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Blindspots! We all have them.

It is Officially Spring!  I am writing this on the first day of spring, 1 September.  It is also Father's day here in New Zealand, hope you had a fabulous Fathers day if you are a dad.  May you lead strong and true in that very important leadership role. There is nothing like the role of parent that gives you the opportunity to face that most dreaded thing that can make any courageous leader's blood run cold.  The fact that we may be less than perfect. And even worst, that we...

In The Thick Of Thin Things.

Do you every get caught up in the thick of thin things?  When life gets so "busy" that you are running, balancing, rushing, pulling, getting, hustling, texting... you get the idea.   All this is celebrated and honoured in the culture we live in today.  So we keep doing it, filling our lives up with endless,  meetings, activities and lists.  Oh the lists, the long glorious lists.  Do you know that some studies have showed that just making the list can give us such a...

Why wait for a new season?

I woke up this morning with the realisation that it was a new season, the temperature has well and truly dipped as I walked in the dark this morning.  It is also a new financial year.  My brain immediately did the proverbial "wipe that slate clean, let's start afresh". Why is it we are so primed for waiting for new starts?  We start our diets on a Monday, the start of the week, we hang on until New Year's day to chalk up our wins and losses and then set our intentions for the new ...

Trust. Simple, not easy.

I recently found a questionnaire in a book I was reading on Self trust.  I have always found things that increase my self awareness interesting and valuable.  The more we understand ourselves the more the world around us makes sense.  It exposes how we see our world.  Sometimes how we see the world isn’t necessarily how the world is. I am coming to realise more and more as I work with Leaders and their teams how vital a seemingly simple thing like trust is.  I have al...

What riding pillion taught me about Leadership.

My husband and I have recently gone on a few motorbike trips with some friends.  I have always enjoyed Motorbikes, in fact, I first fell in love with my husband’s bike before I actually met him, when I moved in across the road from him.  I love riding pillion with my husband. We went for a quick ride with our “biker" friends this last weekend. One of the reasons I love riding a motorbike so much is the fact that you are part of your environment, you smell the trees and bushes, and ...

Be You Always!

Authentic! This is another word that is bandied about these days because it sounds sexy and cool.  Words like this often lose their real meaning because when it gets “branded” we start to associated the word with whatever has made it popular.  And that is all fine, but it is good to sometimes look up the word and to see what it is about the word that is stirring us. So what does Authenticity mean?  And more importantly what does it mean to you and your business, team or life?...

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Who you are speaks so loudly, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.  Ralph Waldo Emerson. The word Integrity is one of those words which is largely misunderstood.  It is often assumed it means someone who acts a certain way.  An honest person.  And that is part of it.  This is the word that is the first to be thrown around when I run a facilitation on Values and it is the one value I push back on the most. Firstly because most people don’t really understand what it me...

Why I have given up on Budgeting!

I have giving up on budgeting!  All the accountants and bookkeepers stopped breathing right there.  Breathe!!!  Now let me explain.  Actually if I am totally honest I have never really budgeted. Most of my life it has been an area that I have carried a lot of shame around, as a coach and business person I have felt that I should have known better.  The longer I left it the harder it was to ask for help.   My first introduction to budgeting came when my husband and I...

Does your Leadership leave people with a lift or a limp?

This is a question I have been pondering lately. I get to experience different kinds of leaders in the work that I do. All leaders are inspiring, some inspire me for the wrong reasons. Some leaders inspire me to continue the work that I do so that I can coach up-and-coming leaders to not be like them. This week I got to work with some great leaders who inspired me for all the right reasons and when I see leaders like that it fills me with hope and joy, it reminds me why great leadership is so im...

Leadership Mastery

Mastery is defined as comprehensive knowledge or skill in a particular subject or activity.  It starts with mastering ourselves and leads to us leaving a legacy that adds value, empowers, builds and makes a way for others. Great leadership doesn’t start when you are entrusted with a team, it starts with leading one person…. Yourself.  And to be honest it will probably be the hardest person you will ever have to lead. I always have a quip when people start talking about time ma...

3 Powerful Reasons for Hiring A Coach

“The term ‘Coach’ was initially started in 1830 and the Oxford University put forth the meaning of this term as slang for a tutor”.  I recently read this in an article on the History of Coaching by Mike Morrison. The term Coach comes from the actually horse and carriage Coaches that carried people from one place to the other literally. Today Coaching has grown in popularity and in effectiveness.  There are also many styles and models of coaching just as there are many personal...

The Power of Frustration!

Most of us want to avoid feelings of discomfort for the large part. We want to buy into the Hollywood happily-ever-after. We want to avoid all struggle and it would be great if we could skip through life without bumps, trips or dark patches thank you very much. The reality is that this view is both unrealistic and unhelpful. Unrealistic because no matter how positive you are, we live in a broken world with people who are doing the best with what they have right now and sometimes their best still...

Goodbye Sudan!

I recently saw and shared a post on Facebook that really saddened me, but also sparked a line of thought for this blog.   Sadly this week the last male White Rhino in existence died in captivity.  The photo was posted with the man who would have cared for him.  I posted it and felt incredibly sad as these gorgeous animals are from the country of my birth and so it really struck a cord.  They have been poached for their horn for greed for many years and many thousands of ...

Moving Through Life Without Baggage.

If only life was so simple…  Us humans are complex beings.  We have such good intentions and yet we can sometimes go through seasons where we can actually be our own worst enemy.  We hide when we should be shining.  We hesitate when we should be jumping.  We hold grudges when we should be walking free. The thing about grudges, offenses and unforgiveness is that they are so hard to recognise until we have been carrying them around for a while.  And the danger ...

Where there seems to be no way….

In the busyness of life we can sometimes fall into the trap that we don’t have time to Selah (Pause, and calmly think on that)  I use this term to take time out of my busy schedule to get perspective and keep the main thing, the main thing. I recently had a moment that reminded me that even coaches are prone to being blindsided by this trap.  It is always easier to drum it into your clients than to actually do it yourself (blush)…..  I had a  busy day of meetings an...

Are you Thriving or Surviving?

Isn’t it funny how your best thoughts come to you while you are driving or in the shower? Both of these places have one thing in common which irritates me: no way to write things down.  I love Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk where she tells the story of a great American poet who would be in the fields working when she would feel the poem thundering towards her. She would run to the house to fetch a pencil and paper to record it, and if she didn’t get there on time, it would pass her by. ...

Living from an Open Space

It is amazing how much can change in such a short time.  Change is a constant thing when you are committed to growth.  Growth isn't always comfortable nor easy, but it is simple. Having written a book about change and the growth cycle still doesn't exclude me from going through the process and feeling the emotions attached to it.  I still feel the fear, self-doubt, and the discomfort of uncertainty, but knowing and understanding that it is part of the journey definitely makes you...

Pushing Through the Resistance

At the beginning of the year I decided I needed to finish my 2nd book.  So when i came across a challenge on Facebook from a best selling writer to write 500 words a day, I, with heart pounding , signed up.  The first day or two were good because I was still on holiday and had free time on my hands, but then the resistance which I have been battling for almost two years started to creep up again. I have spend the last two years being very haphazard with my writing.  If I were to ...

Stepping up to the RIM

Apparently shortly before Peter Drucker died he said, "We are in one of those great historical periods that occur every 200 to 300 years when people don't understand the world anymore, and the past is not sufficient to explain the future." I find this exciting!  I find it exciting because this is when we start to get imaginative and innovative and we stop just accepting the status quo and the pain of staying the same overtakes the pain of uncertainty and change.  And stuff gets done!!...

Gathering the Splinters

I have the pleasure of having a very wise lady as a friend, who recently reached out to me to see how I was doing considering this was the first Christmas without my mum.  In our email exchange she acknowledged my feeling a little numb about it and trying to figure out the tension between getting on with it and holding space for the grief, which is what I have been trying to navigate through this last few months.  She reminded me of the life changing 2 years we have had and having done...

Starting with the end in Mind

Happy New Year! I love the beginning of a new year.  There is a sense of being able to wipe the slate clean and start again.  There is a tangible sense of hope in the air for some and a sense of dread for others.  For me, I have the Positivity talent in StrengthFinders, so I am the person with unlimited amounts of hope as I peer into the foggy future. For me a new year is like a giant present, waiting to be unwrapped one day at a time.  The 2nd habit of highly effective peo...

Finding and Forming your Tribe

I can't believe it has been over two years since we arrived here in New Zealand.  It seems like this has always been my home.  I still miss many things about South Africa, mostly the very special people that made up my tribe.  The people who made me who I am today.  There is nothing like uprooting and leaving the country of your birth to make you realise the value you had in the people around you.  For most of my life I had lots of friends who probably, if I am totally ...

Do you have REAL Connection?

Every year one of my goals is to read a book a month.  The books I read are mostly business or leadership books.  This month I am reading a book by Dr Henry Cloud, called the The Power of the Other.  It is fabulous!!  It always amazes me how timely some books are in my life. The science is proving what many of us has felt, but not had the understanding or the words to express.  We need connection, Isolation is bad for us.  What neuroscience has uncovered is that we ...

Leadership is about Capacity

Many years ago now, I remember sitting in a small conference room with other Sole Proprietors as the speaker took a jug and tried to pour the contents into a shot glass. He was talking about leaders and the importance of making sure we were going to do everything we could to ensure we could grow our capacity from the shot glass to the large glass on the table and then he encouraged us, “don’t stop there, never stop growing your capacity to receive more so that your influence could make an im...

Leaders Add Value.

“Everything rises and falls on leadership.” said John Maxwell, an authority in Leadership, at the Global Leadership Summit 2016.Leaders have the ability to bless or curse people. Over the last few days I have been watching the news back in South Africa with a very heavy heart as we see the devastation of an ineffective leader. South Africa needs lots of prayer.Proverbs 29:2 warns us, “When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked are in power, they groan.”Howev...