employee satisfaction survey and one of the areas on the survey was around trust and comments people had made about not being allowed to use the internet.

She wondered out loud at the point of it other than wasting time, I asked a simple question, “I notice you do not have a PC on your desk, do you have a PC here or at home?”, the reply was, “No, but my estate manager does.”

She then went on to say, “what does anyone actually use the internet for?”, I looked out of her office and saw two PA’s, one for work and one for personal, they printed emails, made the notes then they typed them out for her it went on from there. This is a very successful woman, who has made his fortune through organising her day this way and has done a darn good job of it.

Though the learning for her, was not ‘how to use a PC’, but more to the point the gradual dissociation with the world that everyone else lives in (I know for a fact I can barley function without the internet).

What’s my point? Well feel that there is a mental note to self here for many senior managers probably on topics more far ranging than the internet, even simple things like getting to work. Most senior managers drive and even have their own parking, many people get the bus and an underground train then have to walk, they can’t leave heir desk unless when they feel like it……..

Consider:

  1. Do I understand the lives my people live?
  2. Have I lost the understanding that I used to have?
  3. How can I regain not the credibility but the understanding that will lead back to the credibility?
  4. Who will be my council and advise me?

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New Year Resolutions – Not just once a year

Posted on January 10, 2010 by executivecoachingguru

Consider the ‘new year resolution’ and if I ask when you’d do it, well the clue would be in the question; you do them in the New Year.

It might be worth considering that actually a New Year Resolution can start technically whenever you want it to, as any day is a year later, the start of a new year.

Todd Thomas from the DeVos Graduate School of Management who conducts Resolution research found that, “CEO’s are less likely to make personal resolutions as opposed to ones directed at the companies they run.” 

Why? Well in my experience, it’s because the commercial aspect of  senior executives life is often more understandable and negotiable than what sits outside of it.

A provider of workplace employee benefits WorkplaceOptions did a survey recently that polled 700 workers on their resolutions for the new year; a 1/3rd of them involved ‘weight loss and improved fitness’.

Maybe there is an opportunity for the employee to demonstrate some more focused commercial goal setting within their resolutions to engender collaborations and sustainability and for the leadership Cadre to set and share more personal goals to increase the humanity in the observation and experience of others.

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Weary Executives leave the City

Posted on January 3, 2010 by executivecoachingguru

The Times carried a story today about James Burridge who left the banking world to become a maths teacher, with the words:”I just thought there has to be more to life than this“.

It’s a valid point and one that any Executive Coach coaching at senior levels finds themselves increasingly coming across and as a coach there is no definitive answer other than the one that sits within the individual and that of course is the point. It’s the answer that sits within all of us.

The role of the executive coach is to enable the thinking of those asking themselves this perennial question, so that they may come to a conclusion that enables them to live within the moment and not lose focus on the reality of their real world situation.

It becomes apparent that for many people the answer is well-known to them, what is not so clear is how to access the courage that may have to be called upon to take the relevant steps.

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New Year Resolution – Living Brave

Posted on December 31, 2009 by executivecoachingguru

I have been trying to figure out what to do with the blog as it was a bit stiff and corporate, so I have decided to leave the design as it is and to change my thinking around how I use it. So new start and new approach.

A blog of ideas, thoughts, models and what I am working on! The first thing being that this is the year of the book, oh yes! THE book, the BOOK, THE BOOK.

Something I have been threatening to write for a few years now and have never made any headway with. 2009 was the year of getting my martial arts web site running and doing the video for a dedicated YouTube page. The YouTube site is done as we speak and the web site should launch next week. So mission pretty well accomplished.

I realised in 2008 that I was falling foul of ‘chasing two rabbits’ and thus not catching either, so made the committment to do one thing at a time, so 2009 was the martial arts and 2010 the book.

On that note it seems with the New Year approaching I should ask you to consider something that might well focus your thoughts for that New Year resolution: “How many rabbits are you chasing?”

Have a great New Year!

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Catching the frisbee – A leadership behaviour

Posted on August 31, 2009 by executivecoachingguru

Support & Challenge is a funny subject for leaders, as intellectually everyone understands that too much:

  • Support becomes suffocating and creates dependency
  • Challenge dominates and subjugates free will
  • No support or challenge leads to apathy and indifference

All of these though can and often do, lead to varying degrees of disconnection; interestingly though teams can benefit from a kind of ill-fated connection of “we’re all in this together”, which is not a strategy I suggest. Working with senior teams gives me the privilege of observing behaviours and interactions in real time scenarios around the board table and one of the biggest indicators of the health of a team is the ability to calibrate the level of support and challenge that is given to each other.

Think of how your team poses questions, ideas, thoughts, questions, praise and conflict, when these things are placed into the conversation do they receive high levels of support and challenge as appropriate, people sit there not participating or are they overly supported and challenged. When teams get the balance right, which usually takes frequent review to calibrate impact, then people are given a license to operate that stretches the capacity of the team to handle issues, tasks and thoughts in a truly adult and productive way.

Consider this like throwing a Frisbee into the middle of the group, the right level of support and challenge keeps the Frisbee afloat, the wrong level sees it falling to the ground.

Consider the dynamics of your leadership community and how they catch the Frisbee.

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Executive Coaching – ‘Knowledge vs Know How’

Posted on August 9, 2009 by executivecoachingguru

Executive coaching is without a doubt an art form all of itself, that art is made up two distinct areas.

1. Knowing what to do.
2. Knowing how to do it.

Like any area of valued endeavour, there is something intangible about the capability of an individual to read the moment, sense the thought, pull on the right experience and frame a question or offer an observation that impacts on another individual enough for them to change a perspective and re-frame a behaviour.

Though that is coaching and like any other skill, that is honed to a high level, the art form, the mystic, the value is often made easy around something that is not.

When looking for a great executive coach:

1. Consider the whole person, the depth of their life experience.
2. Are they comfortable in their own skin.
3. Can they be a confidante, will they challenge, be an advocate, inspire, coach and mentor.
4. Do you feel a connection (not friendship)

Simple things that point to whether or not you are prepared to enter into an adult relationship as opposed to a commercial one. Simple things that go beyond a certifate of competence and into your instinct about whether or not the balance between knowledge and know how sits before you.

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Leaders set the cultural tone: In their lives and those around them

Posted on June 26, 2009 by executivecoachingguru

“I have come to the frightening conclusion…

That I am the decisive element.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration,
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides
whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated,
and a person is humanized or de-humanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.
If we treat people as they ought to be,
we help them become
what they are capable of becoming.”

 - J.W.Goethe

Goethe (1749-1832) may well have been ahead of the curve when it comes to personal awareness and the impact  we have on ourselves and the cultural climate that we operate in. As a novelist, philosopher, playright, diplomat and civil servant (he obviously didn’t have a television to disturb him or email), he seemed to have a keen and lucid line of site on humanity and this in term enabled him to reflect on his own behaviour and pen the above.

If you are reading this as a business leader, there is possibly no other work on the topic of ‘dignity at work’ or ‘cultural dynamics’ that you’ll ever need to consult again, this says it all, “I am the decisive element”, the choices we all make ultimately become manifested in our own environment as an exec coach one of my primary roles is to enable people to understgand and value the gap between ‘Stimulus[GAP]Response’ if I ask you what do you think sits in the gap between those two words, what would you say?

The answer is simply ”Stimulus[FREE WILL]Response’, it’s just that for some of us the [FREE WILL] gap is very small and in fact is more of a reaction than a space for us to control. Teams and complete business cultures often have little awareness of their ‘capacity’ to either be the controller or the controlled in regards to the execution of Free Will.

How often do you see  individuals, teams or the business swallowed up in a response of  ‘happiness through to despondency’ that is often a trigger response that has been created by an outside source? If you have understood my question (and I asked it right) then the answer is ‘a great deal’, as a leader the hardest thing to do is recognise that as a primary part of the business ecology; how much you are responsible for the ‘daily mood that makes the weather….a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration’?

Goethe in his own personal observation in the 1800’s set a question that can now, not only apply to ourselves but also to teams and overall culture.

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