blog: news and opinion

The impact of kindness and compassion

30th July 2021

The news emerged that Dame Clare Marx, Chair of the General Medical Council, was stepping down from her post, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She reflects on her career that ‘in my happiest moments, I felt respected, valued and listened to. I felt I belonged’. Her wish is that ‘every doctor and every patient experiences the compassion that defines first-class care’. It’s the humanity between colleagues and by leaders that can evoke either distress or joy, isolation or feeling part of something bigger. How would it be if all of us, as leaders, spent just a couple of minutes each day being aware and conscious of compassion, kindness and listening? Awareness is the crucial starting point for change.

Power and the leader

30th June 2021

One of the most striking features of power is, it seems to me, how multi-faceted the topic is – and how richly the facets interrelate and intersect and interdepend. There are many and varied implications for the exercise of leadership, and leaders can benefit from reflecting on these. For instance, a variety of perspectives are afforded by looking at ‘my’ power, ‘your’ power, ‘our’ power, and the power in and of the system. Further, within each of these comes the contrast between personal power, the power afforded by title or status, and the nuances of the perception of power that arise in the presence or absence of fear or shame. power can be ‘power over’ or ‘power with’ – and the latter implies more sustainability through relationship and connection. Power, courage and compassion can go hand in hand.

Integrity and power

28th May 2021

The client’s terms of engagement transgressed my own deepest values, including integrity. This kind of behaviour on the part of consultancies seems widespread. Further, the attendant disservice to the ultimate end user stems from the enforced compromise of professional integrity, and the imbalance of power is experienced by many of their associates to be abusive. As professionals, are we prepared to tolerate this kind of attitude, behaviour and lack of integrity inherent in the contracting from so many perspectives? Are we really powerless or can we find ways to bring our power respectfully to a rebalancing that will be in all our interests?

Peace, ease and fulfilment

30th April 2021

I accept that it may make no sense to juxtapose a street sweeper's relatively simple situation with my clients’ complex roles and environments. On the other hand, I’m very curious about how leaders conceive of their responsibility (and opportunity) to design and embed working lives for themselves, their peers and their reports which release greater peace, trust, ease and fulfilment - and thus greater effectiveness. More than that, I worry about their health, their wellbeing and their longevity if leaders don't take that responsibility.

Integrity, safety and wellbeing

31st March 2021

I’ve just done something I’ve never done before: I’ve handed back a 4-year contract. At the heart of my decision was an inability to tolerate a client’s terms of engagement – both the formal, explicit terms, and the informal, implicit terms. My deepest values (integrity, professionalism, honesty, care for the coachee experience, respect, acknowledgment, being heard) were compromised. I felt deeply unsafe: my trust in the client was entirely absent. What was happening was moral injury, and the experience was threatening my wellbeing by demanding that I don’t behave in integrity – and I can only maintain my wellbeing if I’m behaving in integrity. I’ve learnt too that doing what matters deeply to me is a significant enabler of tough decisions and tough actions.

'I' or 'we' as a model for leadership?

27th February 2021

What happens when a leader or a nation sees the future not through a lens of relationship, action and impact, but through a lens of isolation, cutting off supply routes of collaboration and support? Is this the model of leadership that we really need? ‘You’ and ‘yours’ can actually be the route to ‘me’ and ‘mine’ if only we choose to look through a broader lens. As a coach, I may enquire with a coaching client more explicitly into the implications of ‘I and we’ in contrast with ‘I or we’, at individual level, team level, organisation level and beyond. Putting ‘I’ before ‘we’ risks shutting off not only precious resources but also risks shutting off precious rewards. ‘We’ before ‘I’ might lead to rewards we hadn’t dreamed of.

Coaching through COVID and BMJ Leader

29th January 2021

I'm privileged to have had a blog published in BMJ Leader, published in BMJ Leader, one of the publications in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) stable. The blog focuses on the very particular leadership style that characterises Coaching through COVID, the pro bono coaching programme for NHS and care sector staff who are directly impacted by COVID, and particularly those who don't nomally have access to coaching, from doctors and nurses to porters, cleaners, pharmacists, physiotherapists and many others, who are experiencing anxiety, uncertainty, threats to their personal safety and that of their families from contracting COVID-19, distress, trauma, exhaustion and much else.

2020: a year of learning

31st December 2020

They say the toughest experiences are also the richest sources of learning. As 2020 closes, I look back indeed on the richest and most intense year of learning I can remember. As the hidden has erupted into the obvious in the most striking of ways, and when some of what we previously took for granted has been completely overturned, it is beyond any doubt that all of us need to beware of claiming that this or that is impossible. Being a co-founder of Coaching through COVID has meant for me the most nourishing, safe, innovative and energising team that I have ever been part of - and we have achieved extraordinary results. And working from home has shown in stark relief the extent to which health and wellbeing fall squarely into the manager’s and the leader’s responsibilities.

Psychological PPE: offer of free support

3rd December 2020

Free support - psychological PPE coaching - is available at Coaching through COVID for key workers impacted by COVID

The washing machine and the laundry: new perspectives on leadership

30th November 2020

If we ever wondered what it would be like to be inside the drum of a washing machine, turned upside down, and over and over, multiple times, spun, and tangled in ways we’ve never before experienced, the last 10 months, since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the UK (and the world), might give us a hint as to what it might feel like. The turbulence created by the new order will mean that there are new lenses through which leaders will need to look as they sort their parameters, their strategies and their tactics: wellbeing jumps up the agenda, communication becomes a priority, relationships and connections become critical, sustainability receives more attention, and processes now require careful thinking through.