Introduction: The Baobab tree offers some important corporate lessons, in the vast, and often turbulent landscape of corporate environments. Executives find themselves grappling with challenges that parallel the mystique of the Baobab tree. Much like the Baobab’s unique adaptation to arid climates, corporate leaders must navigate through the dry spells of toxic workplace dynamics. This […]
Depression! A cunning and devastating illness. A surprising number of people suffer from its effects and I’m not talking about the in-your-face bi-polar type. Low level feelings of exhaustion, disinterest, inertia, drag, dull, uncreative, sluggishness, apathy. The thing is that, when it comes to this stuff, the workplace is brutal! Furthermore, there is a lot […]
A client recently took my course on Executive Presence. He was struggling with his confidence levels, especially around his boss. The thing is, he was the CFO of the company! How could he find himself at this stage in his career battling with self-esteem issues? Not the domain for executives! They are supposed to get […]
Being an executive of many years standing and a CA(SA) at that, I submit that I am a fairly good judge of character. Sure, I’ve got it wrong but generally I trust my instincts and they mostly do not let me down. So here is a sorry tale of extreme executive manipulation. My client, Jackson […]
Being in an executive coach is a great honour. I deal a lot with emerging executives and it is a humbling profession as it allows me into the deeper parts of peoples fears and courage. Here is an amazing story of just that: Courage. But this story unfolds in a rather different way. It starts […]
We’ve all heard the stuff about stress and health. I for one find the whole thing more stressful than healing. The fact is I just don’t do all those right things that the stress gurus propose – it just takes too much energy and time. But here is something that is very useful and effective […]
The corporate space intrigues me. I spent many years observing its dynamics and being trained into its construct. It plays out in a surprisingly predictable way. One of the phenomenon that was particularly interesting was the way people were deliberately manoeuvred out of the way. This is called “The Ox-Bow Effect”. The thing is if […]
The ongoing debate about the difference between a coach and a mentor is boring me. Just get on with it. I’m going to short circuit the whole issue by melting both ideas into one construct – COACHING. And it works like this: If you want to change your life and you believe that you can […]
When it comes to personal branding, time keeping could be one of the most critical components. Don’t kid yourself. Arriving late might pre-brand you as slovenly and off purpose. And then there are those who fail to show up at all! Usually this type is too embarrassed to face the consequences and make it worse by not even calling […]
In life that is one thing you will learn the hard way. No person can tell you this – you need to have your own personal experience. Relying on a written contract is no way to go into a deal. If you ever have to pull that agreement out the draw, know that you are in trouble. […]