by Liz Gooster (MC11)

Coaching fishbowls always put me in awe of both the coach and the person being coached, awe of their bravery in exposing themselves, their expertise and some of their innermost thoughts and doubts to public scrutiny. Alex Linley’s fishbowl on Realise 2 was no exception. The room was spellbound as Alex – calm, composed, comfortable in a deep aura of gravitas – debriefed his ‘fish’ on his strengths and weaknesses. As an observer, it’s impossible to know how the experience felt for the person being coached, but it seemed as though some clarifying nuggets were gained and several pointers for change and action taken away. This is exactly what you’d hope for as a coach using Realise 2 with a client.

Realise 2 is a strengths assessment tool which seeks to give a holistic picture of a person, viewing their strengths and weaknesses against the three axes of performance, energy and use. It gives a 3D image if you will, based on the 4M model. Having filled in a questionnaire which asks you to rate attributes on how well you perform them, how energised you are by doing them and how often you use them, your personal 4M profile is generated in the form of a 2×2 grid. In the top right quadrant sit your ‘realised strengths’, those things you do well, you do often and which energise you. These are strengths you should marshal (the first ‘M’). Moving clockwise, which is the recommended order for a coaching debrief on the profile, because this means you end on a positive, developmental note, you reach ‘learned behaviours’ in the bottom left. These are things you do well, but which you find more draining than energising. You may or may not use these skills frequently and the advice here is to moderate (second ‘M’) their use. Next up are your ‘weaknesses’, deliberately labelled as such to counter the popular preconception that we need to conquer our weaknesses, which Alex refreshingly describes as ‘garbage’! No one can be good at everything and while we can mitigate the negative impact of our weaknesses – and Realise 2 can help us do this – Alex likes to quote Peter Drucker, who exhorts us to ‘make our strengths productive in order to make our weaknesses irrelevant’. In Realise 2, the guidance is to minimise (third ‘M’) your use of these behaviours.

Finally we come round to the top left quadrant which contains our unrealised strengths. This is possibly the area where we have the greatest potential to make positive change, as these are the things that we do well, are energised by doing but don’t do very often. If we could do these things more, it stands to reason that we could raise both our levels of performance and satisfaction. The advice here, unsurprisingly, is to seek to maximise (fourth ‘M’) these behaviours and how to do so is part of the Realise 2 coaching session.

One of the things which Alex does so skilfully, based on his deep familiarity with the instrument and his experience of using it with a large number of people, is to draw out connections and dynamics. For instance, he points out how strengths, especially if overused, can squeeze out other possible strengths and helps clients begin to identify strategies to allow other abilities to come to the fore, even if only occasionally. I’ve used Realise 2 before, but watching it in action while being enveloped in ‘the great Alex Linley aura’ made me see its benefits operating at a palpably different level. For me the fishbowl was gripping proof of the value of this tool when used precisely and thoughtfully. In Alex’s words, Realise 2 is ‘not a surgical instrument, but a tool to start a conversation’. I’d like to be able to have conversations like the one we witnessed. So much so that I’m already in the process of signing up for Realise 2 training!

More

If you’d like to take the Realise 2 test yourself, or use it with coaching clients, you can download it from http://www.cappeu.com/Realise2/StandardProfile.aspx

For more coaching fishbowls like the one I attended, see the Meyler Campbell website at http://www.meylercampbell.com/programmes/fishbowls.html

by Meyler Campbell

You may have noticed that at Meyler Campbell we have been avidly supporting Anne Waldron’s tandem skydive jump on behalf of Breakthrough Breast Cancer through a couple of fundraising business events in which all proceeds going towards this amazing cause.

1. Anne Scoular Fishbowl on ‘Big Five’ Coaching –14 June, 4-6pm – £85 donation
2. Coaching Cats – an exploration of coaching in the legal profession 21 June – £60 donation

Please go to the following link for details http://www.meylercampbell.com/news/giving-back.html

How your money has helped

The money you help to raise has been fundamental in the fight against breast cancer. This week, three major pieces of research have been published by Breakthrough Breast Cancer. All have been funded in part by Breakthrough, with involvement from two of key scientists, Professors Jorge Reis-Filho and Andrew Tutt.

They have helped reveal:

1. Nine new genes which drive the development of breast cancer – a huge leap forward.
2. A greater understanding of how breast cancer develops even at its very earliest stages. This means that we should, in the future, be able to detect problems earlier so that a woman can receive treatment before her cancer progresses.
3. A previously unknown process that happens to the cells in the body and which is a driver in breast cancer development. By understanding this process we hope to be able to create targeted treatments in the future which, for example, might be able to stop the cancer from developing.

The ramifications of this work in terms of how we diagnose, treat and prevent the disease are potentially huge. You can read more about these on the breakthrough breast cancer website

This work shows how far we have come since Breakthrough was founded 20 years ago. But it also shows how important it is that we carry on, and work harder and faster, until we reach a point when breast cancer is a disease which is no longer life-threatening.

Your support has been vital in helping us to get this far. It is now needed more than ever.

We’d love to see you at one of these fundraising events, it’s for a great cause and even if you are unable to make it, you can still make a donation via uk.virginmoneygiving.com/AnneWaldron.

Thank you

by Saiyyidah Zaidi-Stone (MC11)

We are all seeing an increasing number of professional articles and academic journals regarding happiness in the workplace, but does it really matter? Well, when the Harvard Business Review is writing about ’The Economics of Well-Being’ and independent research confirms that firms with a higher level of happiness amongst employees experience a higher level of profitability we pay attention.

The problem is that while money is easy to count, happiness is a tricky thing to measure. In many ways the impact is like the change from black and white TV to colour- it can be revolutionary. Embracing workplace happiness may require a leap of faith but from working with corporate and public sector clients it’s a pretty short leap and provides the basis to nurture a stronger bond between employee and organization. Imagine the impact of knowing that what some of your employees really want is fruit bowls in the kitchen rather than a monthly night out? A small intervention which saves money and gives staff what they want rather than what you think they need. Research confirms that companies which provide genuine emphasis on not just making a profit but also on positivity increase loyalty; reduce attrition; enable higher creativity, motivation and confidence whilst increasing productivity. It’s a no brainer to me!

As a business coach how do you take this new knowledge and apply it in the coaching context to enable your coaching clients (and their teams) to maximise performance and productivity?

As a positive psychologist I am familiar with many positive psychology questionnaires used in the workplace and for me one of the best is that created by Jess Pryce-Jones and her team at iOpener. The People and Performance Questionnaire is easy to grasp and provides results framed around the framework of the 5C’s: Contribution, Conviction, Culture, Commitment and Confidence. On 18 April 2012 on behalf of Meyler Campbell I hosted a coaching fishbowl where we were privileged to witness Jess coaching with the tool. Without going into too much detail lets just say that the insights created for the coachee through the use of this tool were incredible. The attendees were mesmerized and many had questions relating to the use of the tool and the impact on the coaching session. The use of questionnaires in coaching sessions increases insight and awareness for the coachee and enables the coach to serve the client better through the rich information available for discussion. Given that many of us are already using personality and strengths tools within the coaching setting I see the iOpener tool as a significant addition.

Following on from the success of the coaching fishbowl Jess has made an extraordinary offer to Meyler Campbell Business Coach graduates. The full accreditation for the use of the iOpener tool for organization development, team and individual coaching usually takes 2 days and costs £1500.

In recognition of the calibre of Meyler Campbell business coaches Jess has offered a one-off online webex to accredit anyone wanting to use the iOpener People and Performance Questionnaire on a 1:1 basis only. This will take place on 14 June 2012, 5pm. You’ll get 3 credits to use the tool and be asked to do a small write up to achieve accreditation as a coaching practitioner. The cost would be a minimum £100 donation to the Art Room, a charity which offers art as therapy to children to raise their self esteem, self confidence and independence www.justgiving.com/theartroom. Once the donation is made business coaches are then asked to email Racheal.butcher@iopenerinstitute.com with the name in which the donation. You will then will receive information on how to join the online event. There is limited availability and donations should be confirmed by 7 June 2012 to secure a place.

Assessing well-being can serve many purposes beyond merely enhancing well-being- it can be used to re-craft jobs, negotiate development challenges and build relationships with colleagues and superiors tools like this often play a central role in business coaching- my advice is for you to take up this offer as soon as you can!

To find our more about the People and Performance tool go to www.iopenerinsitute.com. There’s a free mini report so you can see what you’ll get.

Saiyyidah Zaidi-Stone
Dip Arch, RIBA, FILM, FAPM, MSc (Dist)

www.mcleanstone.com
saiyyidah@mcleanstone.com

The following is the speech given by Jules during the  launch of, “Uncommon sense and common nonsense: why some organisations consistently outperform others”. I hope you enjoy it.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————

by Jules Goddard

The best moment in my academic career was an email from Stephen about a month ago, beginning “a very very handsome book has just landed on my desk”. I don’t think Stephen could have understood the weight of emotion that this simple statement released in my mind.

I first conceived the idea for my book in 1978 when I wrote a short essay called “A minimal definition of strategy”. My argument then was that what separates success from failure is not goals, or intentions, or values – but assumptions and beliefs. I thought at the time that this essay might be expandable into a book.

Now 34 years later, the result of this idle speculation is upon us.  The book has finally come out.

34 years.

This works out at 3 words a day.

To say that I was suffering from writer’s block would be like saying that Russell Brand was a confident young man or that Stephen Hawking was good with numbers or that John Prescott was sometimes irritable.

On a typical day, I would start to construct the first word of a new sentence over breakfast.  By lunchtime, the second word of the sentence was beginning to form in my mind.  Imagine the excitement as the third word came into focus just before bedtime.

I remember one day in 1984, a whole sentence came to me in a flash and the rest of the day was spent joyously writing it out in full, leaving the details of spelling and punctuation till the following day after a good night’s rest.

The breakthrough was 2003 when Tony came on board as my co-author. Immediately, the ideas became clearer and the pace quickened.  On one occasion, we had written three full sentences before elevenses.

Clearly, the tempo was killing us.  There was nothing to do but to step out for lunch in St John’s Wood and recover from our exertions.

In the time it took us to write a chapter, Mozart’s whole life could have been lived.

If Tolstoy had written at the same speed, we would still be waiting for Napoleon to be at the gates of Moscow.

Dostoevky could have written about not just the brothers Karamazov, but the sisters, the mothers, the nieces and the God Parents Karamavov as well, with time to spare.

Wagner’s Ring Cycle was composed in the time that Tony and I were rephrasing a particularly tricky paragraph on key performance indicators.

I worked out that if Cherry had done her line drawings for the book at the same pace that Tony and I were sculpting our immaculate prose, she would be drawing lines at 2mm a day.

Penny’s copy editing would be spotting grammatical errors once every three months.

And the printers would be churning out a copy of the book every 47 days.

So please buy this book.

Thrillingly relevant to the issues confronting the country in 1979, you will relive the excitement of the Callaghan years and the winter of discontent.

And by buying it, you will encourage us to write Part 2, so that in 2034 we can re-assemble to celebrate a pithy reminder of what life was like in the year 2012.

If you don’t buy the book, we will assume that you felt we’d rushed it into print without giving the ideas the attention they deserved.

This could radically slow down the speed and confidence with which we write the sequel.

So, my thanks to Tony, my co-author, for his patience, his intellectual companionship, his wisdom and his help.

We’re actually rather proud of the book and we think you will find it a refreshing antidote to most books on business.

When you read it, bear in mind that we had agreed long ago a straightforward division of labour – he would write the sense, and I would write the nonsense.

And finally, a very big thank you to Stephen, our extraordinarily kind and compassionate publisher, to Penny, our unfailingly optimistic copy editor, to Sue, the brilliant designer of the book and to my daughter Cherry, for her lovely illustrations.

And just as important, thank you all for coming this evening to pay homage to the speed with which the right words have been put together in the right combination over the course of a third of a century.

To buy please go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Uncommon-Sense-Common-Nonsense-organisations/dp/1846686016/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337067223&sr=8-1

Sarah Fenwick

CPsychol, AFBPsS, AC Accred, MSCP

Specialist in High Performance Thinking and Behaviours

«  Executive/Business Coaching

«  Leadership Development

«  Sport Psychology

«  Psychometric Profiling

«  Motivational speaker

sarah@sarah-fenwick.com

www.sarah-fenwick.com

by Stephen Newton (MC04)

I have just read this book by Dr John Reed called ‘Pinpointing Excellence‘.  I raise this only because I feel that it may be the way that the coaching market is going and that buyers of coaching may seek to use what is proposed as a selection process, without necessarily thinking it through, which will therefore impact on MC graduates.

Reed makes the point that the Executive Coaching (his term) market is fragmented and that there is no widely agreed / common standard for admission or certification to a profession that has the power to change lives for good or ill to a tremendous degree.  As you may know, he proposes a toolkit for buyers of coaching that evaluates coaches by allocating points in four dimensions:

• Coaching expertise
• Business expertise
• Psychological expertise
• Ethics (which he seems to equate with certification by e.g. WABC, ICF etc.)

A reasonably high score would be gained by a combination of Business Coach Programme, WABC certification, Master’s degree in psychology plus some clinical practice and 20+ years of “C Suite” experience in a Fortune 500 company plus a Harvard MBA….

Whilst what he proposes is arguably better than nothing and is a way to push qualification rigour into the coaching market, it seems to miss the point that qualifications alone do not necessarily mean that an individual can coach successfully.  It seems similar to the investment management industry which has been heavily and increasingly regulated for a generation.  Has investment performance improved as a result?  No; there are still only a handful of managers that can consistently beat the relevant market index.  The difference now is that the rest can explain in agonising detail and with mathematical precision why they failed and how.

Just a view.

by Moray McLaren (MC12)

I have been speaking to Anne and other Meyler Campbell friends about the possibility of organising an annual retreat for the community. Anne has kindly agreed to circulate this exploratory note.

The idea is to host a weekend retreat – where we can catch-up with friends, recharge batteries and have some interesting conversations – while enjoying the great food, wine and autumn sun in Barcelona.

I live in Spain and when Anne told me that 2012 is the 10^th Anniversary of the first Meyler Campbell graduates, it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.

At the same time, I know how busy everyone is and that our personal time is very precious. Before putting this into action, I would really welcome some feedback on what would make this a success, our annual social and learning weekend together in the Catalan countryside.

More specifically:

• What are the hot topics we should be discussing?
• Who are the inspirational people we would like to hear / get to know?
• How best to relax and spend time getting to know each other?

(I am also tempted to ask, should we bring along our significant others – my wife hears so much about Meyler Campbell that she would be curious to meet you all).

No surprises that the suggestions I have received to date have been the fun stuff… hill walking along the coast, morning yoga / mindfullness, wine tasting, long lunches and great company.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to hearing what you think. My e-mail address is moray.mclaren@iberianlegalgroup.com. Please copy my secretary Paula who will be coordinating the responses (paula.brienza@iberianlegalgroup.com).

Best wishes,

Moray

OVERVIEW

What?

 Meyler-Campbell 10^th Anniversary Retreat

Where?

•  Sitges, the upmarket resort of Barcelona
• A 20 minute taxi ride from Barcelona Airport
• Dolce Sitges, a 5 Star, purpose built hotel spa and education centre on the beach
• www.dolcesitges.com

When?

•  Late September / early November 2012
• When England gets cold and Barcelona is still enjoying the autumn warmth
• We will circulate potential dates to those who are interested in attending

 Contacts?

•  Moray.mclaren@iberianlegalgroup.com
• Paula.brienza@iberianlegalgroup.com

Further information?

•  Hotel: http://www.dolcesitges.com/photo-gallery/photo-gallery
• Sitges: http://www.gositges.com/photo-gallery/photogallery.html
• Barcelona: http://www.barcelona-travelguide.com/pictures/barcelona-photo-gallery.html

By Anne Scoular

Business Coach Graduate Emeritus Professor Mary Watts (BC08) has been appointed to the Chair of the British Psychological Society (BPS)’s Special Group in Coaching Psychology. Mary has many different streams of experience which will flow into this role. She is herself a practising coach and supervisor of coaches. She was in there at the very beginning of coaching psychology in the UK, indeed she was Chair of the conference at City University that got the field off the ground in 2004, and has a wealth of theoretical and practical experience of psychology, having earlier been one of the key founders of the fields of health psychology and counselling psychology in the UK as well. She was for a long time Professor of Psychology at City University, the university of the City of London and the professions, and was accorded the honour of Emeritus Professor on her retirement in recognition of her work over many years there. Importantly for her leadership of business coaching, she is herself an experienced leader and manager: as Pro-Vice-Chancellor at City she led a major change programme, and is fascinating to talk to about how she drew on her psychology and coaching daily through that process! And we are privileged that she has another connection with Meyler Campbell: she is our External Assessor, so subjects the the Faculty’s work to a searching review once a year to make sure we stay right up to the mark.

Mary is also utterly delightful, warm and totally down to earth – she will be a great asset to the BPS, congratulations Mary!

For more, see http://www.sgcp.org.uk/sgcp/publications/international-coaching-psychology-review/sgcp-%26-igcp-news-updates-march-2012$.cfm.