Wise Wednesdays

Whether to leave your job is a big question. And it isn’t. Changing careers is becoming increasingly common, let alone changing jobs. Most people change careers at least twice according to recent trends. It’s a question that used to come up a lot when I started coaching but less so recently. People seem to get in touch after they’ve already tried different types of coaching/therapy and want to dig a bit deeper and look at things in a completely different way. They’re ready to take on radical self-responsibility for their lives and their choices but aren’t sure how to start or feel uncertain because no one else seems to be on their wavelength. But it doesn’t matter. As long as you know what wavelength you’re on, you can ignore the noise and pay attention to the signal from your intuition. At the last Leaders Circle, one of the participants, an excellent government scientist who has always been exquisitely responsible and conscientious as a team leader and is givi...

Persuasion and influence seem to be a big deal at the moment. Gone are the days of command-and-control in the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world, or so we’re told. Constant competitive “disruption” means the boss can’t tell you what to do because they just don’t know. So we influence rather than dictate to leave room for innovation. Influence is not a benign topic either. From micro-targeting in order to manipulate elections to mental health issues and suicides among celebrities in the social media limelight, we have to consider whether and how to strengthen our boundaries and expand our awareness of the sensory and cognitive input coming our way. An article in the latest Harvard Business Review explored trends in “influence”. It commented on how easy it is for people to be manipulated and also how little people do to protect themselves against it. Is it naivete? Or an underestimation of the extent of manipulation around us? Who knows. But it seems that manipu...

If you’ve ever gotten caught in procrastination, you’ll know that having a goal is not enough to get things done. In my experience, when clients have a breakthrough, it’s often because they realise how much they can get done when they’re less attached to goals and more engaged with the process. Interestingly, they try less, struggle less and suffer less but get more (of the right things) done. This generates a positive cycle. One of the factors is that by letting go of attachment to goals, their attention and therefore energy is less absorbed in one direction. It’s freed up to generate better ideas that get them to the goal faster with less effort. They start letting go of projects that aren’t aligned and suddenly they have the more cognitive space. This enables creative solutions. Recovering cognitive space also means they can spot and engage with opportunities. It can seem magical because things that seemed impossible just fall into place. For example, you ...