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How aware are Chief Executives and their teams of what’s really happening in their organisations? It’s relationships – between people, and between people and events, behaviours, beliefs, cultures and outputs – that are the key to vitality and effectiveness. Given that, how many leaders are really in touch with the health of the relationships they preside over?

In my experience of working with senior people, the same problems and the same fruitless patterns often keep recurring in a single organisation – and it doesn’t seem they can be resolved by rational analysis. Some conversations seem to go round and round repeatedly without ever getting anywhere. Interventions such as leadership development programmes frequently work for a while, but they don’t sustain their benefits.

Sometimes skilled, capable and experienced leaders don’t seem fully able to occupy their authority – and this can be puzzling, given the competence of those leaders.

Such challenges may require a Bigger Conversation – the kind of conversation that addresses not just individuals or individual issues, but which sees both the individuals and the issues as an ecosystem, where what happens in one part of the system impacts on, and is impacted by, other parts.

Looking at organisational and individual challenges through a different kind of lens – a systemic lens – can get beyond the surface and illuminate the true dynamics of what’s going on. This is the kind of lens which takes account of the complexity of interrelationships between roles and the factors that influence them. Such an approach looks at the whole – and not only the separate parts of that whole without connecting them up.

Systemic interventions – whether with groups, teams or individuals – can be designed as a result of a conversation that looks through this new and bigger lens in order to settle dynamics, release vitality, surface blockages, equip leaders and their people to address these blockages, and lead to greater, and sustained, effectiveness for their whole organisations. They can all be equipped to be more resourced, creative, and courageous.

A Bigger Conversation, with broad and deep scope, which explores what’s actually happening and which helps illuminate the influences at work, can be the start of a step change in success.

If you’re reading this and you’re up for something new, different and important, let’s talk.

Photo by Paul Robinson via Compfight

A Bigger Conversation

Relationships - between people, and between people and events, behaviours, beliefs, cultures and outputs - are the key to organisational health. Sometimes skilled, capable and experienced leaders don't seem fully able to occupy their authority, sometimes the same challenge seems to recur repeatedly. Such challenges may require a Bigger Conversation: a conversation that addresses not just individuals or individual issues, but which sees them as an ecosystem.

Influence, impact and culture change: a systemic view

When a new broom comes in to a senior role with high expectations, but is inexplicably unable to occupy their authority, the situation can benefit from a systemic constellations perspective. This means looking at what might have been ignored in the organisation’s remembering, what or who might have been excluded or unacknowledged - and especially what might not have been acknowledged about the contribution of a previous occupant of the role. Energy is then released and the leader is freed up to do what they do best.

Letting go of knowing: new article in 'Coaching at Work'

Clients and potential clients respond with more energy to their experience of how I am than to what I know - and equally, who I am, and how my ‘being’ shows up, have a significantly greater impact on my coaching than what I do.

Compassionate leadership

Compassion at work increases our willingness to trust: our brains respond more positively to bosses who have shown us empathy – and compassion increases the health and wellbeing not only of employees but also of the bottom line. When compassion is low, engagement and levels of discretionary effort are low, retention and recruitment are more difficult, stress and absenteeism are high, and success becomes more elusive.

Nourish Your Practice: new article in Coaching at Work

My article 'Nourish Your Practice' has been published in Coaching at Work January 2017. My reflection before and after every coaching session is an intrinsic part of any coaching that I deliver: without it I would be simply skimming across the surface of what is actually going on and what the possibilities for change could be. I encourage my clients to reflect too.

Practitioner in Systemic Coaching and Facilitation

I've achieved the Practitioner Certificate in Systemic Coaching and Facilitation. My use of constellations - which are a key part of this work - facilitates clients' growth through my coaching. The approach illuminates the hidden dynamics in relationships, teams and organisations, clarifies what may be puzzling or unclear or difficult, and enables change to happen at a level beyond only behaviour management or leadership models.

Neuroscience of gender and performance

In a recent article in 'Coaching at Work' I distil learning from a workshop on the Neuroscience of Gender and Performance. Nurture rather than nature accounts for many of the gender differences we observe in the workplace: male and female brains aren't as different as we're used to thinking.

'What lies beyond': my latest article in Coaching at Work

Attending the cremation of a previous client, and being surrounded by dozens of people who had been part of his life, made me realise that in a coaching relationship I hear and see only a tiny window on the client: their stories reflect just a fraction of who they are - and if I am to deliver real value in my coaching, I need to go far beyond the constraints of the coaching objectives to a deep understanding of who the client is, and can be, in their contexts and systems.

Self-leadership

Unless we know how to lead ourselves, we can’t expect to be effective leaders of others - and self-coaching engenders a capacity for self-leadership as a pre-condition for leading others. High-quality leadership isn’t a check-list: it’s a question of how the leader brings the essence of themselves to their role, and for this, leaders need to courageously examine their own practices and thinking, and to build their self-awareness, self-understanding, and awareness of how the systems of relationships and influences around them work, and how they impact on each other.

Making an impact - through self- and system-awareness

Creating an impact that is authentic - and therefore compelling and lasting - means going beyond the tools and techniques for managing body language, creating rapport and getting 'in the zone' for a presentation. The individual needs to be at ease with themselves through a high level of self-awareness and centredness, and a comprehensive clarity about their relationship to the systems they move within.

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