Articles
Fun, Fun, Fun - Allan Taylor
Inspired by Noah and the Whale’s single 5 Years Time (fun fun fun) Allan Taylor makes some interesting predictions on what will happen in his world:
In 5 years time I’ll be 65 and be an official pensioner. So what…? In 5 years time I’ll be able to get a discount from B & Q and everything else that comes with “benefits” of reaching that age
I’ll have collected lots of wrinkly joke books which will have been given to me by various relations as a reminder that I’ve not long to go. I will be asked time and time again if I’m retired? And I’ll say no I don’t know what that means.
Fun, Fun, Fun
In 5 years time the Kenyans and Ethiopians will have learned how to ride bikes and sail and Team GB will want Gurning and Skittles as Olympic sports.
Somewhere it will become clear that employees who do the job actually know more about it than their boss and a revolution will have started in the workplace.
In 5 years time consultants who have missed the boat will be re-inventing themselves as Employee Connection Consultants and smart businesses will be ignoring them by the dozen.
Fun, Fun, Fun
In 5 years time The City of Edinburgh Council and the Scottish Government will agree a proposal to remove the trams from the city centre and turn the ghost town into a Scottish Theme Park that will feature the renovated Edinburgh Castle Golf Course Hotel owned and operated by Lord Donald Trump of Corstorphine.
In 5 years time the Executive Coaching market will implode as litigation against the extravagant claims made by coaches take hold and thousands of disappointed clients demand compensation
In 5 years time Coaches and Consultants will be licensed by the Government and thousands will be unemployable as they fail to achieve the standards.
In 5 years time you can create your own world…but to be serious for a moment…
There that’s long enough.
In 5 years time I will have settled on what exactly coaching means to me and have worked out how I can help others to help themselves. It’s what I aspire to do, not coach.
I’ll be putting my skills and experience where I think it will make a difference and where I’m needed and wanted and I’ll have the courage of my convictions by turning down the lucrative corporate “Executive Coaching” assignments.
I’ll belong to the one coaching body that is universally recognised as the gatekeeper for professional standards, ethical practice and coaching training and development. At the moment I’m confused as to what I really should be doing to consolidate all my training and experience and align myself with a professional group of coaches that fit with my values. Maybe I should start my own.
I see too many coaches who make extravagant claims about their services. Achieve your life goals, live the life you want, lose weight, gain that promotion, etc. It all sounds like victim centred coaching where the coach’s ego drives the agenda and not as it should put the individual at the heart of the conversation. Of course I know many coaches who are not egocentric but who come from a genuine desire to help others. The trick for those who want one is to be able to tell the difference.
How difficult is it to identify the cowboys (actually when I was a boy cowboys were the good guys) from those who can help? If you Google “Executive Coaching” you get 2,160,000 sites and if you do the same for Coaching you get 78,800,000. So how can you work out where to go?
When I was in the corporate world I looked for a shared set of values as the starting point and then the relevant experience and skills to determine who to use. I wasted a lot of time and money before I could really focus on who could and who couldn’t deliver. I feel another book coming on.
In 5 years time I hope all this gets sorted.
Fun, Fun, Fun….till her daddy took the T-bird away
Allan Taylor
Allan is Founder and Chief Wizard of “Smagicsoitis” a Scottish Company dedicated to the promotion of hair raising; mind blasting and toe curling employee experiences at work.
Allan does not coach nor does he facilitate, neither does he offer life changing solutions to exhausted executives with more money than sense. He offers no guarantees other than the ones you commit to. He is not accountable for anything other than being himself.
He offers only his experience, his views of his world and an uncanny ability to help where help is needed and wanted.
Highly intuitive, inspiringly creative and with a healthy disdain for hierarchy and authority, Allan has a vision for a different world of work than that to which most of us are used to. He wonders if we have the leaders with the courage and integrity to lead a new generation of enthusiastic and energetic people who love their work. His mission is to bridge the gap between the words and behaviours used by managers today.
He has a cycling proficiency badge and an unused library ticket from 1963 and has for over thirty years studied ways of bringing the real person to the workplace.
Allan Taylor
November 2008
Leadership for Sustainability - Richard Little
June 2008 / Richard Little
The narrow scientific rationalism that brought us mass production, market economics and global warming also gave us scientific management. Notwithstanding decades of rhetoric about empowerment and engagement, corporations are still dominated by crude instrumental managerialism – the reduction of human beings, born free, to the status of expendable resources. Until there is a significant change in the practice of leadership in business, and in the legal framework that shapes current corporate structure and purpose, the transition to truly sustainable business will be half-hearted, faltering and fatally slow.
Some illusions about “change” and the Narcissistic desire for it - Jonathan Snell
February 2008 / Jonathan Snell
The experience of Change can thrust us into depression, anxiety, confusion and fear and just as easily excite, enliven and transform us. However, how we might manage it depends upon whether we are part of the process or are left with the consequences.
Do you know who your bank manager is? - Paul Pinson
December 2007 / Paul Pinson
Responsibility in the 21st Century
I recently attended a talk given by Sir John Whitmore. For those of you unfamiliar with him, John Whitmore is probably the pre-eminent UK force in organisational and personal development over the last 30 years or so. A former racing car driver, he is Executive Chairman of Performance Consultants International and is one of the leading figures in the international coaching community with activities and operations globally. He is currently working with multinational corporations and government organisations to establish coaching management cultures and values-based leadership for whole system transformation.
If you’re interested in exploring any of the subjects in these articles, please get in touch.
