Hear Marcia talking about Emotional Congruence and Leadership 

I'll always be grateful to Dr. Marcia Reynolds for opening up my eyes to the topic of Emotional Intelligence.  This book is readable, easy to apply at work, and soundly based on neuroscience.  It continues to remind me of this important subject, which is invaluable for leadership development and coaching.

Coaching for Performance is now in its 4^th edition (in English) and this feels like a good time to look at Sir John Whitmore’s achievements with fresh eyes.

Whitmore is clear that, for him, coaching is more than a skill or a technique for individual and team development. It’s invaluable for task performance, motivation and delegation and can be deployed as effectively for quick management interactions as it can in a half hour coaching session.  

Hear Sir John Whitmore talking about coaching for performance

John-Paul Flintoff is known for his work at the Sunday Times, as feature writer and associate editor on the Financial Times magazine.  Over the years he’s interviewed a huge range of people, including Hollywood actors, rock stars, sportsmen, artists, politicians, financiers, Nobel-winning scientists, and philanthropists.  

He includes in this list “ordinary” people who have had extraordinary experiences and says that the “best thing about being a journalist is meeting people.”

We all want to live in a better world, but sometimes it feels that we lack the ability or influence to make a difference. 

I am intrigued by the concept of trust, how it is earned, how it is lost, what the impact of a shift in levels of trust is and how it applies to the world of coaching and leadership. Here at the Forton group we have a set of principles that we believe support great coaching great leadership. One of these is trust - trust that the person you are working with is creative, capable, wise and good. This holds true for coaches and leaders. So I was fascinated to read what perspective on this Mr Seldon would bring.

This book was written some years ago and the author speculates about whether 2010 was a point in history where trust was at its lowest ebb. He cites many examples where trust had been eroded; politicians, journalists, police officers and many more. Clearly a time that inspired him to think through some of the key questions around trust and the author comes up with some good models and some practical ideas in different communities that would support the rebuilding of trust and create longevity of trust.

The concept of multiple types of intelligence was pioneered by Howard Gardner in the 1980s. It has always appealed to me and it is increasingly apparent in the new world of work that we reside in that intellectual intelligence alone is not sufficient.

In an hierarchical organisation during the Industrial Revolution, commands flowed down from the top and people were told to make more widgets and they did. The outputs required from most workplaces have shifted in the last two centuries but the organisational structures and the leadership styles have not changed at the same pace.

There is a desperate need for leaders to be more flexible in their styles and for organisations to change structures. Judith's book makes a great contribution to this need. She focuses on the skills required to conduct conversations that build trust and partnership. By analysing both the structure of our conversation and the impact that we have on the brain, drawing on new insights from neuroscience, she provides a mechanism for leaders to be more effective in transforming their teams and organisations