When Not to Coach
When Not to Coach I'm sitting with my father. He's 93. Health failing but still fighting. Maybe you've been there - That time when you need to make plans for an elder. When you're no longer the child. You're the parent now. It's on you. I want to respect his wishes. I want to preserve his autonomy and agency. So I do what I do best - professionally that is - I coach. I ask. I listen. I say, 'What kind of thing might work best for you here dad?' and 'How would you like to deal with...?' [...]
A New Variant (of Tiredness)
Finally. Finally I am back working face to face. Training, teaching, coaching, mentoring. The school landscape has changed over 16 months. Or rather, what's underneath the landscape has changed. People are tired; tired in ways they've not known and in ways they struggle to describe or understand. I do my best to help them. Here's a thought to make sense of it: March 2020. Chaos. The unknown, the unexpected, the overwhelming. The wicked. I wrote about that, here. We rallied, pulled on our reserves, created, adapted, struggled and (kind of) got there. When I realised what COVID-19 actually meant to [...]
The Only Tip You’ll Ever Need To Stop Procrastinating
It took me 15 seconds to begin writing this article and 30 minutes to finish it. Last year it might be anything up to a day to start and two to finish. Why the difference? One word: 'Just'. Just start writing; just write for 2 minutes; just get your ideas down. I realised that for most for my writing life I'd been accompanied by a writing demon - a voice in my head with a soft and charming message, triggered whenever I thought of writing a blog or a book or an article. Here's what it says/said: Make sure you've got [...]