It seems that every day I receive an email offering advice on habits. The popularity of neuroscience has spurned an interest in how our brains work and what we can do about it. Habits are such simple things. Developed over time, they become enduring and quite resistant to change. They serve a purpose for us, in that they short-cut the need to think about how we behave in certain situations, and they reap rewards when that purpose is served. (more…)
‘It’s where he is now but it wasn’t what he planned.’
These words had been going around my head for weeks since I heard the Damon Albarn song ‘Mr Tembo’.
Somehow it has particularly resonated as I was facing a not unexpected but nevertheless unsettling change in my career. (more…)
To quote Mintzberg whom I referenced in my last blogpost , ‘As Kierkegaard once observed, life is lived forward but understood backward. Managers may have to live strategy in the future, but they must understand it through the past’
At the point at which events happen we often cannot totally understand their meaning and certainly not their full implication. We can only infer what this may mean in the future. However we can and should look back and reflect how events have shaped where and who we are now in order to move forward. (more…)
As someone who is in the business of supporting others to change, I accept that the setting of goals is very important. However I am reminded, every time I set a goal, of the line from John Lennon’s song Beautiful Boy, ‘ Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans’.
I am sure this has been interpreted many times in many ways however I wanted to share my take on this and the context in which I am writing this. (more…)
A report from the UK’s Institute of Leadership and Management claims that women have lower career confidence than men and more self doubts, and women with self doubts have lower expectations. In her book, “Lean In,” Sheryl Sandberg wrote about seeing plenty of women with self confidence issues, stating that whilst men ask for what they want and believe they deserve it, women on the whole do not.
In my recent blog on women on boards I quoted an EU report that claimed that 60% of university undergraduates are women, but significantly fewer go on to leadership positions. (more…)
So should we take positive action to get women on boards?
Yes. Let me justify this with my argument.
If you look around in any country, the senior roles in large companies are held by a small clique of mostly men. Not just this, but men who went to the same schools. It reminded me of the last time I went to a conference in the UK and watched the endless lines of grey suited, grey haired men trooping into the room. Occasionally there were women as well, however on the conference platform again mostly men. (more…)
Barbara is an Executive Coach, leadership, and creativity facilitator with a passion for creative tools and writing about creativity and leadership. 