What’s it like at the top these days?

This year I’m adjusting my focus a bit. I’m still coaching leadership teams though looking to do more 121 work with the people right at the top. By all accounts 2023 is going to be a tough year and support is being ramped up for staff, but who is there for the person at the top? They have their business advisors, that’s handled; I’m talking more about them as a person as a human being. If you’re right at the top what’s it like for you?

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Who are you, revisited.

We were talking about values and I took the opportunity to share a distinction I was taught many years ago. Success is about who we are as a human being and who we “be” is informed by our lived values. Here we revisit a blog I wrote seven years ago; circumstances may have changed though the notion is relevant for testing times.

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Double-plus coming of age

“What one piece of wisdom would you give that people would want to share?” Mine is this: your capacity for success equals the conversations you’re having, minus the conversations you’re not having, multiplied by the way you’re having them.

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Focus on the next lamppost

You got a big challenge ahead; you can see a large part of it. Its daunting, even overwhelming. I remember as a young trainee civil engineer on Howdon Sewage Treatment Works thinking how does the Site Agent manage all of this. The size of the task seemed incomprehensible to me. Round about the same time I watched a film about the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon and thought wow! I could never do that. Well, that was in the late seventies and I’ve come a long way since then, thanks to this little strategy…

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My top ten reads from 2021

Here’s the best 10 books I read in 2021. And here’s what’s included: a career changing top tip from a serial entrepreneur, a deep meditation on quality, rediscovering our place on planet Earth – in conversation with a guerrilla, Unilever leading the way, numbers and measurement and the trouble that causes, marketing wisdom viewed 57 million times – there must be something in it, how to think and how coaching could change everything…

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My top ten reads from 2018.

At the end of one of my Programmes Paul asked me for my recommended reading list. So, here goes. I’ve looked back over the books I have read in 2018 and picked my top ten. Some of them are from the early nineties, pre-internet. Yes, there was wisdom prior to the internet and much of it is needed right now. It’s personal though I am confident it’s a useful list.

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A six year old with a chain saw

Do you overprotect your staff cos they are ‘not old enough’ or ‘experienced enough’ yet? On Saturday I was cycling up a long hill in the countryside when I saw people trimming back hedges and trees. As I got closer I noticed a man and child, who was no more than five or six years…

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