This is new on these pages. A short daily commentary on whatever is going in the world but from a life and executive coaching viewpoint. If possible and appropriate I will link each commentary into a common theme for the day.
Super Jumbos Financial Dead Ducks
Are the new super jumbos the Titanic of the 21st century? Delays are being caused by very complex designs and systems. This very complexity may also cause a maintenance nightmare perhaps even a safety concern in service. Second problem is economics. The price of petrol is going up so the margin for error in economic terms is small. In fact the business case for these monsters is marginal at best. The problem is the weight. Every kilo of weight affects the bottom line. What will happen when the main carrier routes out of Australia (Kangaroo and Pacific) are saturated with sub $1000 return airfares? Well the people who designed the LOPAs (in essence the number of seats) to seat 700 people will win out against those who seat 550 (but provide services). There is a trade-off between services and seats. More service less seats, less service more seats. But when the price plummets below $1000 and even $800 there will only be one imperative seats and more seats. Of course the trade-off with service is required as it defines the 'brand'. The idea around which the marketing muscle will be exercised. But brand and the marketing concept will have to be redefined with the super jumbos because the economics of brand don't add up when the fares to UK return are $800. It in effect turns the seat into a commodity bought on price alone. When that happens full service airlines protecting iconic brands will be dead ducks gone the way of bullwhips manufacturers who couldn't turn their facilities to making car engines.
Aboriginals of Northern Australia Facing Extinction
The Aboriginals of Northern Australia are exterminating themselves in a personalised internal frenzy of annihilation. As a writer on Creole issues and the impact of western culture on African people and slaves I understand the impact of white culture, values and mores on native people but what is happening in the north is a tragedy of epic proportions. But nobody cares. 236 years of tortured history is against caring. Solving this problem will be as difficult, if not more, as solving the long standing territorial disputes in the Middle East and Africa. Why? There is a war in those areas but it is undeclared in Australia.
When the community is committing self immolation nobody in the community can be helped. It is like the Jonestown massacre except much slower. It is a lack of mass discipline on a grand scale. It is the community that creates the fund of resources and good will to combat the orgy of self destruction indulged in by its members. It funds this source from the hard work and diligence of the majority but when the majority have also lost the plot, then there is nothing left to give back. Governments, NGOs, charities and do-gooders can't help until the majority in the community create work on the ground that will spark the recovery. In a typical Sydney community for example the majority are law abiding and peaceful and the minority troubled. In remote Aboriginal communities the majority are in trouble and the minority are law abiding. The problem is not personal, it is a system wide epidemic of despair and hopelessness and takes the community as low as it can go. It is not a community anymore but a bunch of dejected and bewildered individuals. The only thing lower than that is their level of health care which is abysmal.
There is a connection between these two commentaries. Iconic brands tend to use indigenous emblems and traditional logos to promote their unique national identity. This is ironic given the lamentable state that Aboriginals the world over (with some exceptions for example Canadian natives) find themselves. The problem is these iconic brands are whiter than white and would not employ many Aboriginals in their operation. This is a case of do as I say not as I do.
Corporate Psychopathy Running Wild
There is a very interesting story today entitled 'Corporate Responsibility best left unregulated'. It is ostensibly about trying to regulate companies to not only focus on generating wealth but also focus on their social responsibilities whilst doing so. The upshot was that it was recommended that no regulation be put in place as it will not lead to any improvements. Based on the work done by researchers and advocacy groups it is a given that there is no such thing as voluntary corporate social responsibility. If business don't have to do it they won't do it. What about their charitable work and support for the community you say? Well my reply is they do this because it generates good will in the community which has a direct impact on their acceptance and product marketing. They do this because they have to do it. It is part of the marketing campaign. You will find in most corporates the group that deals with community support is within the marketing department. There is no need to say Go Figure. It's clear what is going on here. Only those social and community activities that will lead to a direct impact on their bottom line will get funding and support. That is not social responsibility but a marketing campaign. Corporate psychopathy is a natural consequence of the untrammeled exercise of power by corporates both within their organisational hierarchy and when they project that power externally.
Not to stretch the point too much but this is also related to the first commentary. Where corporates see no bottom line value in supporting a community, they won't. Those Aboriginal communities receive no corporate support whatsoever. Never have and never will. The image just doesn't work.
Sisters are doing it for themselves
There is a story today about two sisters travelling in South east Asia when one was injured then subsequently died after a drive by shooting. Last year I became acquainted with the case of a young woman who lost her sister to suicide. Both these cases have been much in my thoughts. What is the process of recovery after losing your sister whether to murder or suicide? The journey back is a long, painful and perilous one. Every day is a struggle without your sister, every day a trial. One solution is to have a baby. It helps the healing process.
About Gilbert Labour
Mr Labour is a strategist, consultant, adviser, speaker and presenter on corporate restructuring, psychopathy in the workplace, life and executive coaching, project and program management, Six Sigma and Lean process improvement.
He combines all these skills in a unique combination, utilising Six Sigma and project management, to provide modern enlightened companies with truly innovative advice that will create a sustainable competitive advantage. Mr Labour exercises his skills and influence with compassion and deep understanding of the human condition especially where restructures result in overwhelming change and job loss.
He specialises in the following industries: legal and accountancy, telecommunications, transportation and aviation, banking and finance, insurance, government, IT and outsourcing and believes that his experience in these verticals is applicable across all industries, countries, languages, cultures and businesses generally. He has 30 years corporate experience in these industries.
Every single industry he specialises in (telcos, aviation, retail banking, insurance, outsourcing) faces fundamental challenges to continued survival and prosperity in the 21st Century and Mr Labour is well placed to provide a multi-disciplinary approach to uncovering insights for competitive advantage.
He sees the management of strategic, compliance and operational risk as one of the key issues facing executive managers on a daily basis. But not all companies can take advantage of formal Basel II and Sarbannes-Oxley (SOX) governance models.
For those companies that are not in the financial industry but still require strong governance around the management of operational risk, Mr Labour is an expert on creating strategies for managing operational risk supported by strong programme management structures to ensure compliance.
He has been extensively involved in process improvement initiatives within project and production environments. He has delivered Six Sigma Green and Black Belt process improvement programs that provide bottom line improvement whilst maintaining and enhancing employee morale.
He also owns and runs one of the world's most comprehensive web resources on the topic of life and executive coaching containing over 1500 pages of advice and more than 250 articles on life and executive coaching. He has also been quoted in learned papers, newspaper and magazine articles.
He has written a book on life coaching which provides an introduction to life coaching for the general public. He has also written a book on executive coaching, Executive Coaching for Process Improvement Excellence, that provides daily insights for top managers looking to succeed in today's fast paced environment.
He is also a pioneer in the field of coaching and project management having presented a landmark paper on this topic at PMISA 2004 (World Conference on Project Management) in South Africa in May, 04. His paper entitled Sane Project Management, a Life and Executive Coaching Approach has created both a new field in project management and a new area of interest and research for coaching and coaches around the world.
For PMISA 2006 (World Conference on Project Management) he has written a paper entitled Project Management and Six Sigma - a convergent and divergent model for solving business problems. He seeks to develop a theoretical and practical model to extract readily applicable business approaches from both divergence and convergence of these two disciplines.
He will explore whether coaching can facilitate the extraction of some of the benefits of this convergence? This will be continuing an exploration of the connection between coaching and project management that he first developed and presented at PMISA 2004.
Mr Labour acknowledges that in today's highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment, a busy consultant, life coach or executive coach must evince a compelling value proposition, as much for himself as for his product and service.
His unique value proposition is bringing to bear, on difficult even intractable business problems, a brilliant mix of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, embracing Six Sigma, Lean, project management, executive coaching, operational and line management.
He has a refreshing engaging and vibrant perspective on life and business in the corporate world. He is able to engage with any company in the world, within his industry expertise and beyond, and provide an assessment of the issues and problems that management suspects exists. He does this on a pro-active basis and confidentially.
He is also able to execute or be involved in the execution of any recommendations resulting from these engagements. He has previously managed large programs of work involving major restructuring, outsourcing and downsizing.
He forecasts a greater demand for people with his unique blend of skills in the future especially where established, staid inefficient companies in otherwise dynamic industries face head-on competition from more efficient home grown companies and those companies thriving in the tiger economies of China and India with their vast pool of cheap, educated and trained local talent.
Mr Labour will be holding an Executive Coaching Retreat in Mauritius between 26 September 2006 and 15 October 2006. Please contact Mr Labour for further details of the retreat. There are places for only 5 executives at this retreat which will focus on the growing opportunities in China and India.
Life Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 128
Life Coaching Thoughts and Ideas
In whatever walk of life or profession you might be in, no matter how busy you are, how demanding you are of other people (especially if you are), always but always give praise and thanks for a job well done. Nothing will buy you more loyalty and even greater efforts from your people than praise. One of the truest markers of psychopaths is that they never give praise (and probably have never received it).
There are the great players who you couldn't have a conversation with about the game they are so gifted at. These people are purely instinctive sportsman. Whilst there are others who besides being great players are also great people, great intellects who know the game from a human dimension and understand greatness. You may be great but it does not necessarily follow you understand what it is to be great, what it takes to be great. These latter also make the best teachers.
Sports people who lose the plot are the same as executives having a breakdown. There is a cause of the breakdown, there is a recovery period both mental and physical and there is a return to the game/office. If only it were as simple as that. The breakdown is such a calamity such a journey into the abyss the void that the comeback is a journey of another dimension. Think of running a mile with a 40 kilos pack on your back and your energy level half of what it used to be.
If you are better, much better than anyone around you it is not really a cause for your personal rejoicing. One of the reasons for your excellence is that your current capability is so much more than whatever the current situation will ever demand of you. The question to ask is: why are you wasting your talents on a position or situation that is evidently far less demanding of your talents than you would wish it to be (in ideal circumstances).
One of the reasons for this is discrimination whether age, race or otherwise. Another reason could be that you have voluntarily downsized and you have taken a role that is less demanding on yourself because your personal circumstances have changed, your energy levels lower and your focus less sharp.
There should always be a layer between what you write and you. Sometimes this layer is raw, bleeding, on edge but it should always be there. When it is not there hell ensures for the artist but undoubtedly great art can ensue but it is not sustainable for the artist. The other extreme is art or writing which is barren, devoid of emotional risk. An artist that is still emotionally engaged but healthily so (especially with all addictions under tight control) is the ideal. The work is edgy but it is sustainable and will improve over time. The time of the incandescent artist is probably past. Does that mean the time of great art is passed?
Corporate psychopathy - what can the knowledge we have about this subject do for us? Is there a program, tool, something to identify and remove psychopaths from the organisation, from our lives? Unfortunately there is no such thing because the disease is not recognised as such and hence has no reliable and agreed diagnosis and treatment. There are no doctors specialising in treating psychopathy, it is not a
condition per se but a description of a personality trait that is socially undesirable but not thought of as an illness. As a result of this there are people out there causing havoc in our personal and work lives that are literally getting away with murder.
How do you recognise someone who's lost the plot? How do you help someone who's lost the plot? You will only help someone you care about. You only want to help someone who you already think highly enough about to take the time to understand their situation. The number one symptom of this problem is asking an area or person to do work for you that is out of their scope. The correct response is for them not to do it. If they do it, then you have two people who've lost the plot. People who have lost the plot are an embarrassment but keep the workplace interesting and vibrant.
What is better? Working within yourself but doing so superlatively and getting compliments and satisfaction form your clients? Or working on something new, at the edge and beyond your performance envelope and confused each day with your clients bemused, unhappy, impatient and frustrated? Pushing the envelopes working in the area of invention, innovation and creativity. Probably the natural answer is working within yourself but that would be wrong. The right answer is both together are better than either one on their own. One is past the other is the future. The future builds on the past but the past also builds on the future. For an explanation see other articles on this web site regarding how to improve your past. You have to look back if you are going forward (using your in built rear view mirror).
How to make the best use of your corporate time? Have a goal separate from the organisation goals that you are working towards. Ideally make everything you do for a corporate goal also work simultaneously toward your personal goal. Merge the two seamlessly so that one becomes the other. There is no two lives here. It is one and only and they are the same.. There is no separation between work and play, life and work.. At work there is life, at home there is work.
How to make the best use of your corporate time? Have a goal separate from the organisation goals that you are working towards. Ideally make everything you do for a corporate goal also work simultaneously toward your personal goal. Merge the two seamlessly so that one becomes the other. There is no two lives here. It is one and only and they are the same.. There is no separation between work and play, life and work.. At work there is life, at home there is work.
All personal success requires a personal charisma the 'why should I care about you factor'. This cannot be manufactured but it can be nurtured if there is a spark of it there. There are books written about how to be likeable but they are useless. Being likeable is a gift. The very best managers, when they walk back into a room where people are working, cough or speak aloud just before they get there (to give them a chance to get on with whatever it is they do and not embarrass them). It is a courtesy by the manager but speaks volumes for their people skills and sensitivity. It displays an innate sense of management.
Realise that you're not in a corporate environment forever so make the most of your time there. Enjoy it. You can only enjoy it if you are triumphant. The secret is to be at the top of your mental and physical game whilst you're there and leave when you go off your game. There is no point being there if you're a lame duck.
About Gilbert Labour
Mr Labour is a strategist, consultant, adviser, speaker and presenter on corporate restructuring, psychopathy in the workplace, life and executive coaching, project and program management, Six Sigma and Lean process improvement.
He combines all these skills in a unique combination, utilising Six Sigma and project management, to provide modern enlightened companies with truly innovative advice that will create a sustainable competitive advantage. Mr Labour exercises his skills and influence with compassion and deep understanding of the human condition especially where restructures result in overwhelming change and job loss.
He specialises in the following industries: legal and accountancy, telecommunications, transportation and aviation, banking and finance, insurance, government, IT and outsourcing and believes that his experience in these verticals is applicable across all industries, countries, languages, cultures and businesses generally. He has 30 years corporate experience in these industries.
Every single industry he specialises in (telcos, aviation, retail banking, insurance, outsourcing) faces fundamental challenges to continued survival and prosperity in the 21st Century and Mr Labour is well placed to provide a multi-disciplinary approach to uncovering insights for competitive advantage.
He sees the management of strategic, compliance and operational risk as one of the key issues facing executive managers on a daily basis. But not all companies can take advantage of formal Basel II and Sarbannes-Oxley (SOX) governance models.
For those companies that are not in the financial industry but still require strong governance around the management of operational risk, Mr Labour is an expert on creating strategies for managing operational risk supported by strong programme management structures to ensure compliance.
He has been extensively involved in process improvement initiatives within project and production environments. He has delivered Six Sigma Green and Black Belt process improvement programs that provide bottom line improvement whilst maintaining and enhancing employee morale.
He also owns and runs one of the world's most comprehensive web resources on the topic of life and executive coaching containing over 1500 pages of advice and more than 250 articles on life and executive coaching. He has also been quoted in learned papers, newspaper and magazine articles.
He has written a book on life coaching which provides an introduction to life coaching for the general public. He has also written a book on executive coaching, Executive Coaching for Process Improvement Excellence, that provides daily insights for top managers looking to succeed in today's fast paced environment.
He is also a pioneer in the field of coaching and project management having presented a landmark paper on this topic at PMISA 2004 (World Conference on Project Management) in South Africa in May, 04. His paper entitled Sane Project Management, a Life and Executive Coaching Approach has created both a new field in project management and a new area of interest and research for coaching and coaches around the world.
For PMISA 2006 (World Conference on Project Management) he has written a paper entitled Project Management and Six Sigma - a convergent and divergent model for solving business problems. He seeks to develop a theoretical and practical model to extract readily applicable business approaches from both divergence and convergence of these two disciplines.
He will explore whether coaching can facilitate the extraction of some of the benefits of this convergence? This will be continuing an exploration of the connection between coaching and project management that he first developed and presented at PMISA 2004.
Mr Labour acknowledges that in today's highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment, a busy consultant, life coach or executive coach must evince a compelling value proposition, as much for himself as for his product and service.
His unique value proposition is bringing to bear, on difficult even intractable business problems, a brilliant mix of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, embracing Six Sigma, Lean, project management, executive coaching, operational and line management.
He has a refreshing engaging and vibrant perspective on life and business in the corporate world. He is able to engage with any company in the world, within his industry expertise and beyond, and provide an assessment of the issues and problems that management suspects exists. He does this on a pro-active basis and confidentially.
He is also able to execute or be involved in the execution of any recommendations resulting from these engagements. He has previously managed large programs of work involving major restructuring, outsourcing and downsizing.
He forecasts a greater demand for people with his unique blend of skills in the future especially where established, staid inefficient companies in otherwise dynamic industries face head-on competition from more efficient home grown companies and those companies thriving in the tiger economies of China and India with their vast pool of cheap, educated and trained local talent.
Mr Labour will be holding an Executive Coaching Retreat in Mauritius between 26 September 2006 and 15 October 2006. Please contact Mr Labour for further details of the retreat. There are places for only 5 executives at this retreat which will focus on the growing opportunities in China and India.
Life Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 127
Life coaching is not about making people feel good about themselves. In some cases, it makes people feel bad about themselves
Influential enough to be credible and credible enough to be influential
The best life coaches learn from their clients as much as if not more than their clients learn from them
A life coach has to be creative because he is in a way reshaping someone else's life and even beliefs. That provides the life coach with a lot of power and influence. How does a life coach reshape someone's life? Or more to the point how does he get himself into a position where he is influential enough to be credible in reshaping someone's life? The latter is the job specification of a life coach.
It is what all your experience and sessions with your client should lead you to. If it doesn't you're not a life coach and your client is wasting his time and money. The former is aspirational, that is, the best life coaches should aim to reshape people's lives. After all, why would they come to you? They come to you because they need a structure to conduct their daily lives. Perhaps even a direction to aim their daily life efforts at. But as life coaching is collaborational, by direction I mean self-direction. But a guided self-direction, at least at first.
The world has endless variety and provides the observant life coach with many opportunities to observe and learn from people (not clients). A great life coach looks for these opportunities, especially if it involves himself, and exploits them to the max. Squeezing all the life learning out of them. At times this may cause pain but that is a small price to pay for this priceless learning. It is what your clients pay you for. That perceptive insight into their own condition.
But that is not to say that life coaching is a purely intellectual pursuit and the resulting relationship one that is antiseptic. It is far from that but it is always absolutely professional and ethical. Great life coaches perform a very difficult balancing act.
They have intellectual horse power of the highest calibre, you need it to be a credible life coach, but that is allied with an emotional awareness of yourself and the client that transcends the intellect and operates in a magical sphere.
All great relationships possess something unfathomable something unexplainable something undeniable something unique and the relationship of a life coach to a client no less so perhaps even more so.
There are two sides to the relationship and the best life coaches do not let you see the join. Rather the join is powerful yet almost invisible that the client has no suspicion that the relationship also has strong emotional elements and that is how it should be.
It is the unspoken part of the relationship and in my opinion the most important part, at least it is the most effective part. That is, recourse to it almost always produces great results. It is where you communicate with someone in an environment of total trust. That is, the point I started this article with has been reached 'influential enough to be credible'.
This trust reposed in you by a client has to be used carefully and wisely. It is communicating beyond the normal barriers people put up. Therefore it reaches down deep and a great life coach can really great affect change for the good. That is a huge responsibility and really should only be reposed in someone who is an exceptional life coach and who understands the scope and range of that responsibility.
A life coach is continually experiencing life, there is no other choice. But what sets a life coach apart is that he can dissect that experience even if it is excoriating especially if it is that way. The tougher the pain the better the lesson. But dissecting pure pain is not for everybody. For most it is too raw to learn from. For those who will go on to make great life coaches, there is no greater crucible.
Where do the great ideas generated in a life coaching session come from? Firstly it is a given that there is no great life coaching session without great ideas. Ideas are generated when the chemistry is right. That is someone who comes to you with the world's problems on his shoulders, no matter how great a life coach you are, you will not be generating ideas at least not initially. Because the client is not ready, you're not ready and the relationship is not ready.
As I alluded to above if life coaching is anything it is a relationship. Without it there is no life coaching. It takes time, it takes knowledge, it takes experience for a life coach to understand exactly what buttons to push. To first of all address what is going on and seek shelter from the storm in a favourable anchorage and then to even think about setting sail for a new course.
It takes working with many clients or a selected client over time (you learn lots either way) to understand exactly what tools in your carry bag to use, how to calibrate these tools and how to deploy in the most efficient way possible. Life coaching is a great learning experience and the best realise that start off pretty useless and as they get more experience, they hopefully will learn and learn quickly.
There is no magic or secret to being a life coach. It takes a confidence in your own abilities to resolve people's problems and issues and the capability to do it relatively quickly. For that you need pure intellect. But that is not enough you also need to be personable and able to develop the right chemistry between you and the client to get things done. On top of all that, you must be a smart and canny business person.
After all life coaching is a small business and a most demanding one at that. Because you are selling yourself, your warmth, your generosity, your analytical skills, your objectivity and above all your honesty and integrity. A tough job skills description. There are not many jobs as demanding. Not to mention the competition. There are at least 50 million web sites out there that deal in life coaching in one way or another.
To be a successful life coach, you must be a stand out in more ways than one. You must catch the attention by your own unique individual slant on life. One that is quirky but truth. One that resonates with the people out there searching the internet for anything and nothing and everything in between. Of course it goes without saying that once you begin to snare clients, you must work with them in an exceptional capacity delivering results. Life coaching is not about making people feel good about themselves. In some cases, it makes people feel bad about themselves at least at the point of initial contact. They're in a space they don't want to be. It is about making people reassess why that is and forcing them in some cases to make changes to their lives to get away from that unwanted space.
About Gilbert Labour
Mr Labour is a strategist, consultant, adviser, speaker and presenter on corporate restructuring, psychopathy in the workplace, life and executive coaching, project and program management, Six Sigma and Lean process improvement.
He combines all these skills in a unique combination, utilising Six Sigma and project management, to provide modern enlightened companies with truly innovative advice that will create a sustainable competitive advantage. Mr Labour exercises his skills and influence with compassion and deep understanding of the human condition especially where restructures result in overwhelming change and job loss.
He specialises in the following industries: legal and accountancy, telecommunications, transportation and aviation, banking and finance, insurance, government, IT and outsourcing and believes that his experience in these verticals is applicable across all industries, countries, languages, cultures and businesses generally. He has 30 years corporate experience in these industries.
Every single industry he specialises in (telcos, aviation, retail banking, insurance, outsourcing) faces fundamental challenges to continued survival and prosperity in the 21st Century and Mr Labour is well placed to provide a multi-disciplinary approach to uncovering insights for competitive advantage.
He sees the management of strategic, compliance and operational risk as one of the key issues facing executive managers on a daily basis. But not all companies can take advantage of formal Basel II and Sarbannes-Oxley (SOX) governance models.
For those companies that are not in the financial industry but still require strong governance around the management of operational risk, Mr Labour is an expert on creating strategies for managing operational risk supported by strong programme management structures to ensure compliance.
He has been extensively involved in process improvement initiatives within project and production environments. He has delivered Six Sigma Green and Black Belt process improvement programs that provide bottom line improvement whilst maintaining and enhancing employee morale.
He also owns and runs one of the world's most comprehensive web resources on the topic of life and executive coaching containing over 1500 pages of advice and more than 250 articles on life and executive coaching. He has also been quoted in learned papers, newspaper and magazine articles.
He has written a book on life coaching which provides an introduction to life coaching for the general public. He has also written a book on executive coaching, Executive Coaching for Process Improvement Excellence, that provides daily insights for top managers looking to succeed in today's fast paced environment.
He is also a pioneer in the field of coaching and project management having presented a landmark paper on this topic at PMISA 2004 (World Conference on Project Management) in South Africa in May, 04. His paper entitled Sane Project Management, a Life and Executive Coaching Approach has created both a new field in project management and a new area of interest and research for coaching and coaches around the world.
For PMISA 2006 (World Conference on Project Management) he has written a paper entitled Project Management and Six Sigma - a convergent and divergent model for solving business problems. He seeks to develop a theoretical and practical model to extract readily applicable business approaches from both divergence and convergence of these two disciplines.
He will explore whether coaching can facilitate the extraction of some of the benefits of this convergence? This will be continuing an exploration of the connection between coaching and project management that he first developed and presented at PMISA 2004.
Mr Labour acknowledges that in today's highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment, a busy consultant, life coach or executive coach must evince a compelling value proposition, as much for himself as for his product and service.
His unique value proposition is bringing to bear, on difficult even intractable business problems, a brilliant mix of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, embracing Six Sigma, Lean, project management, executive coaching, operational and line management.
He has a refreshing engaging and vibrant perspective on life and business in the corporate world. He is able to engage with any company in the world, within his industry expertise and beyond, and provide an assessment of the issues and problems that management suspects exists. He does this on a pro-active basis and confidentially.
He is also able to execute or be involved in the execution of any recommendations resulting from these engagements. He has previously managed large programs of work involving major restructuring, outsourcing and downsizing.
He forecasts a greater demand for people with his unique blend of skills in the future especially where established, staid inefficient companies in otherwise dynamic industries face head-on competition from more efficient home grown companies and those companies thriving in the tiger economies of China and India with their vast pool of cheap, educated and trained local talent.
Mr Labour will be holding an Executive Coaching Retreat in Mauritius between 26 September 2006 and 15 October 2006. Please contact Mr Labour for further details of the retreat. There are places for only 5 executives at this retreat which will focus on the growing opportunities in China and India.
Life Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 126
Life Coaching can help unhappy people
But really unhappy people don't want to let go of this pain, it is so comforting and defining
Emotional pain provides a story, a point of reference, a structure, a past but no future
Unhappiness is contagious. Unhappy people want to make other happy people unhappy. They want to make people aware that they're unhappy but they usually do it in a round about way.
They want to infect others with their contagion, with their agony. But because agony cannot be simply transferred or shared, they a will create a little drama and dissension in your life that goes quite close to mimicking what they themselves are going through.
They want to envelope you in a folder of distress and frustration and file you. But not if you know what to watch out for. You will find nothing overt or verbal to help you identify this distressed individual who wants to make you that way too.
Rather than being depressed about it, they are morbidly active and overtly but superficially happy. They are always willing to help you but behind your back they are always complaining about you. You are their victim don't you forget it.
There are some people who you can read unhappiness on their faces. They are emotionally bruised and have lost their inner smile. How do you detect? Just a blank look when formerly it was an active proactive look full of forward energy.
How to detect hidden unhappiness
The state of unhappiness is pretty hard to hide but some people have perfected this difficult art. Most do it poorly because the body language and the eyes give it away. But those who have mastered the inner turmoil and show a pleasant, kind and engaging personality to the outside world, how can you tell they're unhappy?
You will find this type in corporate environments. No matter how bad things are going for them, they still smile and plod (not power) on. The giveaway here is: they are a guided missile but with a faulty inertial navigation system that is stuck on one mode: autopilot and goes in only one direction only. Trying to get them to change tack is senseless and useless.
The next giveaway is a lack of deep and true emotional engagement in anything that is going on around them. They are at the wheel but with eyes shut. This lack of emotional involvement manifests itself in the inability (and reluctance) to adapt to new or change situations.
The third giveaway is that they look as if they are carrying an enormous weight of pain and suffering around them, inside them and outside them. It is a weight you cannot share with them not can they share it with anybody else. It is their own private pain and they possess it fully and no one will take it off them. In fact they don't want to let go of this pain it is so comforting and defining.
The fourth giveaway is a hugely diminished faculty of creativity and innovation especially when it is really necessary: when dealing with a crisis or other disaster. Creativity is usually associate with someone performing at the pinnacle but it is also useful when coming up with creative solutions for getting out of a slump.
It is as if they are paying a penance for a sin not yet committed or a sin committed long ago or an imagined sin. In other works the nexus between cause and effect is tenuous at best. It is very hard to understand what the root cause of the unhappiness as the real reasons are hidden in personal antiquity.
They are all wounds no scars. Scars have not yet had time to form. They carry big open wounds that bleed at the slightest touch so they are afraid to touch and be touched. Afraid to feel and to be the subject of someone else's feelings. Afraid to love and be loved. Too afraid to exist but too afraid not to exist.
The openness of someone healed surprises them but there is unknowing retreat into themselves, a headlong escape into the self which in reality means from prison to solitary confinement.
Love dies on their lips. Warmth chills on their breadth. Beauty petrifies on their face. The furnace of their love perishes. Their sourness bitters their life with bitterness.
Unhappy people are lost, have lost the plot. Don't know themselves anymore. Don't trust themselves anymore. They are on a bleak journey, know there is another more open journey full of sun but don't know how to get there. It exists but cannot be conceived much less found.
About Gilbert Labour
Mr Labour is a strategist, consultant, adviser, speaker and presenter on corporate restructuring, psychopathy in the workplace, life and executive coaching, project and program management, Six Sigma and Lean process improvement.
He combines all these skills in a unique combination, utilising Six Sigma and project management, to provide modern enlightened companies with truly innovative advice that will create a sustainable competitive advantage. Mr Labour exercises his skills and influence with compassion and deep understanding of the human condition especially where restructures result in overwhelming change and job loss.
He specialises in the following industries: legal and accountancy, telecommunications, transportation and aviation, banking and finance, insurance, government, IT and outsourcing and believes that his experience in these verticals is applicable across all industries, countries, languages, cultures and businesses generally. He has 30 years corporate experience in these industries.
Every single industry he specialises in (telcos, aviation, retail banking, insurance, outsourcing) faces fundamental challenges to continued survival and prosperity in the 21st Century and Mr Labour is well placed to provide a multi-disciplinary approach to uncovering insights for competitive advantage.
He sees the management of strategic, compliance and operational risk as one of the key issues facing executive managers on a daily basis. But not all companies can take advantage of formal Basel II and Sarbannes-Oxley (SOX) governance models.
For those companies that are not in the financial industry but still require strong governance around the management of operational risk, Mr Labour is an expert on creating strategies for managing operational risk supported by strong programme management structures to ensure compliance.
He has been extensively involved in process improvement initiatives within project and production environments. He has delivered Six Sigma Green and Black Belt process improvement programs that provide bottom line improvement whilst maintaining and enhancing employee morale.
He also owns and runs one of the world's most comprehensive web resources on the topic of life and executive coaching containing over 1500 pages of advice and more than 250 articles on life and executive coaching. He has also been quoted in learned papers, newspaper and magazine articles.
He has written a book on life coaching which provides an introduction to life coaching for the general public. He has also written a book on executive coaching, Executive Coaching for Process Improvement Excellence, that provides daily insights for top managers looking to succeed in today's fast paced environment.
He is also a pioneer in the field of coaching and project management having presented a landmark paper on this topic at PMISA 2004 (World Conference on Project Management) in South Africa in May, 04. His paper entitled Sane Project Management, a Life and Executive Coaching Approach has created both a new field in project management and a new area of interest and research for coaching and coaches around the world.
For PMISA 2006 (World Conference on Project Management) he has written a paper entitled Project Management and Six Sigma - a convergent and divergent model for solving business problems. He seeks to develop a theoretical and practical model to extract readily applicable business approaches from both divergence and convergence of these two disciplines.
He will explore whether coaching can facilitate the extraction of some of the benefits of this convergence? This will be continuing an exploration of the connection between coaching and project management that he first developed and presented at PMISA 2004.
Mr Labour acknowledges that in today's highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment, a busy consultant, life coach or executive coach must evince a compelling value proposition, as much for himself as for his product and service.
His unique value proposition is bringing to bear, on difficult even intractable business problems, a brilliant mix of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, embracing Six Sigma, Lean, project management, executive coaching, operational and line management.
He has a refreshing engaging and vibrant perspective on life and business in the corporate world. He is able to engage with any company in the world, within his industry expertise and beyond, and provide an assessment of the issues and problems that management suspects exists. He does this on a pro-active basis and confidentially.
He is also able to execute or be involved in the execution of any recommendations resulting from these engagements. He has previously managed large programs of work involving major restructuring, outsourcing and downsizing.
He forecasts a greater demand for people with his unique blend of skills in the future especially where established, staid inefficient companies in otherwise dynamic industries face head-on competition from more efficient home grown companies and those companies thriving in the tiger economies of China and India with their vast pool of cheap, educated and trained local talent.
Mr Labour will be holding an Executive Coaching Retreat in Mauritius between 26 September 2006 and 15 October 2006. Please contact Mr Labour for further details of the retreat. There are places for only 5 executives at this retreat which will focus on the growing opportunities in China and India.
Life Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 125
The mindset of a life coach
How do you go from mere mortal to life coach in the space of 30 minutes
As a life coach the client expects you to be high performing at all times especially when every minute is paid for in advance but how do you get into this mindset where you can be effective immediately?
Firstly, being a life coach is a 1500 metres race (no longer) but not a 100 metre sprint. So you have some time to create the right environment for coaching. You must use this time wisely. Probably in a session you will have the first say 20 minutes to create/recreate the coaching connection. Without this connection, there is no coaching possible.
What do you do in the first 20 minutes whilst you on the fly create the connection. You talk about the known, what has been occupying your client's time since the last session. You not only have to talk to keep this conversation going but you also have to think of the right entry point for your coaching for this session. So you need to keep one conversation going whilst working out how to start another one. You must create that entry point rather than wait for it.
Based on what was discussed at the last session and what the client has been doing in the last two weeks, you can work out the level of traction and progress made against what may have been agreed or discussed at the last session. Life coaching is not project management, it is not a task list. What is discussed and agreed upon from session to session has to reasonably fluid as unavoidable circumstances may derail the best laid plans and intentions.
After the first 20 minutes, you will then have a clear idea of what to focus on. There are a number of standard approaches that I use in my practice that I focus on generically. Sometimes this is tailored for the client but generally speaking these include platform for performance, approaches to keep the brain muscular and active, facing to/creating challenges in the personal and work sphere. Always looking to push the performance envelope.
Once platform is in place then the coaching journey can go where it may. It is like having a car fully charged with fuel and ready to go in any direction you point it. The work can lead into the personal arena looking at relationships for example and/or it can deviate into the work arena and look at such issues as executive health. I find in practice that the professionals I coach are usually workaholics. I can't help them until I can cure them of this addiction. This is a sump that drains away all effort, focus and energies. There is no time, space or energy for a life.
Coaching has a beautiful simplicity and symmetry. It is based on having the right chemistry, the right connection between two people. But it is much more than an emotional connection or bond. Because a coaching relationship is a professional one, the coach must retain a level of emotional independence because the advice you give must be impartial and right given the circumstances. It cannot be based on your own feelings or emotions. It is ironic in that it is a relationship that requires an emotional connection to work yet emotion can have no part in the outcomes or direction.
Clients can and do fall in love with their coaches. It is the nature of the beast. Coaches know this and keep the relationship on a relaxed but business footing. As a coach you are trusted implicitly and it is incumbent upon you to never violate or damage that trust. The coaching relationship cannot survive if the trust is not there.
Being a good coach takes time and experience to understand the right pacing and to not ever force the pacing of any session even though there might be other areas you would like to cover. Given the nature of this relationship, you must always create a bridge from one area to another. You must show how they are inter-connected and one supports the other. Ideas, even the client's, on their own have no place unless you can integrate them into where the client is going.
Given what I have said above, to be a credible life coach you must have a first class brain for working with people. But allied with this brain power must be an emotional maturity to be able to absorb everything the client tells you and reflect it back to them in ways that are new, innovative and creative yet which makes complete and absolute simple sense.
As a life coach, 99% of what you see and understand is left unsaid and unspoken. Therefore when you do speak it should have strong emotional power because you have distilled the best ideas and thoughts in some short, simple but powerful sentences and phrases.
You must have the ability to forget your own personal problems and worries for a moment and focus totally on your client. Sometimes it is hard to do that no matter how professional you are. But there is a space that is not where you are now and where you need to be to be of most use to the client in the shortest possible time. You must jump into that space either before or during the session. That way when the client tells you A, F, O, X, P you can work out that the equation is F = (A + P/O)*X and no other. This is not work for a hack or a poor professional but for someone at the peak of their powers, someone who is the best they have ever been. This is the price of entry for a job that pays $150 per hour.
Being creative is a curse, you are always thinking, molding, merging, sorting and producing. As a life coach, this means writing about what I do on a daily basis and coming up with ideas which I myself have no idea of where they come from. But I do read voraciously so it must have something to do with that. Great ideas about management and executive coaching come from all sorts of places: roman history, german history, Malcolm de Chazal, poetry, Galsworthy, novels of the nineteenth century. Anywhere the human species is flayed to the bone and exposed for scrutiny, study and pity.
A life coach need not have any of the qualities above. The benchmark for a successful life coach is someone who has a good client base and whose business prospers as a result. But I would say as a life coach myself clients only become regular when you start doing some of the things I have outlined above. People will not pay a life coach the large sums they pay them if they are no good, if they do not have an emotional connection with them that sees results.
About Gilbert Labour
Mr Labour is a strategist, consultant, adviser, speaker and presenter on corporate restructuring, psychopathy in the workplace, life and executive coaching, project and program management, Six Sigma and Lean process improvement.
He combines all these skills in a unique combination, utilising Six Sigma and project management, to provide modern enlightened companies with truly innovative advice that will create a sustainable competitive advantage. Mr Labour exercises his skills and influence with compassion and deep understanding of the human condition especially where restructures result in overwhelming change and job loss.
He specialises in the following industries: legal and accountancy, telecommunications, transportation and aviation, banking and finance, insurance, government, IT and outsourcing and believes that his experience in these verticals is applicable across all industries, countries, languages, cultures and businesses generally. He has 30 years corporate experience in these industries.
Every single industry he specialises in (telcos, aviation, retail banking, insurance, outsourcing) faces fundamental challenges to continued survival and prosperity in the 21st Century and Mr Labour is well placed to provide a multi-disciplinary approach to uncovering insights for competitive advantage.
He sees the management of strategic, compliance and operational risk as one of the key issues facing executive managers on a daily basis. But not all companies can take advantage of formal Basel II and Sarbannes-Oxley (SOX) governance models.
For those companies that are not in the financial industry but still require strong governance around the management of operational risk, Mr Labour is an expert on creating strategies for managing operational risk supported by strong programme management structures to ensure compliance.
He has been extensively involved in process improvement initiatives within project and production environments. He has delivered Six Sigma Green and Black Belt process improvement programs that provide bottom line improvement whilst maintaining and enhancing employee morale.
He also owns and runs one of the world's most comprehensive web resources on the topic of life and executive coaching containing over 1500 pages of advice and more than 250 articles on life and executive coaching. He has also been quoted in learned papers, newspaper and magazine articles.
He has written a book on life coaching which provides an introduction to life coaching for the general public. He has also written a book on executive coaching, Executive Coaching for Process Improvement Excellence, that provides daily insights for top managers looking to succeed in today's fast paced environment.
He is also a pioneer in the field of coaching and project management having presented a landmark paper on this topic at PMISA 2004 (World Conference on Project Management) in South Africa in May, 04. His paper entitled Sane Project Management, a Life and Executive Coaching Approach has created both a new field in project management and a new area of interest and research for coaching and coaches around the world.
For PMISA 2006 (World Conference on Project Management) he is presenting a paper entitled Project Management and Six Sigma - a convergent and divergent model for solving business problems. He seeks to develop a theoretical and practical model to extract readily applicable business approaches from both divergence and convergence of these two disciplines.
He will explore whether coaching can facilitate the extraction of some of the benefits of this convergence? This will be continuing an exploration of the connection between coaching and project management that he first developed and presented at PMISA 2004.
Mr Labour acknowledges that in today's highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment, a busy consultant, life coach or executive coach must evince a compelling value proposition, as much for himself as for his product and service.
His unique value proposition is bringing to bear, on difficult even intractable business problems, a brilliant mix of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, embracing Six Sigma, Lean, project management, executive coaching, operational and line management.
He has a refreshing engaging and vibrant perspective on life and business in the corporate world. He is able to engage with any company in the world, within his industry expertise and beyond, and provide an assessment of the issues and problems that management suspects exists. He does this on a pro-active basis and confidentially.
He is also able to execute or be involved in the execution of any recommendations resulting from these engagements. He has previously managed large programs of work involving major restructuring, outsourcing and downsizing.
He forecasts a greater demand for people with his unique blend of skills in the future especially where established, staid inefficient companies in otherwise dynamic industries face head-on competition from more efficient home grown companies and those companies thriving in the tiger economies of China and India with their vast pool of cheap, educated and trained local talent.
Mr Labour will be holding an Executive Coaching Retreat in Mauritius between 29 May 06 and June 11 06. Please contact Mr Labour for further details on the retreat. There are places for only 10 executives at this retreat which will focus on the opportunities in China and India.
Life Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 124
Disappointment
Not being disappointed is bad, being disappointed now and then is good. It means you are setting goals. It may also mean that you may not have the life skills and methodology in place to achieve them especially if they are set very high.
But it is preferable to set goals and fail that not set goals at all. It means you are trying at least. What life coaching can help you with is provide you with some tools and skills to turn the 'try' into a successful strategy.
If you're not disappointed every now and then it means that you are not setting your standards high enough. It means that you are not setting expectations on yourself or setting them high enough. There is no life which is an uninterrupted success or uninterrupted failure. Most lives fall in between the two, some cluster predominantly around the pole of failure.
Being disappointed is good. Not being disappointed in essence means that you have not set your expectations high enough. There is a tendency to go through life 'safely' and not being disappointed and as a corollary being surprised by exceptional performance.
But exceptional performance does not come about when you're not looking. It requires a conscious decision to get there. The conventional wisdom is that being disappointed is something that you should feel bad about because upsets the status quo (of doing little) and is a bad thing all round.
But in life coaching being disappointed is a good thing because it means the first of the two parts required to succeed is in place. The first is setting an expectation on yourself or others that is beyond the norm. The second part then needs to follow and that is providing the guidance and direction required to meet that expectation.
In corporate situations not being disappointed means you're not setting the bar high enough for yourself, your people or your company. There is no point not setting the bar high so as not to be disappointed at the result, that achieves nothing. The point is set the bar high but also provide the support and coaching to reach it.
About Gilbert Labour
Mr Labour is a strategist, consultant, adviser, speaker and presenter on corporate restructuring, psychopathy in the workplace, life and executive coaching, project and program management, Six Sigma and Lean process improvement.
He combines all these skills in a unique combination, utilising Six Sigma and project management, to provide modern enlightened companies with truly innovative advice that will create a sustainable competitive advantage. Mr Labour exercises his skills and influence with compassion and deep understanding of the human condition especially where restructures result in overwhelming change and job loss.
He specialises in the following industries: legal and accountancy, telecommunications, transportation and aviation, banking and finance, insurance, government, IT and outsourcing and believes that his experience in these verticals is applicable across all industries, countries, languages, cultures and businesses generally. He has 30 years corporate experience in these industries.
Every single industry he specialises in (telcos, aviation, retail banking, insurance, outsourcing) faces fundamental challenges to continued survival and prosperity in the 21st Century and Mr Labour is well placed to provide a multi-disciplinary approach to uncovering insights for competitive advantage.
He sees the management of strategic, compliance and operational risk as one of the key issues facing executive managers on a daily basis. But not all companies can take advantage of formal Basel II and Sarbannes-Oxley (SOX) governance models.
For those companies that are not in the financial industry but still require strong governance around the management of operational risk, Mr Labour is an expert on creating strategies for managing operational risk supported by strong programme management structures to ensure compliance.
He has been extensively involved in process improvement initiatives within project and production environments. He has delivered Six Sigma Green and Black Belt process improvement programs that provide bottom line improvement whilst maintaining and enhancing employee morale.
He also owns and runs one of the world's most comprehensive web resources on the topic of life and executive coaching containing over 1500 pages of advice and more than 250 articles on life and executive coaching. He has also been quoted in learned papers, newspaper and magazine articles.
He has written a book on life coaching which provides an introduction to life coaching for the general public. He has also written a book on executive coaching, Executive Coaching for Process Improvement Excellence, that provides daily insights for top managers looking to succeed in today's fast paced environment.
He is also a pioneer in the field of coaching and project management having presented a landmark paper on this topic at PMISA 2004 (World Conference on Project Management) in South Africa in May, 04. His paper entitled Sane Project Management, a Life and Executive Coaching Approach has created both a new field in project management and a new area of interest and research for coaching and coaches around the world.
For PMISA 2006 (World Conference on Project Management) he is presenting a paper entitled Project Management and Six Sigma - a convergent and divergent model for solving business problems. He seeks to develop a theoretical and practical model to extract readily applicable business approaches from both divergence and convergence of these two disciplines.
He will explore whether coaching can facilitate the extraction of some of the benefits of this convergence? This will be continuing an exploration of the connection between coaching and project management that he first developed and presented at PMISA 2004.
Mr Labour acknowledges that in today's highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment, a busy consultant, life coach or executive coach must evince a compelling value proposition, as much for himself as for his product and service.
His unique value proposition is bringing to bear, on difficult even intractable business problems, a brilliant mix of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, embracing Six Sigma, Lean, project management, executive coaching, operational and line management.
He has a refreshing engaging and vibrant perspective on life and business in the corporate world. He is able to engage with any company in the world, within his industry expertise and beyond, and provide an assessment of the issues and problems that management suspects exists. He does this on a pro-active basis and confidentially.
He is also able to execute or be involved in the execution of any recommendations resulting from these engagements. He has previously managed large programs of work involving major restructuring, outsourcing and downsizing.
He forecasts a greater demand for people with his unique blend of skills in the future especially where established, staid inefficient companies in otherwise dynamic industries face head-on competition from more efficient home grown companies and those companies thriving in the tiger economies of China and India with their vast pool of cheap, educated and trained local talent.
Mr Labour will be holding an Executive Coaching Retreat in Mauritius between 29 May 06 and June 11 06. Please contact Mr Labour for further details on the retreat. There are places for only 10 executives at this retreat which will focus on the opportunities in China and India.
Life Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 123
Life Coaching Case Study
Coaching for Life Coaches
T is a lady who was born overseas and emigrated to Australia a number of years ago. She is very intelligent but has a number of failures behind her. Some of which are still ongoing and yet to be fully resolved satisfactorily. The degree of loss is known but the exact number is not, at this stage.
She is an attractive person, warm and friendly. She is also severely overweight but her health is not currently seriously affected. Her husband has been stricken with serious life threatening health issues and this has created a lot of unbalance in her life. She previously lived a life as a high flyer supping with the best in the land.
She has made a number of investments on the assumption that her husband will be with there to make them work but unfortunately his illness has forced her to fire sale some of the these investment at quite a substantial loss.
She is currently reeling because the bad investments are now coming home to roost and in essence she will be paying for these mistakes for many years to come with no underlying assets to show for it at the end of the futile repayments. In addition to the above T has also bought a new business which is in its infancy and yet to become profitable and no other employment at this stage.
What to do? Where to go from here?
A life coach assists with this emotional stock taking by purely facilitating the process. There is no need to provide answers just subtle changes in the right direction. Guide the client ship with tiny imperceptible movements. Only when you are comfortable with the client can you make sudden shifts in direction but even then it must seem and feel normal and logical.
Prepare a balance sheet and quantify the loss in monetary terms. Do not count opportunity cost loss just realisable losses. Have a sum that you can look at and get used to. Think of it as financial closure. Of course it is not closure as you still to fund the deficit but from a moving forward point of view it does provide closure because it is a number than cannot get any bigger and cause any more damage. Do not move to the next step until you have done this accounting work. Seek help from an accountant if you can't do it alone or dispassionately enough but you must have a number to work with.
Now that you have the number of your loss, is that amount funded or not? In other words can you fund this loss from your savings or will you need to borrow money to pay it? If you need to borrow, what are the repayments and can you fund those repayments? Will you need a job to meet the repayments?
After you have settled the financial side of things now comes the emotional fall-out and formation of future baggage. The failure to resolve this may have led T to neglect her weight problem. This latter can take you eye off the ball. Without fitness there is no possibility of platform and without platform there can be no success no matter how talented you are.
Now the hard part but it may have to wait just as a cut takes time to form a scar and heal. There may be a period of time between paying off the financial debts of a failure and beginning to count the emotional debts of failure. Prepare an emotional balance sheet. What are the pluses and minuses in this balance sheet. Preparing this balance sheet requires a crystal clear honesty. So this might take some time when (and if) you get around to it. But until such time as you get around to this, you cannot move forward. Here you should be thinking about what it took you in the first place to give this chance a go? When did it all begin to wrong? The cost of you admitting to yourself that it wasn't going to work and the emotional penalties that admission then imposed. This taking stock of the past might take you six months if you were to do it alone with a life coach perhaps 1 month.
The moment you realised you have made a mistake when you're still buried up to your ears in it is a moment never to be forgotten. In fact you will not let yourself forget it. You do this by inflicting excruciating pain on yourself. At that moment there seems no way out but there is even if the way out leaves you naked on the sea shore after the shipwreck. That moment plus perhaps 3 to 6 months is when those people who will seek help seek it. The others never do and they are in a perpetual purgatory, in life coaching limbo unable to go back (too painful) and unable to go forward (no way or technique of overcoming the negative emotions holding them back).
A perceptive life coach is able to clear the way forward by providing a direction in quite small steps. It is not even a technique at this stage, just tentative steps. Coaching the client to see what works and what doesn't. What unlocks and is a step forward, what brings back old memories and is a step backward. In a way this is a mystery to be unearthed, a secret to be uncovered and hidden country to be discovered. This is the meat of being a life coach.
When the client comes to you with this sort of background, everything you do in a session must be towards unlocking the keys to this mystery. Everything they say you must know in advance what it will be and have already worked out the response (not in terms of words back to them) but in terms of the overall direction you should the session. You must be thinking on your feet at 100 mph but without the client knowing.
Being nervous plays no part in being a life coach. If you are nervous working with strangers on an intimate basis, then life coaching is not for you. The point is that you must be as perceptive and sensitive as an artist but having a solid platform yourself that is analytical and results oriented. It must so you are being paid a lot of money by the client. They are paying for real direction and results not some fantastic or artistic exposition of their character or habits.
BTW T is not a real person but a composite used for the sake of exposition and teaching.
About Gilbert Labour
Mr Labour is a strategist, consultant, adviser, speaker and presenter on corporate restructuring, psychopathy in the workplace, life and executive coaching, project and program management, Six Sigma and Lean process improvement.
He combines all these skills in a unique combination, utilising Six Sigma and project management, to provide modern enlightened companies with truly innovative advice that will create a sustainable competitive advantage. Mr Labour exercises his skills and influence with compassion and deep understanding of the human condition especially where restructures result in overwhelming change and job loss.
He specialises in the following industries: legal and accountancy, telecommunications, transportation and aviation, banking and finance, insurance, government, IT and outsourcing and believes that his experience in these verticals is applicable across all industries, countries, languages, cultures and businesses generally. He has 30 years corporate experience in these industries.
Every single industry he specialises in (telcos, aviation, retail banking, insurance, outsourcing) faces fundamental challenges to continued survival and prosperity in the 21st Century and Mr Labour is well placed to provide a multi-disciplinary approach to uncovering insights for competitive advantage.
He sees the management of strategic, compliance and operational risk as one of the key issues facing executive managers on a daily basis. But not all companies can take advantage of formal Basel II and Sarbannes-Oxley (SOX) governance models.
For those companies that are not in the financial industry but still require strong governance around the management of operational risk, Mr Labour is an expert on creating strategies for managing operational risk supported by strong programme management structures to ensure compliance.
He has been extensively involved in process improvement initiatives within project and production environments. He has delivered Six Sigma Green and Black Belt process improvement programs that provide bottom line improvement whilst maintaining and enhancing employee morale.
He also owns and runs one of the world's most comprehensive web resources on the topic of life and executive coaching containing over 1500 pages of advice and more than 250 articles on life and executive coaching. He has also been quoted in learned papers, newspaper and magazine articles.
He has written a book on life coaching which provides an introduction to life coaching for the general public. He has also written a book on executive coaching, Executive Coaching for Process Improvement Excellence, that provides daily insights for top managers looking to succeed in today's fast paced environment.
He is also a pioneer in the field of coaching and project management having presented a landmark paper on this topic at PMISA 2004 (World Conference on Project Management) in South Africa in May, 04. His paper entitled Sane Project Management, a Life and Executive Coaching Approach has created both a new field in project management and a new area of interest and research for coaching and coaches around the world.
For PMISA 2006 (World Conference on Project Management) he is presenting a paper entitled Project Management and Six Sigma - a convergent and divergent model for solving business problems. He seeks to develop a theoretical and practical model to extract readily applicable business approaches from both divergence and convergence of these two disciplines.
He will explore whether coaching can facilitate the extraction of some of the benefits of this convergence? This will be continuing an exploration of the connection between coaching and project management that he first developed and presented at PMISA 2004.
Mr Labour acknowledges that in today's highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment, a busy consultant, life coach or executive coach must evince a compelling value proposition, as much for himself as for his product and service.
His unique value proposition is bringing to bear, on difficult even intractable business problems, a brilliant mix of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, embracing Six Sigma, Lean, project management, executive coaching, operational and line management.
He has a refreshing engaging and vibrant perspective on life and business in the corporate world. He is able to engage with any company in the world, within his industry expertise and beyond, and provide an assessment of the issues and problems that management suspects exists. He does this on a pro-active basis and confidentially.
He is also able to execute or be involved in the execution of any recommendations resulting from these engagements. He has previously managed large programs of work involving major restructuring, outsourcing and downsizing.
He forecasts a greater demand for people with his unique blend of skills in the future especially where established, staid inefficient companies in otherwise dynamic industries face head-on competition from more efficient home grown companies and those companies thriving in the tiger economies of China and India with their vast pool of cheap, educated and trained local talent.
Mr Labour will be holding an Executive Coaching Retreat in Mauritius between 29 May 06 and June 11 06. Please contact Mr Labour for further details on the retreat. There are places for only 10 executives at this retreat which will focus on the opportunities in China and India.
Life Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 10
Obesity and the roller coaster ride from nadir to zenith and back
There are five journeys in obesity, which one are you on now?
Why are there obese people when there are people starving in the world? Is obesity a medical problem rather than
one of lack of self-control or perhaps even one using food for sexual/sensual gratification for masking (?) the real problems?
How successful is someone who is 250 kilos at 'masking' or hiding the problem?
The five journeys is obesity are -
Getting there becoming obese, this is the easiest journey of all and happens almost without you knowing. This journey is on the road to death.
Staying there at a steady weight, this is a hard journey because the tendency is to put on more weight not less. This journey is a slow death.
The next journey is one into hell and that is on the road to putting on more and more weight. This is the last journey these people even embark on.
This journey ends in death.
The penultimate journey and the one with the most difficulty starting is the road back away from obesity. The enormous journey back is not the problem
but the first step back, the first gram lost. This journey is not a journey of weight loss but a journey to lose the fears and problems that the weight gain had
temporarily put on the back burner. This second last journey is the life coaching journey and has much less to do with weight loss, exercise and fitness and more to do with
facing problems in their real intensity and fury perhaps for the first time since the decision taken to embark on the first journey.
The last journey and that is to keep the weight at the target weight after the massive task of weight loss because again the tendency is to put the weight back on
even faster than before and much much faster than it was lost. For every gram lost a kilo is put on.
Work with a life coach who understands your weight problem is not a weight problem but a personal problem posing, impersonating a weight problem. Someone who knows which
journey you are on and can make sure you either move to the next healthy journey or stay at the healthy journey you're on.
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Coaching Programs
555 Program
The 555 Program is complementary to the 333 Program and is part of a family of programs called The Numbered Series, a simplification of a plethora of products, services and programs into
a number of specifically targeted set of programs that target a very specific audience with a limited amount of time and resources to devote to a life and executive coaching program. The programs
covers a set of goals over a set period for a specific (one time only) fee.
The key goals of the 555 Program is to be able to run 5k in 5 months, to solve 5 life coaching issues or problems in 5 months and to investigate and resolve 5 executive coaching problems
in 5 months.
Life Coaching Portal Programs
Beyond the existing Diamond program being run on the portal, a series of additional programs are being developed to be run for specific audiences and which have very clear targets and goals.
These include the following.
The 555 Program
Gilbert Labour, will personally run this program. It will probably take in the region of 10 suitable people and run for 5 months. The program is multi-faceted and covers three main streams a fitness stream, a life coaching stream
dealing with personal issues and an executive stream to supercharge your work, business and corporate environment.
The first stream is a fitness element. The goal is to be able to run 5k (non stop) in five months and be able to lose 5 kilos in the process. This is a modest achievement and is considered a healthy approach to fitness generally.
I am a former fitness instructor and dance teacher and can provide guidance in this area. You will need a clearance from your doctor if you're over 45.
The second stream is a life coaching element. The goal of the life coaching is to investigate a number of current personal issues and focus on 5 for resolution in 5 months. One to be resolved or at least worked on each month.
The third stream is an executive coaching element. The goal of this element is to come up with five goals or issues to be dealt with in the 5 months of the program. These could involve working towards a promotion, changing jobs, changing careers,
leaving the corporate environment and developing a small business. For the hard core executives and other corporate thrivers and survivors there will be a number of areas that include executive interview training and executive decision making that can be covered.
There are many others and these can be chosen based on your current goals. The aim of this stream is canvass all the possibilities and focus on only 5 and work through each one.
The cost of the program varies. To take part on a one-on-one basis with Gilbert Labour will cost $5000. To take part in a group setting will cost $2000. Individual programs can start at anytime considered suitable.
To provide this program on a company wide basis (more than 10 people), please call Gilbert Labour for a quote.
Please call Gilbert Labour on 0409 223 436 if you would like to take part. Further information on the 555 Program is available from the portal.
General Information
I also do a small amount of pro-bono work in the area of life coaching. I belong to the Life Coaching Pro Bono Group (LCPBG), a group of life coaches I am putting together to do this type of work for people in need but who may not be able to afford the services of a full fee life coach. We make allowances for your circumstances and also on the understanding that once you're back on your
feet, your capacity to contribute to your life coaching will also improve.
Generally speaking, we will set clear goals, we will put in place plans to attain those goals, we will execute the plan effectively. We will monitor and survey the results and ensure our goals are met. In most cases, we will envelope what we are trying to achieve into a coaching programme.
I operate flexibly taking into account the needs of the client as we progress with the programme.
Please call me on my mobile (0409 223 436) for a confidential discussion to begin the journey of self discovery.
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