Monthly Archives: April 2019

I recently had an experience where someone took me flying and nearly killed me!  I am a pilot and regularly fly in our North East home, and I am fortunate enough to experience flying frequently.  The pilot in charge was very experienced in terms of operational procedures but unaware to me, had real issues with the runway we were using that day.

The pilot had made a decision that the runway was a challenge and even managed to convince themselves that they should land each time and they wouldn’t be beaten!

As we approached to land, I commented “What a fantastic approach” it was time to perfection and brought us on a brilliant heading for a perfect landing.  What I didn’t realise is that our approach was far to high and very fast.  We should have gone around, every pilot knows that and I then I thought we were.  However, we didn’t, and as I saw the landing point, we would typically land flash by I thought we are going around.  Eventually, near the end of the runway we bounced,

I continue to find that I need to separate the differences between the two labels that are coaching and training as they continue to be miss-understood. The boundaries between coaching, training, mentoring and counselling continue to confuse everywhere I go. Every time I deliver either a training course or a coaching course I separate the differences at the start, and I can honestly say 90% of individuals that I train, do not understand until I discuss the differences with them.

I seem to continue to write about this as do others when I read the latest articles. I think what has happened is that when people started the trend/fashion in coaching, it was miss-understood. I was in a company recently where the boss said, “Yep coaching we are all over that we give coaching qualifications”.  When I asked, precisely what they were doing out of interest it was blatantly apparent to me they were training. I witnessed one trainer (not coach) say I have just had a good coaching session where I saw

Lately, in my blogs, I’ve been concentrating a lot on the skills and techniques around training such as motivation and engagement.  This is because I’d been doing a lot of Ski training in the Austrian Alps where I’d had to try and work through some real inner ‘demons’ to meet the standard of an intensive course.  On reflection, I’ve had a hugely emotional journey and one that I’d never have been able to complete without making a vital change.  I had to change my way of thinking and become a believer:

Like I hear so often when delivering training, have you heard the phrases, “I’m not good at that” or, “I can’t do that”?  I bet you’ve heard it a lot and you may have even heard it from your inner self at some point in your life.  I want you to consider the effect on your confidence, motivation and ability if you are saying this; what do you think the result will be?  You’re completely right if you thought, “You won’t be good / you won’t do it”  At some stage, a decision within

I want to share a recent experience which happened to me.  As I am sure, you can appreciate being a trainer within a training company we use hotel and venue facilities regularly.  The majority are, in my opinion, good and offer an excellent service and reasonable value for money; I want to point out that I am always the first to comment when I receive excellent service.  Of course, now and again you meet the opposite, in other words not good. This blog is about my recent experience with the latter; I don’t want to get bogged down in the facilities (which were appalling) but the actions of the manager because this is a management blog!

I will provide a brief overview of my issues.  When I arrived at the venue, I complained there were no refreshments for delegates.  Furthermore, I complained regarding the location of the training room with associated trolleys and noise.  A high-pitched sound in the room from heating (and it was deafening) to the point of putting delegates off

I thought I would continue with some blogs on coaching for managers. If anything it will help you consider/reflect on what you do compared to what you think you do. Where could you change?

Coaching sessions need to be valued; they need to be prepared for and not just ad hoc. There has to be time given to prepare and to reflect, and you need to allow yourself and your staff time to reflect something (not given in a lot of companies these days) clearly the most essential part of any coaching or training session. Those ten minutes could be so valuable and incredibly powerful after any session, moreover where the learning and changes may start to take place.

When you prepare are there any distractions before the session and in the session? What does the member of staff see as they enter the room, what do you think they may be thinking and feeling, sometimes what you may be thinking may be entirely wrong. Judgements get in the way of listening and noticing. The role of the coach is to encourage,

In my life, I’ve had many moments both personal and professional where I’ve perhaps lacked a bit of self-motivation; you know those thoughts that manifest themselves as a limiting self-beliefs. - We tell ourselves, “I can’t do this” and what happens next? Precisely what we manifested; we more often than not fail in our task!  What though can happen if we add a little self-motivation before we try?

In this blog, I’m going to share with you some personal experiences of how I discovered my rather bizarre self-motivation technique and hopefully this can help you find yours so you can succeed in your tasks and challenges!

One of the things I always found a challenge while serving in the Royal Air Force was when they introduced fitness testing which was the Beep test, sit-ups and push-ups at an age-appropriate level.  Now I enjoy playing sports but find the gym quite dull if I’m honest but found that playing sports and having a sedentary job behind a desk wasn’t exactly perfect for maintaining

One of the critical areas of our management development courses is the elements we cover on understanding behaviour.  We get so many comments regarding this aspect of the training including the fact that we may be using some ‘dark art’ regarding how we can understand how a person operates or how they behave and communicate.

Unfortunately, there is nothing dark about how we do this it is all based on psychology, not masses of the theory of psychology but the practical application and awareness of human behaviour in the workplace using psychology.  Human beings are incredible, and we are all unique, but certain behaviour patterns can easily be linked and associated with particular preference. Carl Jung, a Swiss psychoanalyst, founded this approach within analytical psychology and his work he completed in the early part of this century is still used today in most psychometric assessment tools.

Therefore, once you are aware and know what to look for, it is relatively easy to understand

What do you do when a coachee is sitting in front of you with their view on the world where you may see a different view in the way they are talking. How do you question this? Should you drive the direction?

Questioning is key to a good coaching session; how do you guide and get the coachee to think in another way? What is an open question? How do you use good open questions to get the coachee to think, maybe change a paradigm?  Questioning must be done, so it is not judgemental and not based on your assumptions.

It is always hard as a coach to stay away from driving down a road to a solution when coaching. Very hard to not judge and make assumptions. The key to coaching is to sit and watch the coachee. How they are talking, what you are noticing in them and yourself, then share this. This Feel uncomfortable at first if you are not used to this. It is about the coachee and not you as a coach so if you feel uncomfortable, get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable because it is the coachees

Every time I travel and especially when visiting the larger metropolitan cities, it always staggers me how much people exist in their own little micro ‘bubble’ letting the world go by in ignorance.  Smart devices and social media haven’t exactly helped of late, but it’s not just in recent times that this has been the case:

I remember as a child on my first trip to London on the underground being told to keep quiet;  it 'Wasn’t the done thing' to speak on the train and innocent me thinking in my head, “Why not, I don’t like this”.  An interesting behavioural control that has been put upon me by parents and others that I never liked!  Fast forward to now and a great story I can share as to why it’s so amazing to get out of that bubble and find out what and (more so) who, is around you!

My daughter Kayleigh in the last part of her A levels and we’ve been doing the rounds (as you do) of all of the Uni’s to try and narrow a choice.  We’d been visiting York University so were travelling