eadinehickey

Category: Coaching

  • UCD MBA Coaching Article …. just published

    Six years ago a coaching pilot was launched with MBA students in the Smurfit Business School. To date 851 individuals from 30 different countries have benefited from this programme. The purpose of the MBA coaching programme is to provide a space for reflection in the lives of MBA participants to enable them to work on…

  • Leadership and clowning!

    Imagine a big room in the attic of a rural hotel in the Swiss mountains. There are 8 people, 2 facilitators (clown/ consultants) and 6 participants diverse in  terms of age and country of origin. This is a leadership lab run by AZck! Learning and Development in conjunction with Tom Greder. I went to this programme as…

  • ‘We want coaching’

    A recent article in the FT by Maxime Boersma entitled ‘We want coaching,’ say high-fliers shows how perceptions of coaching have changed dramatically over recent years. The Head of Learning and Development at a UK organisation describes how “Executive coaching is increasingly sought by senior leaders as a space where they can have reflective conversations about their work…

  • A unique leadership development opportunity

    For those who follow my blog, you will know that my trip to Harvard in 2012 was significant for me and altered my views and approaches to leadership development. I also benefited from meeting an incredible international group of people with similar interests and aspirations. One such person is Annick Zinck (www.AZck.com). I have the…

  • The downside of expertise!

    Over my life-time I have been on a journey of gaining expertise in the actuarial field, as an IT consultant, as an operations director and now as a leadership development consultant and coach. After-all, expertise gives credibility. In my quest to learn more and know more, I never really considered the down-side of expertise – surely…

  • ‘Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves’ – Carl Jung

    Looking at things through a different lens can often help us see a situation differently and learn. This was exactly what struck me when I came across this quote recently… except the lens in this case is more like a mirror  – so we can understand ourselves and our impact on others a little more.…

  • Leadership in the age of complexity… an interesting article

    Leadership in the age of complexity… an interesting articleThis is an interesting article on the transition from Heroic Leadership to Leadership as a ‘Hosting’ activity. As the article describes, Heroic Leadership relies on the assumption that someone can be in control which is impossible in this age of inter-connectedness.

  • Experimentation

    I wrote in a previous post about the benefits of experimentation to open up our minds to possibilities. I heard today of a cookery book which intersperses QR codes along the way so you can link into a video clip using your phone, iPad etc.. I love it! Such ideas come about through experimentation, making…

  • Acknowledging our part of the mess!

    Facing up to an adaptive challenge requires us to put the problem at the centre, depersonalise it and then look at the various the various stakeholders and where they sit in relation to the problem. That all sounds very logical and depersonalised, however it gets interesting when we look at the part that we ourselves…

  • What is Adaptive Leadership?

    Adaptive Leadership is ‘the practice of mobilising people to tackle tough challenges and thrive’ (source: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership; Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky).  The ‘tough’ challenges referred to are adaptive challenges… challenges which have unclear definitions and unclear solutions. New ground is being covered and there are no obvious solutions to the challenge at hand.…