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.

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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

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 Jess Pryce-Jones (BC2005)

Wall St Journal have taken the first steps to launching a new happiness at work global index using our research. Please can you help us make that happen by going to this link, completing it and sending it on? http://tinyurl.com/WSJ-HappyAtWork

That would be fantastic! So far, so good!

by Meyler Campbell

“Manager as Coach – how the world famous store uses coaching in a retail environment ”

Meyler Campbell

Hi everyone, it was announced last Friday that Alice Perkins is to be Chairman of the Post Office – a huge role, and a long-overdue tribute to Alice’s magnificent work over several decades in both the public and private sector; I can’t think of anyone more deserving or suited to it. A great national institution will be in safe hands. See the link below for the Press Release – and the very warmest congratulations Alice, from all of us!!!!

http://www.news.royalmailgroup.com/article.asp?id=2923&brand=Post_Office_network

By Jess Pryce-Jones (BC2005)

Meyler Campbell Business Coach Graduate Jessica Pryce-Jones,  CEO of the i-Opener Institute, was in a Times2 cover story this week writing on the ‘Power of Nice’ : on why it pays to be nice at work. To read the whole article please go to http://iopener-live.amaze.com/media/11064/the_times_2_-_20_jul_11_-_the_power_of_nice.pdf

By Meyler Campbell

There are some things that in the normal course of events are impossible to get, even for our amazing community – but this summer we’ve been incredibly lucky to secure some briefings one would normally never access.  They’ll put you streets ahead of the game, and every single penny goes to charity. First up:

Big Bang for lawyers: what’s it all about?

Ten thousand law firms across the UK are marching in solid phalanx towards the cliff-edge – Big Bang for lawyers is due to happen on 6 October 2011, when external equity investment will be permitted in English law firms for the first time and “Tesco law” will allow in new and very different competition.  Private equity and M&A are circling and armed to the teeth, and despite their protestations even the largest City firms should be thinking differently.  A few leading edge coaches are already working flat out helping leaders keep clear heads.  But most law firms are in classic Kubler-Ross cycles – were in denial, now in suppressed panic, and most coaches haven’t woken up to the vast opportunity and need for their services.  In sharp contrast to the hyperbole of this blurb, Professor Stephen Mayson, a world authority on law firm strategy, adviser to law firms, companies, regulators and governments around the world, and the insider’s insider on the Legal Services Act, will lay out a sober, cautious and scrupulously accurate briefing on what is actually happening – the key facts, the timings, the implications. Whether lawyer, leader, coach, or all three, in this one short Breakthrough Briefing you can switch from uninformed victim of this change, to informed rider of its waves!

Date: Thursday 14th July 2011, 4.30pm to 6.00pm, central London venue.  Booking Fee £100.  If you want to come but can’t make the date, please feel free to send someone in your place: in addition to being gold dust information, this is the final glorious fundraising push supporting Ann Orton’s parachute jump for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, so we’re keen for as many as possible to attend! To book a place, please contact Claire on clairemaidana@meylercampbell.com. All places will be confirmed upon receipt of the booking fee which can be submitted by clicking the following link: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserPage.action? userUrl=AnnOrton&faId=74454&isTeam=false

Comment by

Dick Tyler – Meyler Campbell Faculty Member

I think there are significant coaching opportunities in law firms. Some of these (a significant majority) are with the rank and file partners, who look after big books of business but don’t really worry much about Legal Services Act issues. Others (a handful, at most, per firm) are with senior and managing partners, who do. I think the Legal Services Act is one element of a change and modernisation process which is happening to the legal profession, but I’d be surprised if it’s going to be like Big Bang, even though quite a lot of suppliers of services to law firms would like it to be!

The fact is that law firms don’t need large capital bases in the way that banks do - we can spend a certain amount of money of recruiting people, opening offices or IT, but we are likely to fall flat on our faces if we do too much of it or do it too fast. The reason for this is that the thing that needs to be scaled up is culture, which is what makes each firm distinctive and takes time. And there are some pretty big firms that have got big without needing the Legal Services Act to enable them to do so.

I don’t want to rain on the parade, I just don’t want people to try and sell coaching on the basis of a false prospectus!

All analysis of which stage of the Kubler-Ross cycle I’m in gratefully received!