Wise Wednesdays

It always takes me a moment to respond when someone asks me how much time they’ll need for coaching. They have busy schedules and don’t have a lot of time for homework, so they’re worried that coaching is another thing to fit into their to do list.  I get where they’re coming from and it reminds me that there are a lot of bad coaching practices out there… The value of (high performance) coaching isn’t to take up time but to cut through the noise and focus on the important things, creating more space, ease, and flow. This catalyses your ability to reach your true goals.  Like in a chemical reaction, a catalyst speeds up the process and reduces the activation energy. It doesn’t require more time or energy (and luckily doesn’t get consumed in the process!)  But unless you’ve had great bosses, learned the tricks of the “high performance mindset”, or had a previous experience of deep coaching, it’s hard to go against the grain of employee work culture...

When I found myself working in my dream job in global health (the job I’d been working towards for almost two decades), needless to say I was pretty excited. But I quickly found that there was an endless mass of work to do and I was at risk of overwhelm and burnout – how quickly can you end poverty and improve the health of the most vulnerable in the world? My boss had boundless energy herself so she wasn’t going to put the breaks on for me. One weekend when a report deadline was coming up, I realised that if I were to go the distance in this job, I’d need to make some choices, miss out on certain opportunities and occasionally disappoint my boss.  While it was a little tense sometimes, eventually what happened is that my productivity in one area of my work that I enjoyed very much – writing – shot through the roof and I delivered beyond expectations.  That became my speciality and I was given some pretty exciting international projects which also inc...

The first time I met Martina, I knew we were going to be friends. We were in a group of mature PhD students (mature in the sense that most of us had jobs before starting a PhD – doctors, lawyers, researchers, etc). We were doing an introductions round with the “what do you do?” question. But Martina suddenly interjected: “Why do we have to start with such boring questions?!” While I was taken aback for a moment, I knew she had a valid point and loved her honesty.  Why? Because, I believe that we are more than our job titles (or areas of expertise) and the status or salary they bring.    “What do you do?” is one of the most common and also most dreaded questions. It’s a ranking and sorting question rather than a way of truly connecting with people. It never leaves us feeling very satisfied. At worst, it creates distance or envy. At best it huddles people into professional clans. I’m passionate about people creating their own jobs, career path...

Even though we’ve just been through the biggest festive season of the year, I’ve noticed that the mission-driven, highly educated professionals I spend time with and coach, aren’t very good at celebrating themselves… They all too readily forget their accomplishments, skills, courage and kindness. This doesn’t do them justice in life and reinforces feelings of imposterism, not to mention rob them of opportunities to be visible and shine their light in the world. In fact, my heart bleeds a little when I read their pre-coaching session preparation because one of the questions I ask them is: “How have you celebrated your results?” And, more often than not, the answer’s something like: “Errm, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.” It’s not that you have to stand in the middle of an office and blow your own trumpet all day, nor sing your own praises to the sound of a harp to anyone who would listen. Not at all.  It’s far less romantic than that. ...

We’ve landed in 2019!  In last week’s webinar, an important focus was what to let go of from 2018.  Our work culture encourages us to just pile on more tasks and say “yes” to work when in reality (with scientific backing) we must prioritise to maintain optimal levels of functioning. In other words: to succeed, you must be able to say “no”. And that includes saying “no” to your own internal noise and attachment to the past. Here are the webinar replay and slides of the 2019 preparation process.  What you’re willing to let go of is half of the success equation. The other is what you’re willing to step into. The secret sauce of the equation is what really gets things cooking. [See the video below or read on] THE STATE OF MIND IN WHICH YOUR RESOLUTIONS ARE FORMED (AND HELD) PREDICTS THEIR SUCCESS What I’ve learned from going through the preparation process several times myself is that the success of a resolution depends to a large ext...