Tag Archives: coaching

Commitment v Compliance. What’s the difference?

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All good leaders know the difference between ‘internal commitment’ and ‘compliance’. Yes, sometimes, compliance will have to do, particularly in moments of crisis and great urgency, when there is no time to put the ‘effort’ into gaining real buy-in.

But, the downsides of trying to lead when all you have behind you is ‘compliance’ are clear:-

  • People who are not fully committed to your vision and journey are unlikely to ‘go the extra mile’ when the going gets tough.
  • People will need convincing over and over again as each new situation arises.  Basically you buy compliance with a ‘for one use only’ sticker. 
  • People do not undergo learning and growth so successfully when they adopt a state of ‘grudging compliance’ , unlike when they are ‘fully committed’ and bought in to what they are doing.
  • People who are not ‘fully committed’ tend to look to others to take responsibility and blame others when things go wrong. In other words they deflect responsibility.

For a leader to be successful in their venture, they need their teams and followers to be fully committed and bought in completely to the vision and journey, and be Continue reading →

The “white stuff”, and what it means for your brain

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I love this snow metaphor of how our ‘plastic’ brain works….(attributed to Pascual-Leone).

Neuroplasticity is like fresh pliable snow on a hill. When you go down the hill on a sled for the first time, you can be flexible in that you can choose whatever route to take. You can take different paths on your second and subsequent trips too if you like. However, if you choose to take the same path each time, a deeper and more permanent track will develop, and soon it will be difficult to sled down the hill without being ‘stuck in the rut’ you have created. Your route will now be quite rigid, and it will take some effort to break out of the rut and establish new pathways.

In a similar way, neural circuits, once established, tend to become self-sustaining. As Doidge puts it in his book “The Brain that Changes Itself”, neuroplasticity works both ways, it gives rise not only to mental flexibility and growth, but can also lead to mental rigidity and stagnation.    Continue reading →

Is being urgent a good thing?

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Well, that depends!  Critical issues and problems more often than not benefit from early attention, and a ‘true sense of urgency’ is usually what is required to break-through barriers, obstacles and resistance.

The real enemies of ‘true urgency’ are ‘complacency’ and ‘false urgency’.  You may be familiar with those imposters.

Complacency is a dangerous state of mind, mainly because people rarely believe they are being complacent (at least until after the event). In this state, people are content, satisfied and cling on to the status quo. They don’t look for new opportunities, they are not great fans of change, and tend to stick with what has always worked for them in the past.

False Urgency can be equally dangerous. People displaying this thinking and set of behaviours, are energized, active and busy. They are likely to be anxious or frustrated. Their behaviour can often be mistaken for being productive and important simply because they are busy and active. However, their activity is often misdirected, lacking focus and chaotic.

True urgency is neither of these things.  People displaying true urgency do not Continue reading →

Step off the dance floor once in a while

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I was struck by this article by Paul Shoemaker on the “6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers”.  It all makes sense and I am sure most good leaders will know this stuff – at least they will when they are away from the thick of the action.

So, what are the 6 habits effective leaders should form to get strategic?

  • Anticipate
  • Think Critically
  • Interpret
  • Decide
  • Align
  • Learn
A good list (for more detail on what’s behind each item go to the article) to add to any leader’s toolkit.  However, we all have “espoused” theories, and usually they are pretty sound. The problem comes when we start trying to put them into action.  What we then see are “behaviours in practice”, which more often than not are quite different from what we say we should or would do.
The one additional habit I would add, is STAND BACK and OBSERVE.
This has been expressed in a number of ways by different people.  One analogy I like is that of observing the dance-floor from the gallery.  Every now and then it makes sense to stop dancing, and observe the dancers from the gallery.  Watch their movement, the patterns they make, spot the crowded parts of the floor and watch for the different ways people are dancing. What can you learn? Then, when you rejoin the dance, you will do so with new knowledge, with a fresh perspective, and with strategies to put in to practice.
Another useful way to think about it is Continue reading →

How do you Influence People?

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How often have you thought about your own personal influencing style?  And, has it changed over the course of time?  If it has changed, has that been as a result of your own careful thought-out intervention and change, or has it happened subconsciously, so that you are only aware of the change as a result of reflection?  I suspect that, like most of us, you have not often given it too much thought, especially when in the thick of the action, when deadlines are looming, and decisions just have to be made.

Influencing others is at the very core of Leadership. While that has always been the case, in today’s complex, inter-connected world, it is even more true. To be successful in a world where a leader had direct control over their troops, in an environment where command-and-control was all that was needed, where the tasks expected of people were simply expressed (basically “do-it”, or the slightly more persuasive JFDI), influence was probably less important than straightforward authoritarian directorship.

Effective leaders in today’s business world, recognise that Continue reading →

“Coaching is like Brain Surgery”. So, how sharp is your scalpel?

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For a long time the received wisdom within the world of brain science has been about structure, fixed neural connections, localization of function and other related concepts. This view was largely influenced by some of the pioneering work of people like Hubel & Wiesel, Nobel Prize winners in 1981.

The idea that the brain may actually be ‘plastic’ in some way, that it may continue to make new connections, and that regions of the brain may actually be able to adapt and become responsible for function that it was not originally ‘mapped’ for, was dismissed until very recently.

The great news is Continue reading →

Fancy a Free Coaching Session?

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This is International Coaching Week 2012! And to mark it, I am offering a limited number of free coaching sessions to the first people who respond through this website. All you need to do is submit your contact details through the Contact Us page of this website together with a brief summary of what you’d like to get out of your free coaching session.

It’s that easy.  Go on, what have you got to lose?