Personal Development

The Hero’s Journey and How It Applies to Personal Development and Coaching

In his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell proposes that the hero myths of pretty much all the world’s cultures follow a similar structure, that he called the ‘monomyth’ or the ‘Hero’s Journey’. The hero is typically someone who goes out into the unknown and achieves great things for their tribe, their

Some Thoughts About ‘Core Process’ and Its Links to Appreciative Inquiry

Recently I had a ‘Core Process‘ session with Nick Heap, which was interesting, inspiring, and I’m still thinking about it. This article aims to say about about what Core Process is, its parallels with Appreciative Inquiry and other approaches, and to explore a bit what my own core process is about. What is ‘Core Process’?

Practical Appreciative Inquiry: Are Your Conversations Above Or Below The Line?

How to prepare yourself for any work conversation, even the difficult ones Here’s a very useful little nugget I picked up from a recent episode of the Rebel HR podcast, where the guests were Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres, authors of Conversations Worth Having, which is one of the best books about Appreciative Inquiry and

Social Silences: What Isn’t Being Talked About In Your Organisation?

This week I listened to a fascinating podcast interview with author and journalist Gillian Tett about her new book Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life. The book is about what we can learn if we take useful concepts and methods normally hidden away within the fairly obscure academic discipline of anthropology,

Four Essential Questions For Coaching Yourself Or Others

Why some coaching questions can do more harm than good Coaching, if we follow Sir John Whitmore’s definition that it’s “helping people to learn rather than teaching them”, is about asking questions to help the ‘coachee’ find their own answers and come up with their own solutions. But some coaching questions work better than others. In

How To Get People To Change Their Minds

Getting someone to change their mind, especially when they feel strongly about something, is never easy. If you go straight in, and especially if you let your strong feelings on the topic get the better of you, the chances are you will trigger the ‘Backfire Effect’, leaving them more convinced than ever. To increase your

Recent Evidence-Backed Insights On How Not To Come Across As A Jerk – And What’s Behind Them

A recent paper reported in the very useful BPS Research Digest blog suggests that people often make a bad impression because they indulge in counter-productive tactics for trying to make themselves look better. The paper, “Impression mismanagement: People as inept self-presenters” by Janina Steinmetz, Ovul Sezer, and Constantine Sedikides, lists four ‘strategies’ that people use

Why You Need To Put More Effort Into Empathy As A Leader

Or, How Power Turns You Into A Jerk – And How To Guard Against It The higher up the management ladder you get, the less you care about or even notice how other people feel. Most of us don’t have to search very far in our experience to find examples – but in recent years there

How To Increase Your Emotional Intelligence 3: Get In Touch With Your Emotions

You probably read about the psychology study last year that asked people to sit alone with their thoughts, with no distractions, for just fifteen minutes. Surprisingly, many of the test subjects (67% of the men and 25% of the women) preferred to distract themselves with a mild but painful electric shock rather than experience their

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