When you ask people how they define introversion, the most probable reply is that an introvert is a neurotically shy person terrified of other people and at an enormous disadvantage compared with the audacious swagger of the natural extrovert. If you are familiar with the Jungian approach to personality, as exemplified for instance in the … Read the rest >>
Category: Blog
Can coaches ‘make’ clients change?
When I opened the email – and I had certainly never heard of the sender – I saw that it promised me something amazing. If I signed up to a particular training course, I could learn ten questions which would guarantee that my clients would change! Really, truly, they would not be able to help … Read the rest >>
Dieting doesn’t work: here’s what does
At this time of year, the windows of my local bookshop are crowded with the latest books guaranteeing magical ways to lose weight. These books will have been written by an alleged ‘celebrity’ who is young, toned, slim and pretty, male or female. They will all claim that what they offer is not a ‘diet’ … Read the rest >>
Coach panic: ‘Don’t Know What To Say!’
My good friend and colleague Jane Cook of Linden Learning (www.lindenlearning.org) raises the question of how to prepare inexperienced and trainee coaches for life after our courses. She reminds me that on the courses we run together, one of the most frequent dreads expressed by our participants is of being struck dumb with their real … Read the rest >>
The Two Rules of Persuasion Every Coach knows but Remain didn’t
Sometimes we humans are remarkably simple-minded. It should be the easiest-peasiest thing in the world for politicians and media and evil-minded individuals to influence us, as well as the virtuous and high-minded who want us to change behaviour for our own good. When you work as a coach you draw on these principles every day.… Read the rest >>
Six Ways To Wreck your Career Move
Now that the recession really does seem to be over, there are more people on the move again. Previous reasons for staying stuck (fear, fear and fear essentially) have evaporated. But I work with many clients who have made moves for the wrong reasons, and often they have made all of these mistakes at once.… Read the rest >>
7 Things to Avoid Saying on your CV/Resume
Many of my career-coaching clients have never written a CV/Resume, or if they have it was many years ago. They are CV Virgins. And now they are being thrust into a world where the CV is their passport to a new role. The hiring organization or agency makes it worse by using clichéd phrases in … Read the rest >>
Saying Sorry is Not the Hardest Thing To Do
Before this client has even stepped over the threshold she is apologising.
‘Sorry for being late’, she says.
She has actually arrived two minutes after the appointed time so she is only ‘late’ by some super-high standard to which no one is ever held in a social engagement.
As I take her coat she does … Read the rest >>
Sometimes the simplest coaching techniques are the best
The client is sitting in front of me looking hunched and miserable. She and I are at Smart Works (www.smartworks.org.uk) the wonderful charity where I do occasional volunteer shifts. Women who have been unemployed for some time and who now at last have a job interview come for two things that are normally only affordable … Read the rest >>
How long does it take to become a competent coach?
No wonder coaching is notoriously a revolving door profession. So many people are lured into it because it looks easy, especially if you have been the client of a very good coach yourself. The barriers to entry are low. The training may have promised, falsely, that after a few short days you are fully equipped … Read the rest >>
Coaches! Put away that Toolbox!
In training and supervising hundreds of new coaches I notice how many are preoccupied by what we might call Toolbox Syndrome. At coaching conferences, where as a rule beginners predominate, I guarantee that you will find that the workshops which offer new wonder-techniques are the ones that fill up first. I’m quite sure that when … Read the rest >>
O Lord please save us from coaching gobbledeygook
I suppose that when you think about it, it’s a good thing that we now have so many rival theories about coaching.
But I have to confess to a visceral response which is somewhere between incredulity and intense dislike of the Gobbledygook School. There is a Ms, Mr or Dr Gobbledygook performing at most coaching … Read the rest >>