Reflections
Enjoy this collection of thoughts on core, collective and change leadership.
Exercise for Self-Reflection
At the time of the equinox, day and night are seen to be equal in length and darkness and light are in balance. As with solstices, the equinox reminds me to pause and open a space in time to contemplate my journey through life. In these moments, I am one of a long...
Holding a Mirror to Complexity
My first encounter with coaching supervision felt like being in the desert and suddenly finding water. As in many professions, it’s important that we as coaches don’t fall into the trap of “the cobbler’s children having no shoes,” being too busy developing others to...
The Role of Internal Coaching Teams in Reimagining the Future
Imagine a world in which the principles of coaching become the norm, a culture in which collaboration, innovation and shared leadership are deeply embedded. Is such a dream possible? What can pioneering leaders, visionaries and leapers do to support this dream in...
Reflecting on the Bittersweet
Although the self-reflection so integral to leadership development may be one of the worthiest endeavours we will ever undertake, it is not a simple journey. As leaders and coaches, we cannot grow in others what we have not first explored in ourselves. Examining what...
Clarity Amidst Conflict
With the percolating, disruptive undercurrent of the war in Ukraine, tensions are running high. As coaches and leaders, we recognize that conflict is both natural and necessary for emergence and transformation to occur. However, once conflict becomes toxic and...
10 Tips for Keeping Your Designed Team Alliance Alive
Systems work - whether coaching or leading - is about developing more awareness and intention of what’s emerging within and between systems, and so a greater capacity to act from collective intelligence. Coaching a system to gain more awareness and intention in how it...
Coaching Presence
The energy we bring to teams influences the collective energy. As a leader or a coach of a team, what is the emotional weather that will support the work of your team? What energetic presence is required of you? This presence is not about status or basking in the...
Holding Space for Compassionate Wisdom
To lead and coach means to hear, feel, and sense the emotional energy of others, unfolding what lies within. At times, the intensity of this work can make it challenging to maintain healthy boundaries - to keep from drowning in the pain of our clients and those we...
Dancing with Shadow and Light
So much of what we do as leaders and coaches begins with our relationship with self. We cannot invite others to travel where we ourselves fear to go. It is a dance with the shadow and light at our core, as we work past our own defences and begin to understand and...
Inspiring Transformation
Imagine having the ability to spark a fire in your team that can light up the entire system. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, working toward a common goal and inspired to take action within their own circle of influence. What does it take to develop such...
Calculating the ROI of Coaching
What relationship do you have with measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) of coaching? It takes energy, time and money to go full out on ROI, so we had better know what the ROI of ROI is before going in. One of the most obvious challenges revolves around calculating...
Erkan Kadir | Unlocking Agility with ORSC
"I like to think of ORSC as a different lens to look at the world, one that gives you a richer and wider perspective to understand what's going on between yourself and others." • Erkan Kadir, B.Sc., CEC, ORSCC Having started out in software development, Erkan...
Reflecting on Your Coaching Practice
As a coach, have you ever felt like your client, or perhaps even you are just going through the motions? Maybe the team you are coaching is cycling again - talking about the same old things they’ve discussed many times before, without any energy or commitment to try...
The Leader As Coach
How do you define the role of a leader? Is it an expert who has answers? A mentor who trusts team members to be responsible? A champion who connects, supports and challenges teams? An authority who inspires and directs what needs to happen and when? Amid complexity...
Looking Back & Looking Forward
At this time of year, nature pauses, as buds of what will be slumber awaiting the call to awaken. Do you also long to pause, to take stock and reflect on the whirlwind of incredible change that has been our experience in 2020? On the threshold of this fresh new year...
Change Perspectives
Change has overtaken us. For some time, global and local forces have been signalling a need for transformation. Now, we find ourselves being pushed to and over the brink of change, with no individual or organization remaining untouched. This brink, which appeared so...
Signals from Tomorrow
Much of this year has been spent meandering in the liminal. The word comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold or boundary. It is a space of transition. Standing in this threshold, we peer further past the dividing point in an attempt to see tomorrow. What is...
Expand the Emotional Aperture in Virtual Meetings
In the dramatic shift to an entirely new way of working, hiccups are to be expected. We are settling in, adjusting to a reality of physical distancing, virtual workplaces, and distributed teams. Still, it feels like something is missing. A certain buzz imbibed from...
Yearning to Unmask
Looking around, it is hard to believe how much has changed since Covid-19 insisted we step apart from one another physically and devise other ways to connect. While literally this has led to masking, metaphorically we are experiencing a collective unmasking. Systemic...
United in Conflict
What are you noticing as the world around you shifts? The coronavirus pandemic has revealed a universal truth. We are bounded by our skin, our families, our teams, our organizations, our nations. At the same time, we are without boundaries, forever interdependent. In...
Reflecting on the Great Pause
Here we are, in this liminal space. Some have named this time The Great Pause. The Pause itself has been sparked by the coronavirus, itself a liminal being existing at the border between chemistry and life. This space in between. Between sleeping and awake. Between...
Message in a Bottle
In this strange suspended time, we are physically separated from one another yet long for emotional connection. How can we be here and there, different yet the same, distant yet close - both, at the same time? This ambiguity of ‘both - at the same time’ has been a...
Seeing Beyond the Surface
The work that I do in fostering effective team relationships revolves around learning to connect on a heartfelt level – a connection that creates the open, mutually respectful relationships required for effective collaboration. In doing so, we peel away surface layers...
Evolving Team Energy
Is there someone in your life who commands energy? Who easily lightens or intensifies the atmosphere in a space, in a positive or negative way? Whether these people bring sunshine or brooding storm, there’s no missing the shift that happens when they arrive on the...
ORSC in Action
We all have moments that profoundly change us. For me, defining experiences have included living and working in a remote Tanzanian village, and birthing my children at home using hypnotherapy. To my delight, the discovery of Organization and Relationship Systems...
Flirting with Potential
Is the universe flirting with you? Do certain songs, sights and ideas repeatedly flicker on the periphery of your attention? Are you noticing, missing or purposefully ignoring the signals that are being sent out? Part of developing Relationship Systems Intelligence,...