new ICF credential announced
I’m feeling delighted and honoured to have achieved the Master Certified Coach (MCC) credential by the International Coaching Federation. Coaching is a growing industry with an estimated 110,000 practitioners worldwide. In February 2023, the ICF announced that it had...
Congratulations! Linda Spencer PCC
Guest blog by Tina Smith, Enhanced Relocation: Arrive and thrive! I’m excited to announce that Linda Spencer, my Co-founder at Enhanced Relocation has recently been awarded Professional Certified Coach (PCC) status by the International Coach Federation...
Use of Psychometrics in Coaching
I am now offering Quintax Personality Profiling in my coaching work. Why use psychometrics? I believe that understanding yourself is a fundamental first step in personal and professional development. Once you understand yourself and "where you're at," you can start to...
Limitations, what Limitations?
A dyslexic journalist? Surely a recipe for disaster. You might be surprised.
Cultural Intelligence: Head, Body and Heart – and More!
Are you grappling with a cultural puzzle? Then I heartily recommend this…
Resilience
In a business world that is increasingly volatile, it’s often said that leaders need resilience. But what is that? The dictionary..
Make your Mentoring Matter
You want to make the most of the know-how in your organisation? Mentoring is a great way to transmit skills, know-how and culture through key levels of the organisation. A senior colleague (mentor) is matched to a junior colleague (mentee) and the agenda is driven not...
Who’s your Strategy Hero?
Strategy is all about choice and we can look to some useful role models who typify three different strategies; Masterly Inaction, Revolution and Game Change. Your coach can help you choose. 1. Masterly Inaction Fabius Maximus, known as the Procrastinator, was a Roman...
Choosing an Executive Coach – accreditation?
Deciding whom to work with when you are looking for an executive coach remains difficult. In 2004 The Harvard Business Review wrote about the “Wild West of Coaching”, noting that there were few barriers to entry, few quality controls and few ways for clients to check...
It is what it is
In my last blog I wrote about the benefits of frustration as a prompt to get you to imagine what you want. "daring to dream is an important step in thinking about change" This kind of imagining is future-oriented and is a creative step towards choosing what you want...
In praise of the life unlived
I’m really enjoying reading a recently published book by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips called, “Missing Out: In praise of the unlived life.” He says that we spend a lot of our energy on awareness of what is not in our life and wanting something else. This is essential...
Making Change Stick(y)
Whether you are planning a new product launch, forming a new team or planning a new strategy, there are
Creative Vectors Coaching: Coaching defined
I’ve been asked by a few people lately why I named my business Creative Vectors Coaching. I chose the name to reflect my understanding of what coaching is. A vector is a term from maths and physics that has direction and magnitude and is illustrated with an...
Power Distance and Cross-Cultural Working
An awareness of cultural norms and relative differences between nations can be invaluable for anyone in business
What’s the value of Research in Coaching?
Executive Coaching is a relatively new profession and even its practitioners sometimes struggle to explain what it is. In fact, coaching is a helping service that draws on many other disciplines to contribute to its own growing body of thought and evidenced practice....
Do you have to be perfect?
Conscientiousness and a passion for excellence are highly prized qualities in the workplace today. In a highly competitive world we need to avoid mistakes and achieve the highest standards. So a perfectionist working style can be a real asset. But what happens when...
Holy Flying Circus: A call to critical thinking
I missed the first 30 minutes of this excellent play on BBC4, which re-imagined the controversy faced by Monty Python over their film, The Life of Brian. It was an hilarious and witty mix of imitation, story telling, satire and flights of fancy. Then I watched a...
Change is tough: Developing resilience in seeing change through
Remember learning to drive? Those first few gear changes seemed so complicated, the gears ground, the car
New media addiction
Can’t stop checking your e-mails, texts, tweets or facebook status? Then you’re suffering from the modern complaint of new media addiction. These tools are fantastic for speeding up communication and finding new information, but used to excess can be a huge time thief...