What are the possibilities for your life?

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I attended a wedding recently, nothing special you may think, but it was my Dads’ who, at the age of 92, married for the second time. This act of commitment has brought such joy and sense of well-being to those around him, in fact more than that, to a much wider group, friends of friends, my clients, the local florist, our builder (I’ve been spreading the word!). People have grinned, smiled, laughed become emotional, talked about inspiration and really welcomed the news. Finding love again at this stage in his life is, it seems, something rather special and remarkable.

He is a man who has always stayed curious, continually learnt and pushed himself to understand society with all its struggles and contradictions.… Read more...

Developing Business Intimacy

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Eighteen months ago, I took on the challenge, with three good friends, to walk the south coast of England, a commitment we knew would take us four years to complete. One of the joys of this, apart from exploring the wonderful UK coastline, is the time we have to talk, to understand, to explore what is going on in our worlds and just “be” with each other. It has already developed and deepened our relationships and our friendship.  We have had the luxury of time and space to do this which is not always the case, especially in our working lives and I’ve been reflecting on how it’s possible to develop deeper relationships more quickly at work and actually whether it’s necessary or not.… Read more...

Being Resilience; keeping going and bouncing back

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My niece was badly burnt in an accident a few weeks ago, which was shocking for all of us and horrific for her. At the age of 24 she is facing living with the consequences of this for both her body and mind. She has been incredible in her response to it all and has dealt with her injuries and us, her family, friends and carers with a strength, stoicism and humour that belies her age and of course she’s had moments of fear, doubt and vulnerability along the way.

It’s got me thinking about Resilience and what it is that keeps us going when faced with adversity and on going challenges. I asked my niece and her reply included: having things to distract her: being around familiar people/places; having professional help.… Read more...

Valuing friendships

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I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last 3 weeks on holiday in both Australia and Singapore. A different holiday from normal as I went on my own and spent the time visiting and staying with friends, some I hadn’t seen for years and what was lovely was the way we picked up from where we had left off and carried on as though we’d seen each other yesterday. I really needed this holiday as I’d been feeling, as a friend had said to me, “emotionally loaded” over the last few months with unexpected stuff happening on the home and work front. I’m now heading back to work with a spacious head, feeling loved, with renewed energy for the life I live and lots of great intentions around work flow, time for friends, using the space/time I have more choicefully and really being present and attentive to those I work and play with….and … Read more...

Focus on today

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Focus on today

As the New Year heralds the usual messages of resolutions and beginnings, we pause to consider how this New Year we might be different.

Last year felt unprecedented in terms of the surprises that played out on the world stage, and the subsequent uncertainty that we start the year with is both worrying and hopeful.

We encourage ourselves to chose hope over worry: “ hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act” R. Solnit

But because of this uncertainty we may choose not to launch into usual new year, new resolutions activity, but instead to take the opportunity this year to use this uncertainty to have a more reflective and measured start: to better consider the complex issues society, organisations, teams and indeed individuals are facing

It may be more appropriate in the space of this uncertainty to consider instead the ‘ seeds’ of change that we want to grow and also how we can right now be more of who we want to be?… Read more...

Development Potential

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At Development Potential we work with leaders and their teams to succeed and thrive in today’s fast changing, increasingly complex, commercial environment.

We help develop business potential: a leader’s own potential, the potential of teams and the potential of the organisation.

We believe this development process is a journey, a product of self awareness, connections and interactions and overall business context.

It requires leaders to really know and understand themselves, to be able to reach out and connect really well with others, and to focus on both their current business reality and their future business possibility.… Read more...

Making decisions collaboratively – a contradiction in terms?

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desicion makingIs the current focus on collective, collaborative leadership having the consequence of ‘stale mate’ on making the tough difficult decisions that need to be made? Listening to a number of clients sharing their challenges of late, we begin to wonder if this is an unintended consequence of collaboration? We welcome your views on this?

Feedback we’re hearing is that on the one hand we are encouraging senior leaders to leave their comfortable silos and work across organisational systems, but with that comes a requirement to make decisions that affect the whole system. The prevailing behaviour (driven maybe by anxiety, lack of trust, general ‘not knowing the other’) seems to be one of  everyone  accommodating everyone  else in the system – the good news is there’s lots of care and appreciation and people being very nice to each other, but the not so good is that the big decisions are being skirted around, avoided, postponed… with obvious consequences.… Read more...

Space

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“Fire” by Judy Brown

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.… Read more...

Biographical Data Process

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If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, 
or how I comb my hair,
but ask me what I am living for, in detail,
ask me what I buy CBD products is keeping me from living fully
 for the thing I want to live for (Thomas Merton, 1915-1968)

What is this?

 

  • A process of determining how our past has shaped us into who we are today, or put another way, how we got to be the person we are today.

 

Why is looking back at what has gone before important to the coaching process?

  • Much of how we behave as senior leaders has its origins in the emotional processes of earlier life
  • Much of this behaviour is not conscious, it is so well laid down and repeated that we are generally not aware of any thought processes that drive these patterns of behaviour.
… Read more...