If Woody Allen was right that 80% of success is showing up, how hard can it actually be to stand front-facing an audience and speak to them for a few minutes?  The answer, for many people, is ‘very hard’, in fact the stuff of nightmares. It doesn’t have to be that way: very few speakers […]

Last week I wrote about people on the barricades and it proved to be an unintentionally prescient reference for the week ahead. I’m going to declare this right up front: I’m a sports fan and my favourite leisure area provided one of the great case studies of all time this week on how to mismanage

I wrote about applications and interviews last week and it evoked such a positive engagement, it feels worth spending a bit more time in this space before we leave it. I’m going to be outspoken in one or two areas so please remember, these are just my personal views. If you disagree, I’d love to

I spend quite a lot of my time helping people who are looking for new jobs. Sometimes these engagements are formal coaching relationships, more often they are friends and former colleagues who make contact to ask for a reference and a bit of advice.  Looking for a job engages so many parts of the average

The rain splashing across the splayed paddles of the Traveller’s Palm outside my window makes me feel like a child again.  It’s the noise of the rainstick, the sheeesh and tip tap of water landing on broad waxy leaves. I love this plant, which stands guard outside our front gate and is lovingly tended (possibly

I had a brilliant finish to my week, leading another two-day coaching workshop at United World College, here in Singapore. I enjoy these experiences each time I have them and each group of aspiring coaches is unique. One of the really powerful things that has been set up at UWC, is the fact that the

…yeah before you abuse, criticise and accuse, walk a mile in my shoes.“ This isn’t my voice, it’s Elvis, singing his own composition in a live recording at The International Hotel, Los Vegas in 1970. In the preamble to his song his full introduction was: “You never stood in that man’s shoes or saw things

It isn’t so easy to give things up.  We all have addictive tendencies to a greater or lesser extent and we all have a threshold for risk. For those of us who have a high tendency towards addiction and a low risk threshold, it’s possible to become trapped in the repeating circles of your own

This week was one of those weeks. They happen from time to time and if you’re like me, you don’t see them coming. It has been coming for some time. It started with my 2021 commitment to reduce my carbon footprint. This, I set about in two ways. Firstly, I have been making myself walk

Once in a while, I have a conversation with someone during which I shock myself by disclosing something I had long held as private and personal. In the right circumstances, any sort of secret can just bob right out of my mouth, like an apple dropped into deep water that finally makes its way back