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Leadership Mastery

Mastery is defined as comprehensive knowledge or skill in a particular subject or activity.  It starts with mastering ourselves and leads to us leaving a legacy that adds value, empowers, builds and makes a way for others. Great leadership doesn’t start when you are entrusted with a team, it starts with leading one person…. Yourself.  And to be honest it will probably be the hardest person you will ever have to lead. I always have a quip when people start talking about time ma...

3 Powerful Reasons for Hiring A Coach

“The term ‘Coach’ was initially started in 1830 and the Oxford University put forth the meaning of this term as slang for a tutor”.  I recently read this in an article on the History of Coaching by Mike Morrison. The term Coach comes from the actually horse and carriage Coaches that carried people from one place to the other literally. Today Coaching has grown in popularity and in effectiveness.  There are also many styles and models of coaching just as there are many personal...

The Power of Frustration!

Most of us want to avoid feelings of discomfort for the large part. We want to buy into the Hollywood happily-ever-after. We want to avoid all struggle and it would be great if we could skip through life without bumps, trips or dark patches thank you very much. The reality is that this view is both unrealistic and unhelpful. Unrealistic because no matter how positive you are, we live in a broken world with people who are doing the best with what they have right now and sometimes their best still...

Goodbye Sudan!

I recently saw and shared a post on Facebook that really saddened me, but also sparked a line of thought for this blog.   Sadly this week the last male White Rhino in existence died in captivity.  The photo was posted with the man who would have cared for him.  I posted it and felt incredibly sad as these gorgeous animals are from the country of my birth and so it really struck a cord.  They have been poached for their horn for greed for many years and many thousands of ...

Moving Through Life Without Baggage.

If only life was so simple…  Us humans are complex beings.  We have such good intentions and yet we can sometimes go through seasons where we can actually be our own worst enemy.  We hide when we should be shining.  We hesitate when we should be jumping.  We hold grudges when we should be walking free. The thing about grudges, offenses and unforgiveness is that they are so hard to recognise until we have been carrying them around for a while.  And the danger ...

Where there seems to be no way….

In the busyness of life we can sometimes fall into the trap that we don’t have time to Selah (Pause, and calmly think on that)  I use this term to take time out of my busy schedule to get perspective and keep the main thing, the main thing. I recently had a moment that reminded me that even coaches are prone to being blindsided by this trap.  It is always easier to drum it into your clients than to actually do it yourself (blush)…..  I had a  busy day of meetings an...

Are you Thriving or Surviving?

Isn’t it funny how your best thoughts come to you while you are driving or in the shower? Both of these places have one thing in common which irritates me: no way to write things down.  I love Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk where she tells the story of a great American poet who would be in the fields working when she would feel the poem thundering towards her. She would run to the house to fetch a pencil and paper to record it, and if she didn’t get there on time, it would pass her by. ...

Living from an Open Space

It is amazing how much can change in such a short time.  Change is a constant thing when you are committed to growth.  Growth isn't always comfortable nor easy, but it is simple. Having written a book about change and the growth cycle still doesn't exclude me from going through the process and feeling the emotions attached to it.  I still feel the fear, self-doubt, and the discomfort of uncertainty, but knowing and understanding that it is part of the journey definitely makes you...

Pushing Through the Resistance

At the beginning of the year I decided I needed to finish my 2nd book.  So when i came across a challenge on Facebook from a best selling writer to write 500 words a day, I, with heart pounding , signed up.  The first day or two were good because I was still on holiday and had free time on my hands, but then the resistance which I have been battling for almost two years started to creep up again. I have spend the last two years being very haphazard with my writing.  If I were to ...

Stepping up to the RIM

Apparently shortly before Peter Drucker died he said, "We are in one of those great historical periods that occur every 200 to 300 years when people don't understand the world anymore, and the past is not sufficient to explain the future." I find this exciting!  I find it exciting because this is when we start to get imaginative and innovative and we stop just accepting the status quo and the pain of staying the same overtakes the pain of uncertainty and change.  And stuff gets done!!...

Gathering the Splinters

I have the pleasure of having a very wise lady as a friend, who recently reached out to me to see how I was doing considering this was the first Christmas without my mum.  In our email exchange she acknowledged my feeling a little numb about it and trying to figure out the tension between getting on with it and holding space for the grief, which is what I have been trying to navigate through this last few months.  She reminded me of the life changing 2 years we have had and having done...

Starting with the end in Mind

Happy New Year! I love the beginning of a new year.  There is a sense of being able to wipe the slate clean and start again.  There is a tangible sense of hope in the air for some and a sense of dread for others.  For me, I have the Positivity talent in StrengthFinders, so I am the person with unlimited amounts of hope as I peer into the foggy future. For me a new year is like a giant present, waiting to be unwrapped one day at a time.  The 2nd habit of highly effective peo...

Finding and Forming your Tribe

I can't believe it has been over two years since we arrived here in New Zealand.  It seems like this has always been my home.  I still miss many things about South Africa, mostly the very special people that made up my tribe.  The people who made me who I am today.  There is nothing like uprooting and leaving the country of your birth to make you realise the value you had in the people around you.  For most of my life I had lots of friends who probably, if I am totally ...

Do you have REAL Connection?

Every year one of my goals is to read a book a month.  The books I read are mostly business or leadership books.  This month I am reading a book by Dr Henry Cloud, called the The Power of the Other.  It is fabulous!!  It always amazes me how timely some books are in my life. The science is proving what many of us has felt, but not had the understanding or the words to express.  We need connection, Isolation is bad for us.  What neuroscience has uncovered is that we ...

Leadership is about Capacity

Many years ago now, I remember sitting in a small conference room with other Sole Proprietors as the speaker took a jug and tried to pour the contents into a shot glass. He was talking about leaders and the importance of making sure we were going to do everything we could to ensure we could grow our capacity from the shot glass to the large glass on the table and then he encouraged us, “don’t stop there, never stop growing your capacity to receive more so that your influence could make an im...

Leaders Add Value.

“Everything rises and falls on leadership.” said John Maxwell, an authority in Leadership, at the Global Leadership Summit 2016.Leaders have the ability to bless or curse people. Over the last few days I have been watching the news back in South Africa with a very heavy heart as we see the devastation of an ineffective leader. South Africa needs lots of prayer.Proverbs 29:2 warns us, “When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked are in power, they groan.”Howev...

Leaders Are Intentional

For this reason He says, “Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine [as dawn] upon you and give you light.” Therefore see that you walk carefully [living life with honor, purpose, and courage; shunning those who tolerate and enable evil], not as the unwise, but as wise [sensible, intelligent, discerning people], making the very most of your time [on earth, recognizing and taking advantage of each opportunity and using it with wisdo...

Leadership? Where do we Start?

Leadership…  This word fascinates me. The dictionary defines it as “the action of leading a group of people” or an organization, or the ability to do this” or “the state or position of being a leader” and my favourite “capacity to lead”.There have been many different examples of leaders that inspire us, some bold, some courageous, some charismatic and some quietly powerful.The truth is that each of us leads in some way, whether it is in our...

I have a dream

“I have a dream!” It rings in the ears of those who have something to chase, it either scares us or excites us, but it is what keeps us getting up each day to follow that dream, to get one day closer to whatever it looks like. Those who don’t have it, live in a routine and grey world of just enough, some have told themselves that this is all they deserve, some have learnt that having a dream was too painful and now they have retreated to the land of familiar and safe. We all have drea...

A sign of what’s to come…

This morning as Gary and I were walking around our little town of Cambridge with friends we knew from South Africa, I saw a sight that sparked this blog. We were admiring the little town clock tower when we walked under a tree and a burst of colour out of the corner of my eye grabbed my attention. I stopped and went back to take a photo and the phrase “a promise of what’s to come” popped into my head. It was an unusual sight to see because it was the only part of the tree that had the brig...

“Do or Do Not, There Is No Try.”

“I’ll try pick up the pen” he said, with his hands behind his back looking down at the whiteboard markers on the table, his face showing pretend strain. This is what my mentor, was illustrating to someone who had just told him they would “try” to do a directive.  It is Yoda who says “Do or Do Not, there is no try”.This blog was sparked by a comment to a post that was inviting people to attend a function, the person commented that they would try make it. My immediate ...

In the middle of the arena

There are two ways you can experience the arena, one as a spectator and one as a participator. The perspectives are totally different. As you know by now, God talks to me with pictures, this morning in church I had a picture of an arena and felt and saw each perspective. If 2017 is to be your best year yet you will need to engage. Engagement requires you to jump in, take risks and do some stuff.Back to the arena…. The view from the seats is scary and fearful, it smacks of risk, uncertaint...

Joy – A weapon of mass destruction

Sometimes the problem with life is you don’t know how bad its been until it’s good…. As human beings we are really great at making the best of situations. Mostly we just accept what comes at us and deal with it. Especially if you have Positivity as your top strength and especially if you have just immigrated or moved into a place where “normal” is being created day by day because everything is new.One of the great things about moving to New Zealand is that Gary and I started doing...

Happy New Year!!

It feels like it has been a year since I have blogged, I just checked, it has been at least six months. Yikes! 2016 has been a huge year for us as a family, there has been much growth, lots of highlights and a good few disappointments. Looking back though, there has been no regrets. To me that always marks a good year.I am going to resist going through the cheesy “new page” metaphor’s and get straight to the message that is brewing in my heart. Look, I cannot guarantee it won’t...

Be Strong – Be Steadfast – Be Willing

Last Sunday in church was a particularly special time and there were some key phrases that caught my attention and imagination. Firstly from the worship time. We sang a song that is a declaration over New Zealand with three two-word statements.In Maori:Kia Kaha,Kia Mia,Kia manawanui.which means:Be Strong,Be Steadfast,Be Willing.Then we heard from a lovely, gentle preacher from Texas who told us a story about a young man named William Borden whose heart was set aflame with the great nee...