Friday is the time to transition from the working week to the weekend for many of us. It’s a change we mostly welcome, isn’t it? I remember, some years ago though, where the weekend was anything but welcome. I’d just gone through a very messy breakup and week-ends loomed large and lonely ahead of me. It was a painful transition. Last week I wrote about the difference between change and transition – the change being the event and the transition ...
My first train journey in over two years feels totally familiar and strangely alien at the same time. Such simple things. Changing platforms that I used to navigate without even thinking wasn’t so straightforward today; I found myself having to think that bit more because of minor changes. Tiny pauses, but my journey has been a little bit less slick and less confidently undertaken than would have been the case in January 2020. Change means adjustment. We hesitate more, even ...
One thing you can be sure of, whatever change you’ll lead this year, is that all that change will bring lots of resistance along the way too. No change worth doing is achieved without some push back. Resistance can seem like nothing other than a hindrance to progress. But there is a far more positive side too and, when well-managed, resistance can be the key to getting a far better outcome. Having led major change in organisations myself, and having ...
I ran my first coaching skills programme for leaders way back in 1992. At that time the concept of leaders coaching was still new, the GROW Model was a bit ‘out there’ and I recall lively debates around whether or not coaching was ‘a good thing’. In the intervening years, coaching has become a flourishing industry and leaders are expected to coach peers and bosses as well as team members. Sometimes, they’re even encouraged to coach themselves! But you know ...
By Heather Campbell >> Anyone who travels regularly by train knows only too well the irritation of that tinny sound emanating from someone else’s headphones. Today I had that pleasure. First of all, the repetitive delights of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” followed by some kind of game that necessitated repeated meowing sounds. Delightful to the toddler listening to it; less so to me! With adults, I usually ask them to turn down the volume. But it seemed a bit churlish to do this with ...
By Heather Campbell >> In my previous blog I proposed that, in addition to death and taxes there is, in fact, one other certainty in life – and that is we all feel fear on a regular basis. And I believe that fear in the workplace is not only time-consuming and costly but that it creates blockages in communication, stifles innovation and gets in the way of business progress. So, what’s the answer and how can fear be flushed out and dealt ...