Resources for helping organisations thrive
Here you will find articles on the five types of service I offer organisations and the people in them. These will hopefully give you a flavour of how I work and what inspires my approach. If you have any questions about these services please contact me.
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A Jungian Approach to Coaching
I don’t really do book reviews here but for what seem like unconscious reasons I am. In my work coaching business leaders who are studying, it’s helpful to stay on top of the academic material being pumped into them. Consequently, I can often be found with my head in some relatively obscure books. This is mostly a frustrating experience that makes my brain hurt, as I find the writing often dense and sometimes impenetrable. However, occasionally something resonates and appears very useful, and so it was with Laurence Barrett’s A Jungian Approach to Coaching.
From Chess Boards to Ice Fields
If you are of my generation you would probably have been brought up on concepts like Total Quality Management (TQM), Projects In Controlled Environments (PRINCE2) or something similar like Kaizen. These change methodologies, while all valid, were born out of industrial-age thinking, which I’d argue is no longer serving us quite so well.
Creating a Disturbance
I find lots of my work with business leaders ends up being about problems making real change happen. Organisations thrive on certainty and consensus, which reduce anxiety and create routines, habits and rituals. This becomes what is often described as “the way things are done round here”, the status quo, or as I like to provoke “addiction to a winning formula”. All of which creates a feeling of stuckness, driven by fear of the unknown and the risk of being unpopular. It’s at times like this I’m grateful to Ralph Stacey for creating the disturbance matrix.
The Future of Coaching
In a world that’s increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, what is my role as a coach and does it need a rethink? How might my coaching practice be no longer fit for purpose? What might be needed of me, as a coach, that is beyond my current model? These and other questions have been occupying me since the start of 2023.
Aging and Retirement
A few years ago at a work meeting a colleague concluded his ‘check-in’ by saying, in the most casual way that, at the age of 52, his best years were behind him. This sparked a variety of reactions including, in me, an emotion I have no word for but is something like a sad anger. Perhaps I was railing against my own mortality or just I didn’t fancy spending the day with Eeyore.
Nick Mabey - Professional Biography
I joined BT three months before privatisation as a fresh-faced 19-year old who had messed up academically and was in desperate need of structure. Starting out as a telecom officer in Southampton handling customer complaints, I loved the office environment, with the predictable hours and reliable work. There was plenty of personal and professional development opportunities, which I lapped up. Other memories include leading our response to a massive surge in billing complaints, using a PC for the first time and also going on strike for three weeks.
Being On Strike
She already had tears in her eyes as she rose to explain to us what was going to happen next. The day before we had walked out an hour early as a show of solidarity to fellow workers who had been suspended. So now we had to sign a form ensuring we would not do that again. It was Anne’s job to explain this and get us to sign. We already knew we would not sign and so did she. We already knew the consequences of not signing and so did she. And so the puppet show began…
Going Round In Circles
How often do you sit round in a circle at work, particularly without a desk or table in front of you? Has that ever happened? What did you notice?
Drama In Business: Playing With Purpose
Beautiful, creative chaos… 250 people from a consumer electronics company taking part in a radical alternative theatre workshop. I wish I remember it so well because of the impact it had on those who took part. Sadly the truth is that this event is etched in my memory because it of its rarity.
Using Honour To Maintain The Status Quo
Of all of the things we humans have constructed in order to try to control each other and the world in general, the concept of ‘honour’ seems to me to be one of the more bizarre. It’s a term that has often snagged me in the past and it did so again a few years ago with the reburial of King Richard III in Leicester.
Square Pegs And Sharks’ Teeth
Brian (not his real name) and I hit it off from our very first meeting. He was new into a very large, established organisation, having spent almost all his career in smaller, fast growing businesses and I was asked to help his transition with some coaching. Brian’s boss, who I knew well, was very happy that we built such strong rapport straight away. The HR business partner was delighted that our coaching contract was agreed so quickly. The budget was in place, the schedule and logistics were all sorted. The only tiny problem was that Brian should never have joined the organisation and none of us knew it.