We are flexible and fit to your schedule

We are goal driven

You may share the cost of each session by training with a friend

We do a pre-exercise screening to ensure you maximum results within your timeframe

About Gilbert Labour

The Best Getting Better

CORPORATE STRESS BUSTER PROGRAM

COMBINING PERSONAL TRAINING AND CAREER TRANSITION COACHING IN ONE UNIQUE PROGRAM

PROVIDED BY GEMINI PERSONAL TRAINING AND VALISE COACHING

What does the program consist of?

In a nutshell, it comprises 26 personal training sessions and 26 career coaching sessions over a six month period. These sessions can be utilised at any time but due to scheduling considerations it is preferable if you select a convenient time each week for your session. You may during this time convert any career coaching sessions to personal training sessions at no extra charge (on the proviso that your career transition is on track). We will up front sets goal for both personal training and career transition coaching and we will measure our success over the next six months against these goals.

This program is designed for those who are under heavy or extreme workplace stress and who need both a physical platform to deal with that stress but also coaching to assist with developing a viable alternative income source. This program is six months because it will take that much time to turn your life around from one focused on your corporate and life goals to one focused on maintaining your mental health and creativity.

PROGRAM DETAILS AT A GLANCE

When - starts 1/7/07, where - personal training is conducted at a number of outdoor locations around Sydney and career coaching can be conducted at any location suited to the client, how long - 6 months duration, how much - $4000 for the six month program payable in 6 monthly instalments over six months. If you pay unfront the cost is only $3500 for the six months.

This program commences on 1/7/07 and there is room on the program for only 20 people. The program lasts six months during which time you will reach a fitness goal and a career transition goal. Knowing how busy you currently are this will be quite an achievement when you get there.

This is a program for those living unsustainable lives in busy corporate environments and know they need to get out eventually if not now. This is a unique program that combines career transition coaching and personal training to reach your goals faster and safely.

What does the program consist of? The two main components of the program are a get fit exercise regime combined with regular consultation and coaching on identifying and developing an alternative career path. Either one on its own is hard but combining the two is harder but if you want results sooner this is the only way to go.

If you require further information or would like to book a place in the program, please contact Gilbert on 0406164801 or send an email to arc24@ihug.com.au.

About Gilbert Labour

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 88

Workplace stress leading to suicide

Life coaching strategies to prevent workplace related suicides

Don't be afraid of the change you need to make. There is greater danger in not changing than there is in changing

Workplace stress is a very serious personal issue that must be firstly taken seriously by the management of any organisation that has endemic stress because of the nature of the work (for example meeting sales targets) or where psychopaths and other ruthless types roams the corridors of power and create localised stress for groups, sections, areas and which finally percolates to individual people. But more important than that the employee affected by the workplace stress must take action to remove themselves from the cause of the stress or face the consequences of being in a furnace, so to speak, which include broken/faulty/dysfunctional family relationships, lack of performance at work, lack of motivation, unrepressed anger which can all lead to a breakdown, resignation and despair followed by suicide.

The rest of this article is directed to those experiencing fierce levels of workplace stress and how to help yourself. It may save your life. The solution is not to quit suddenly or to suffer in silence and stay. Either course by itself is fraught with danger to your mental health.

How do you know you're experiencing an unacceptable (to you) level of workplace stress?

You only need a basic understanding of large organisations to start helping yourself. These monsters are full of very selfish powerful people hoping to use the organisation's goals for their own ends. If these two coincide all well and good if not too bad as long as their personal goals are fulfilled. These people do not care what they need to do (means) to get to their ends. If that means trampling over you, destroying you if they have to, making you do things you don't feel is warranted that's too bad. These people are not necessarily psychopaths (insane) in fact they are most likely perfectly sane but simply ruthless. The organisation itself is powerless to help you. The law is powerless to help you. Nothing can help you except yourself. Now then that is the setting for the rest of this dialogue about large organisations and people in them who commit suicide.

You feel completely out of control in your current situation. You feel lost, frustrated, angry, disillusioned. You want to act against the perpetrator(s) of the stress but can't because you lack the courage to do so and doing so (you think rightly) will only increase your level of anxiety, stress and despair. The latter is usually the case. When you go up against a bully you will only come off second best and it will make your situation and your feelings about yourself even worse. You feel anxious all the time, can't sleep, can't eat or overeat, you abuse substances but absolutely nothing you do permanently erases the despair your feel. The hopelessness of your situation. The fact that you feel that there is no way out except quitting. When you go up to meet the dreaded boss causing this despair, all you can do is say yes to everything he says no matter how unrealistic you think the goals/tasks are. At the end of the meeting you feel angrier than ever except now you have unachievable tasks to execute. Tasks that you know deep down are unachievable. This is part of the root cause of the despair. The fact that you have been given something to do that is impossible even if you had adequate support, resources and understanding. In reality even that level of support, resources and understanding is missing.

Physically/mentally you have the following symptoms. 1) A constant burning in your guts, the degree of burn depends in some way on what is happening externally but actually runs its own show/course. In other words you cannot control when and the degree of burning (pain really) you're feeling. You can be close to the source of the burning and not feel anything or you may be at home and wake up at 3am and feel you're burning up. 2) Pain more than pain an agony as if your soul in torment is reflected amplified many fold into every fibre of your physical being. 3) A low grade anger with your current situation (anger with yourself really for feeling the way you do over something which you would probably think if you were in a sane state of mind is trivial and unimportant). 4) A shaky hold on reality and a tendency to repeat acts or actions or put yourself in situations that however temporarily relieve your symptoms.

You are especially vulnerable to the side effects of workplace stress if you already suffer from depression or another anxiety related illness. The addition of workplace stress to this mix will tip you over the edge. To systemic despair, to a high degree of hopelessness that can lead to suicide attempts and eventually to a successful suicide attempt. What is the cause of this mayhem in your life? This is ultra difficult to answer and resolve. Your key activity or task or priority is to survive during this time of hopelessness. You can't enter a healing period unless you're alive to do it. To stay alive you must be vitally aware of what you're going through and its effects on your body, mind and spirit.

You know you're in the vortex of extreme stress potentially leading to an abyss if you wake every morning with difficulty, you've lost your shine and smile and no longer feel the strong urge inside your to delight your customers and your boss and you've fallen out of love of your workplace. The key to all this, research has shown, is an unsupportive boss who asks for the unreasonable most if not all of the time. Most people leave bosses not organisations but that is too simplistic because it is the organisation type that beget the types of bosses that endanger the mental health of their employees. If you have to do something motivated purely out of fear (of punishment) then the work output and quality will be very poor indeed. Not just the work output itself but you feel you are prostituting your powers for no useful purpose. Unless you're going to please someone then there is no point doing it at all or even doing it poorly.

If you are experiencing this extreme level of stress, what must (not can) you do about it right now?

You MUST accept that there is nothing you can do in your current situation that can relieve your level of stress except leave. You cannot diet or exercise the stress away. You cannot use alcohol, gambling, tobacco or illegal drugs to take away the stress. You cannot take mood altering drugs to deal with the stress. It might work temporarily but it is not a permanent solution. You cannot use sex to beat it. The bully is not going away (he owns the world you're perishing in), the situation you are in is not going away. The company is not going broke and he is not going to get sacked. The only way out is for you to determine an exit strategy. Take charge of your fate and leave as soon as the level of anxiety reaches the level where you start experiencing feelings of despair and begin to have suicidal thoughts. This is the time to quit. Immediately. Don't wait a moment longer. Finances, money will take care of itself when you're well again. But quitting immediately unleashes a dam of emotion that is almost harder to deal with than staying.

Leaving of itself is not the full answer to your problems. In fact your problems are just starting. After leaving you will start to feel disappointed, angry with yourself for not making the grade. Your punishing super ego will have a field day assaulting your sense of self worth. Telling you how weak and pathetic you are. How useless and stupid you are. How you should have stood up to them and beat them at their game. What you're really doing is beating yourself up about what happened in the past (something you can do nothing about). Telling you what you should/could have done. Of course at the time all you could do was leave, quit, resign. The punishing super ego exploits this ambiguity and time shift to make your life after leaving hell (and for a time probably even worse than when you were in the cauldron). Expect this reaction and be prepared for its fury. Every time you quit a situation, this mechanism comes into operation. A part of you (your ego) is furious with the part of you that quit and the super ego acting on behalf of the ego will not let you forget it. You will need assistance during this phase probably from a psychiatrist to assist in dealing with the damage caused by quitting (not so much the damage caused by staying). That is the irony of quitting.

You will feel an unbearable guilt both for feeling the way you do and for it leading to you leaving. For letting the people around you down. For letting yourself down. You know you're better than that but you just couldn't master that particular situation. So you replay that situation over and over (using different scenarios where you were more active or successful) until it drives you insane. This is not helped if the people around you aren't supportive especially parents and partners. See my previous tip for more on this especially unsupportive partners.

It is not enough to have something to go to when you leave such as another job, studying, holidays. You must think of your time after the event of leaving as healing time. Think to yourself you are sick and you are taking sick leave. Seek the treatment you need before committing to your next venture. The next venture itself is not the healing. The healing needs to be occurring before you move on to the next thing. If you just move on, then there is a very high likelihood that this will occur again and again wherever you move.

Root cause analysis. There is no point recovering from a healing period only to go to a new situation that creates the same feelings of despair after a time there. Therefore understand your psyche and what works for it. For example you might be very creative and innovative and might not be suited to a role which is analytical and quantitative. Certain type of jobs attract certain types of managers and bosses. If you're allergic to constant and unjustified criticism (as most of us are), don't put yourself in a job where this is likely to occur. It is a fact of life that if you're brilliant at what you do, some managers will support and others won't support you (because they're afraid your talent will undermine their position). These insanely jealous managers will expose to a torrent of constant and unjustified criticism until you crack and your performance degrades and no longer threatens them. The whole purpose of this 'warped' management style is to reduce the threat of great performers by burying them in work (resulting from unjustified criticism) that will distract and detract them from performing brilliantly.

If you are brilliant then you deserve your own company, your own business, your own brand. You deserve this, your talent deserves no less. Develop the business plan that will meet your goals. There are great opportunities out there you need to find them and exploit them. The problem in a sense is the framework you've chosen to showcase your talent is too small. There is no or not enough scope for it. You're hitting your head against a ceiling that's been put there to segment you with the real stuff that is going on. When you feel that nudge or collision whichever it is, it is time to either move on to another job (where you might nudge it again) or branch out on your own and see where that leads you.

What can life coaching do to help you?

Life coaching is about identifying and developing your hidden potential. In essence it's about helping you make changes to your life that will result in outcomes that will satisfy your need for money, warmth, shelter and relationship. But in a way that is sustainable and doing this in a very high stress environment is not sustainable. So a life coach will work with you to identify what else you're good at besides what it is you're doing at the moment that is killing you. A life coach will work with you to bring out these talents and ideas to fruition which will then enable you to make the major change in your life to your preferred lifestyle.

About Gilbert Labour

Mr Labour has recently completed a new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace. This resource provides a key starting point for people working in corporate environments who are suffering under the regime of an out of control psychopath. It provides robust proven strategies for overcoming the mental and physical problems caused by a psychopath. This book is available direct from Mr Labour for $29.95 plus postage and handling. In addition for each book sold, $5 will be going to Coaches with Borders for developing work and life skills for the poor in Mauritius.

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 87

Heaven in hell, hell in heaven

Know the client's needs and fill it without the client missing a beat.

Sometimes you need to go thru hell to know the heaven on the other side. The harder the hell the more you'll appreciate the other side. The problem is not this fact but how to engineer the transition from hell to heaven which needs lots of energy, foresight, planning and initiative when you're actually suffering a great deal from your current situation and all your energy is directed to surviving (just) that situation. That is the dilemma of living in a nightmare. How to make the right exit moves (now) that will pay off when you make it (later). Not just any old move but one which is strategic for your time in life and the cycle you're in. You will face many problems before you can make the transition.

The people closest to you may not necessarily support your transition strategy (that is, if you share it with them). In my experience most people closest to you prefer the status quo and hate change. Not sure why that is. Maybe people get used to seeing you in a certain way doing certain similar things on a regular basis. You kind of become like a clock to them and they time their lives according to your rhythm. They hate the breaking of that rhythm, that certainty. Every time in my life when I've wanted to change jobs or career strategy I've met vehement resistance along the lines of: better the devil you know or it's a big scary world out there you may not find another job no matter how low and mean. My advice is to ignore this feedback/advice. If your heart is true and you believe in what it is telling you, follow it. Even if the whole world is against you and you believe your path follow it.

Conquer your own fear of the change. Just like others around you who are feeling the impact of the proposed change. So you will also feel the pain/loss of leaving something you have for something with only the possibility of having something else, perhaps not even as good as what you have currently. Fear makes you stay when you should go or even go when you should stay. Know the difference between the fear that makes you flee and the fear that makes you stay when you shouldn't. Trust the latter but knowing the difference between the two will mean the difference between success and failure in your new transition. But that is not enough. It is only when the desire for change is stronger than the fear that makes you stay when you really shouldn't that the way is clear for you to move.

Put some smarts and thought around the move. It is called a strategy because it needs planning and needs to cover all the following areas: study, finance, new job opportunities and your new earning power, building a client base if that is what you new role entails, networking in your new industry and that means socialising with and developing strong relationships with potential customers/clients/employees/partners, developing a strong network of colleagues and associates.

Once your strategy is in place, forget risk management just go for it and don't stop until you have reached your first goal which could be qualifying in your new field. That is hard enough but the next step is harder. Working in the industry and developing new ways of talking, being, relating and servicing.

Provide an end to end service for your particular industry and service those clients better than they have ever been serviced before and keep on doing it for as long as you need their custom/business. Ensure you have systems in place to track your business (even if it is only a simple spreadsheet). There are lots of business templates out there for use.

Be the best you can be technically in your field and be known for your excellence, drive, energy, direction, nous and savoir faire. Know the client's needs before he does and meet it before he even realises he has a need. Fill it without the client missing a beat. Be in the right place at the right time and meet the client's next expectation (it is assumed you meet the current expectations superbly) easily. You must combine technical brilliance in your field with almost a sixth sense for what your market, your client needs most.

Don't just be client focused for a small business be client obsessed. Think about the needs of the client/customer 24/7 and when you get great service/product ideas brainstorm them and if the meet your criteria execute on them brilliantly.

About Gilbert Labour

Mr Labour has recently completed a new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace. This resource provides a key starting point for people working in corporate environments who are suffering under the regime of an out of control psychopath. It provides robust proven strategies for overcoming the mental and physical problems caused by a psychopath. This book is available direct from Mr Labour for $29.95 plus postage and handling. In addition for each book sold, $5 will be going to Coaches with Borders for developing work and life skills for the poor in Mauritius.

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 86

Goals with a psychopathic manager or partner.

Psychopathic partnership: the unexpected is the norm and the norm unexpected

Every day that you're not nearer to your goal is a day away from your goal. Every day that dawns when you're not working on your goal is a day wasted and further away from your goal. Eventually the gap will be so large you'll either give up or you'll be unable to do it for a number of reasons: other commitments, money, age, motivation, fitness level. When you give up on the goal, you die a little.

When I mean goal I mean a life changing event that will take place once the goal is achieved. What does it take to set and execute life changing goals?

Necessity. You're forced to make the change. Having a psychopath as a manager or partner. Psychopaths are natural born change agents. You have to thank them for making you take the risk and actually change course. To do something new. Change is always scary and ideally your change should be self originated but sometimes somebody comes along who is so stuffed up themselves that they unwittingly lead you to something new and better. Without their negative influence you would still be coasting along within your comfort zone.

Desire or want to make the change. There is a tenuous nexus between the desire and reality. People only change if they're forced to change otherwise everyone prefers to live a quiet uninterrupted life. You may want to make a change because you want to do more with your body: take part in sport, run with the hares, go bush walking, look good.

Ability to make the change. That is all the circumstances are right in a particular moment in time for you to make the switch. In actual fact there is no such coincidence in life. The particular moment in time must be engineered, must be planned, must be created otherwise there is no opportunity only missed chances. If you're luck every now and then you'll be in a groove and everything you do is magical. Take advantage of one of those opportunities to put in place the machinery that will allow you to change.

A desire for growth and renewal. Your current job or relationship or other personal circumstance no longer provides you with the opportunities for growth that they perhaps formerly provided. In reality it is a question of: did the job stop growing or did you? As most people identify closely with their job that is really asking the question: why did you stop growing within the context of that particular job? There is no easy answer to why people stop growing and changing. Fear, disappointment, failure, repeated mistakes may have something to do with it. Being with a psychopathic partner or manager is good enough reason to stop growing.

Growth is only possible in an environment where your manager or partner supports and assists you appropriately. Psychopathic managers kill growth in organisations because they are always looking for ways to catch you out rather than ways for working collaboratively with you for a better outcome. They instill fear and terror in their people. There is no raison d'etre behind this modus operandi. Why they do it is not known to science or art but can only be guessed at. In reality no one knows the root cause of psychopathy and whether it is ingrained or learned or as a reaction to something like being rejected early in life. Whatever the cause, it results in very painful experiences and lessons for those exposed to its fury. Is the fury the result of the rejection? Someone has to pay and that someone is you? Goals with a psychopathic manager is a roller coaster ride of ups and down and usually more ups than down.

Wherever it is found psychopathy is evil. It is a force for destructive change not constructive growth. Psychopathy is anathema to innovation, creativity and new ideas. For those to flourish you need an open collaborative sharing environment where ideas are interchanged and can live till either they die, are given new life and take on a life of their own. All this takes time and a very exceptional manager who understands the dynamics of creativity in a corporate setting.

Psychopathic managers cannot tolerate the merest hint of disagreement with their warped doctrinaire views which is not based on real knowledge of the subject at hand but their own prejudices and knowledge gaps. They fear excellence and talent. The merest sign of either throws them into paroxysms of jealousies and the target for these jealousies is made to feel inadequate, incomplete, useless and ineffective. The worst psychopaths target the finest minds in their organisations for destruction and annihilation. Which is strange because it is the finest minds that have the delicacy of soul and trust that psychopaths find easy to mindlessly crush.

Be definition psychopaths cannot be hurt not in the conventional emotional sense. There is no higher internal moral and ethical authority to go to. There is no higher judge in equity that ameliorates the actions of the psychopath. You get the destructive power raw pure and simple and virulent. What they do feel is material imbalance when it is not in their favour, they really feel oppressed by beauty when they're ugly, by talent when they're without talent, by ambition when they have none, by innovation and creativity when they have none (except to destroy it). In short the driving force for psychopathy is to seek and destroy all those who are more gifted than them in all various kinds of material (like beauty) and spiritual areas (like nobility and generosity of mind).

It is a terrible disease to own when it is discovered by your partner or the people who work for you but there is nothing the psychopath can do about it. It is an affliction for life with no diagnosis, cure or prognosis and for them no symptoms. For them psychopathy or the way they feel is normal. The only thing normal sane people can do in the face of psychopathy (if they want to remain that way) is to flee as fast as their little legs will carry them. There are other environments out there without psychopathy.

In my recent book - Corporate Psychopathy Death in the Workplace - I wrote that psychopathy was a necessary evil in organisations because from the organisational point of view it was a force for change and renewal. That is still a correct assertion in my view but from the point of view of the victims of a psychopath that is little consolation. The organisation prospers because it is renewed but the little people die and wither away on the vine unless they leave. Perhaps in the overall scheme of things they were meant to leave.

A psychopathic partner kills all growth in a relationship without which love cannot renew itself. It chokes the flow of human emotion and leads to some pretty strange and weird couple behavior. A relationship where one partner is psychopathic is one where terror rules, where fear reigns supreme, where the unexpected is the norm and the norm unexpected. The psychopathic partner takes the relationship into uncharted dangerous waters with their frequent 'moody' outbursts or even worse their moody silences. Brooding, leaden, heavy.

There is no future with a psychopathic partner or manager. It is simply inconceivable to live your life with a person who will pummel you at every opportunity and even if there is no opportunity they will manufacture one just to bring you down a peg or two. It is difficult for anyone who has not experienced psychopathy to take in these words but the feeling and emotion felt by the victim is genuine and can lead to depression even suicides.

About Gilbert Labour

Mr Labour has recently completed a new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace. This resource provides a key starting point for people working in corporate environments who are suffering under the regime of an out of control psychopath. It provides robust proven strategies for overcoming the mental and physical problems caused by a psychopath. This book is available direct from Mr Labour for $29.95 plus postage and handling. In addition for each book sold, $5 will be going to Coaches with Borders for developing work and life skills for the poor in Mauritius.

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 85

Integrity

Is there such a thing as integrity in a corporate environment? I have come across it in its pure form very rarely. It seems that integrity and money just don't seem to mix real well. I find integrity gets in the way of doing business. As a buyer you expect to be overcharged and as a seller you are expected to overcharge the buyer. So where exactly is the role of integrity in all this? Nowhere. I have been in plenty of organisations that have lied about current situations, events, the balance sheet, product development. Business is as dirty as politics probably more so because money corrupts more than power.

Integrity and honesty is uncomfortable, inconvenient and causes more stress than is necessary. It besmirches people's reputations, careers and family life. All for what? A little bit more when it could have been less and a little less when it could have been more. For example if you have a particularly virulent form of cancer, the first thing the doctor will ask your family is 'how will he take it? If the answer is poorly then the doctor will lie to you subtly by providing more hope than is warranted or making the situation less dangerous than it really is.

Poor corporate performance

To know poor performance is to know great performance and vice versa. They complement each other. Each needs the other to exist. One only sees the true worth the value of great performance when it is contrasted with poor performance.

Everyday in my corporate life I see examples of poor performance and examples of great performance. This article is inspired by two such performances seen in the one day.

Great performance

A seamless intelligence totally in the space of the conversation/topic/subject at hand. Saying very little but speaking volumes. Every contribution is absolutely spot on and to the point and guiding the conversation one way, the right way. In a group of 10 fairly intelligent people in a meeting one stood out above all others. How? He asked the right questions at the right time. He was able to interpret the answers for what they were. In other words he read the message as well as the medium. He contributed beautifully to the meeting, oozed self-confidence, had an infectious laugh and really knowing vibrant expressive eyes. He was a true leader charismatic, good looking and fit and healthy shiny even. That is great performance. Something that comes from within and without but not knowing what contributed what to the mix. An invisible mesh of natural warmth and attractiveness with no doubt learnt skills. Why did this person have this reaction on me? I think because they shone like a beacon in a room full of dead zombies. Being in their presence left you wanting to hear more from them. A bit like a poetry teacher (true story) who had TS Eliot in their class. The teacher said something like he never said anything but when he did my god it was sharp and ultra perceptive.

Poor performance

Not in command of the material in their space much less the meeting. Not a commanding presence. Physically a weak insignificant presence. Not realising people in corporate environments hate only one thing worse than work and that is responsibility. They like to be led. So lead them but do so in a way that makes sense for them and represents their ways, their views, their weaknesses, their needs and wants. Running the meeting but terribly unsure of what everybody is thinking. Great performers do their homework and either know what people are thinking or work behind the scenes to bring people around to think the way they want them to (before the meeting). This is not unethical it is just corporate reality and anybody who denies it happens is a liar. It happens all the time in politics probably in every organisation man has ever created. It is the politics of power which has no ethics except the rule: win whatever it takes. Not poor intellectual ability but an ineffective marshalling of the powers that do exist. Working to their limitations not their strengths. Lacks confidence. Poor technically. Unable to manage end to end requiring constant assistance and guidance. Escalates when the person escalating to can't do anything beyond what they could have done themselves. Not tough enough with their suppliers. When there are so many questions doesn't have too many answers. When people who work with the poor performer find out about their shortcomings, there is disappointment and anger and they are usually sacked.

What to do if you consider yourself a poor performer?

I will assume you are reasonably intelligent but have problems performing in a corporate environment. If that assumption is not correct there is no point moving forward. That is a pre-requisite for success. Being a top performer in a corporate environment is not for everybody all the time. In other words even if you are a top performer it won't last forever and you must plan for it to end one day.

Develop outstanding verbal communications skills. Take classes if you have to. If you speak with a hard to understand accent ditch it by taking elocution classes. It will pay for itself many times over. I will assume you already have outstanding written communications skills. Both have to be the best they can be because they will degrade as the pressure and stress of a corporate environment increases. If it is already poor, it will only get poorer.

Really know your technical and professional environment that you work in and that your particular profession operates in. Don't bother playing soccer unless you have had coaching. Similarly don't venture there unless properly directed, coached and mentored. Don't make the mistake of giving yourself knowledge and experience you don't have at the interview (you will be found out) unless you're a genius.

Develop a persona that is always relaxed, charming, personable and comfortable to be around. Learn acting if you have to. Acting it works just as well but only if you're a good actor. You can absolutely abhor the people you work with and for but no one will suspect it if you are always going round with a smile and a laugh. This persona will come under pressure during moments of stress so make sure it is deeply ingrained and fixed tightly. If success matters you that much you will change yourself to suit. This is hard to keep up.

Don't be a loner unless you are truly exceptional in what you do in which case they will tolerate you for your brilliance. Just. But it is preferable to be in the group/circle than being brilliant. If you had to choose. Loners don't do well in corporate environments generally. Make friends use your false persona to charm people. Even if you feel terribly stressed and under pressure make time for people, make time for lunch. Always find an excuse to have coffee with someone or other. You never know a minnow now may become a whale later.

Work out every single day. You will need to be in peak physical condition to do the mental things you need to do. To keep the supreme calm you need under pressure and still perform. For some people the problem is not inability to perform but inability to perform under great, constant and intense pressure. But then that is still poor performance. You may need a program of fitness, coping mechanisms, rituals and prescription drugs to keep you in the game. The point is if being in the game is worth that much to you, then you have to do what it takes. But there is a limit to how much you can endure something you may not be totally suited for.

Bottom line. If you're struggling to keep up, finds way to cope or leave. If you stay only death awaits you. The stress will kill you.

About Gilbert Labour

Mr Labour has recently completed a new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace. This resource provides a key starting point for people working in corporate environments who are suffering under the regime of an out of control psychopath. It provides robust proven strategies for overcoming the mental and physical problems caused by a psychopath. This book is available direct from Mr Labour for $29.95 plus postage and handling. In addition for each book sold, $5 will be going to Coaches with Borders for developing work and life skills for the poor in Mauritius.

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 84

Facing up to workplace bullies

Psychopathy in the raw where psychopathy hits the road

As long as you run away from the problem, the problem will coming running to find you again and again

It takes the greatest courage to face up to a workplace bully. Most people agonise over it for days, weeks, months, years even but still they do nothing fearing the consequences. That is, dismissal or demotion or forcible resignation or humiliation.

They are probably also very cognizant of the negative consequences of stewing over the problem: stress, anxiety, high blood pressure, feeling rotten all the time leading to increased rates of cancer, heart attacks and strokes. Cognizant in an emotional and physical sense of the consequences.

In other words doing nothing is not an option but that something is so terrifying that doing nothing by comparison seems the better option even if it leads to a heart attack, depression, anxiety or panic attacks.

Only someone who has faced a workplace bully (like myself) can write about how to deal with it. If any academics not having known the inner emotional turmoil write about it, well their advice is pretty nigh useless. Most people prefer not to face that person and suffer in silence or quit. These are the two most frequent options used by people. But there is a third option.

Facing the bully

The inevitable consequence of facing up to a workplace bully is at some time down the track you will be paid back for your treachery. That is the workplace bully will have their revenge. That is going to happen no matter what. If what you're going through now doing nothing is bad and doing something about it will lead to something bad then the option is clear. Either way you go is bad so you might as well go for the doing something option.

There is another reason why you should face the bully. It is a liberating almost cathartic experience. It purges the negative emotions. The fear lessens, the anxiety lessens, the stress lessens to be replaced by a relative calm even though you have had it out with him and in theory he may have sacked you or threatened to sack you or otherwise put your job in jeopardy. That is well worth the sense of relief, pleasure even at releasing yourself from the emotional clutches of the madman.

If you think after your one on one that your sense of insecurity has increased think again. It's not yours that has but the psychopath's who is not used to being confronted about his own inadequacies. In fact your sense of insecurity strong before would be the same if you hadn't faced him. After that confrontation that feeling weakens not because there is less of a likelihood of losing your job (in fact there is probably more) but because you have lanced a pus filled emotional boil. Which is ironic really. You feel better even though you are probably more in danger of losing your job than before. The emotional relief overpowers the financial pain or humiliation (temporary) you may feel by losing your job.

The major benefit of facing up to a workplace bully no matter how frightening the thought is twofold. Firstly it provides you with the knowledge that you did it. You finally faced up to your fears for the first time perhaps and survived. Not only survived but renewed with new energy with strength whilst at the same time regaining your humor, your self confidence and your mojo. That is priceless. Money can't buy that relief. Nothing can. The price of that relief must be paid for in the hard currency of courage.

Secondly it gives you the experience to face another one in the future as it will inevitably occur in your next job. You will also realise that after facing up to a workplace bully your position there is untenable in the medium to long term. In other words, there is a strong possibility that you will have probably have to leave anyway. But the glorious thing about leaving after faced the bully is that you leave with your head held high and held in the highest respect by your work colleagues.

How should the approach to the bully be made? Just ask him for a chat. Not over a coffee that is too chummy. Not in the office that is his playground where he feels most powerful. Ask him to go for a walk along the street outside the office. Be polite, be courteous, have examples of his inconsistent behaviour, examples of where he is not supporting you, of where he is placing the financial interests of your company in jeopardy. Be evidential whilst still being true to your feelings. This is not a court of law. Laws of evidence do not apply. Don't forget you are dealing with a psychopath so it is not a court of emotion per se but use as necessary like salt to flavor your case.

This is your chance to have your say. Not everything you say must be backed by evidence or fact because part of what you're feeling is just that and you must put that out there. Start the conversation by saying you have the utmost respect and admiration for the work they're doing and you're showing them that respect by going straight to them rather than over their heads (which in theory you can or could still do). Then present your case. There is no need for an outcome that is satisfactory to you, all that is needed is for you to air your grievances. That's it. If you play your cards extremely intelligently you should be able to get an outcome that is satisfactory to you for example perhaps he may give you more time to do something or more resources.

Suffering in silence

Mental self torture. This is not an option at all. If an option at all it is a do nothing option. Wait and see what happens. Well nothing is going to happen except that it can only do more and more harm to your psyche the longer you do nothing. If that is going to be your modus operandi then it is preferable if you quit. At least quitting takes you away from the source of the problem (temporarily) but it does not do the one thing that facing up to the bully gives you: the experience, the wisdom, the strength, the courage to face another one in your next and your next job. As long as you run away from the problem, the problem will coming running to find you.

Quitting

Just not an option in the medium to long term. Only a short term option with mental health consequences in the short term such as guilt (for leaving your family without a breadwinner), guilt because you left your work colleagues in the lurch with probably unfinished projects, anger, rage, homicidal thoughts. Quitting is never an option because once these short term consequences are resolved you are still left with a problem. You faced a problem and you couldn't deal with it.

Going over his head

Almost always fatal to the victim of psychopathy. It is always best to go straight to the person causing the problems to resolve them rather than their boss. That way your respect level is way high so that if you need to go to their supervisor you can say to them look I have seen so and so and they have done nothing to solve the problem. Because the first thing the supervisor will do is suggest a conciliation meeting.

About Gilbert Labour

Mr Labour has recently completed a new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace. This resource provides a key starting point for people working in corporate environments who are suffering under the regime of an out of control psychopath. It provides robust proven strategies for overcoming the mental and physical problems caused by a psychopath. This book is available direct from Mr Labour for $29.95 plus postage and handling. In addition for each book sold, $5 will be going to Coaches with Borders for developing work and life skills for the poor in Mauritius.

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 83

Corporate psychopathy and military success

In some cases psychopathy can lead to wins

Stalin created a psychopathic class of officer who he had previously purged but not killed and who were brought back into the fight to the death against Germany. Ironically his purges created a warrior class that contributed to his win over Germany. So you can say in this case, Stalin's psychopathy and paranoia were winning strategies.

It is conventional history to state that Stalin in 1930s severely weakened and demoralised the Soviet Armed Forces office corps by a series of punishing, violent and destructive purges that ostensibly took place because he feared they were planning a coup, which in reality had no basis in fact.

A large number of people were killed, tortured and otherwise terrorised by his brutal tactics. There is no doubt whatsoever that Stalin was a psychopath hence you would expect this behaviour. All this is accepted history. But what is unconventional is that the purges far from weakening the Soviet Armed Forces (new figures state it only affected 10% of the officer corps anyway) actually strengthened them. How?

Stalin used a number of key people in the war against Germany who had been brutalised and tortured but otherwise survived his purges. He looked to these very damaged people to fight a war of annihilation with Germany. He created a psychopathic class of officers brutalised by his regime in the 30s who would have no compunction in the early 40s to send their men into battle to die futilely, needlessly without a shadow of remorse.

In 1943 such profligate use of men and resources was abated somewhat but the psychopathic tendencies of Stalin's generals was a permanent feature of war on the Eastern Front. After all when working for a psychopath, one of the strategies for survival is you either become one yourself or collapse under the pressure.

About Gilbert Labour

Mr Labour has recently completed a new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace. This resource provides a key starting point for people working in corporate environments who are suffering under the regime of an out of control psychopath. It provides robust proven strategies for overcoming the mental and physical problems caused by a psychopath. This book is available direct from Mr Labour for $29.95 plus postage and handling. In addition for each book sold, $5 will be going to Coaches with Borders for developing work and life skills for the poor in Mauritius.

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 82

Success at work

A lot of problems arise in companies when they want to change too quickly. They can change processes quickly enough but what takes time to change and bed down is a change in corporate culture. This is the very fabric that holds an organisation together. It is bureaucratic adhesive without the bureaucracy.

What happens to a 'can do' attitude inside an immovable object like a conservative, inflexible and hierarchical organisation? Simply a collision, a clash of cultures and great frustration for those who wants to get things done but can't.

Change is not just about improving processes, removing waste, eliminating defects and training people. It is just as much about changing the environment that people work in so that their initiative and innovation meets no artificial boundaries especially those set by conservative and uninspired middle managers.

A happy organisation is one where the operational model matches and is complemented by a corporate culture that recognises and rewards excellence in innovation and creativity. Employees are at their happiest when they are given room to grow and shine. The quality of a good organisation is employing people with this potential.

Employees from within these happy organisations find there aren't too many hard obstacles when they're trying to get things done according to the 'can do' attitude of most companies nowadays. The problem is not that companies don't preach a can do attitude they all do, it is that not all of them support that with a corporate culture. They all talk the talk not many walk the walk.

Conquering workplace stress aka 'Executive Stress'

There is no one article or perhaps even a book that can provide all the answers to conquering workplace stress. Stress is one of the most complicated subjects to write about especially if you think you know stress just because you have experienced it and therefore are an expert on it.

I have 30 years corporate experience where I have caused people stress, have been under stress myself and have been given briefs as an executive coach to identify and root out stress from organisations.

Stress makes organisations toxic to work in. But it is a fact of life that some organisations have a high tolerance for pain whilst others low. This high threshold for pain translates into an environment for the stressed individual that is pitiless and grinding. I have worked for high threshold organisations that seem to tolerate a high degree 'seemingly' of chaos which of course is a ripe environment for psychopaths to roam and pillage.

Everybody dies

Someone who has inspired me has resigned and is moving on. This I guess is the last article inspired by this person. Which brings me to the subject of this article. All tenure in organisations is transient. One way or another one day you too will leave of your own accord, retire or die on the job.

You may also retire one day and be dead within 6 months. Actuaries love this because it means they don't have to keep on paying a pension for another 20 or 30 years. Don't become a statistic, aim to retire as early as you can. The government won't take care of you, only you will take care of you.

About Gilbert Labour

Mr Labour has recently completed a book illuminated by his life and executive coaching experience Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace. It is a study of corporate psychopathy and the price people, who are exposed to its brutal and vicious force, pay.

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 81

Project rescue

Do you have a large project that you think is out of control? Some things that may make you think that way include ---

Sudden, unexpected and unexplained departures of project managers and technical staff associated with the project

A spate of niggling absences disguised as flu/colds/stomach upsets

A psychopath (who may report to you) in the midst. Someone who maintains everything is fine to you whilst the world crumbles around him or her. This person terrorises his people whilst genuflecting to you.

A senior manager (could be you) who maintains to his or her peers that everything is fine and these are only temporary setbacks but who knows deep down 'something' is wrong.

Inability of the project team to make the customer happy (this is not just about delivering on their promises it goes beyond that). The customer is fundamentally dissatisfied, angry even.

If this is you, caught between a rock and a hard place, I can help you by -

Conducting a project health check using PMBOK standards and templates. I will coolly appraise the health of the project.

Is there is a nexus between the metrics of the project and the absences, resignations and poor customer appraisals. There usually is if you have a niggling feeling something is wrong but that may not be the case here.

The way forward. There is something wrong and it is related to the metrics of the project. Alternatively there is something wrong but it is not related to the metrics of the project.

Either way there is a problem. If it is related to the project it is an organisational/personal problem. If it is not it is a personal/ organisational problem.

Consultations with all project group members to determine their feelings, thoughts and ideas about whether the project is out of control and their views of how to fix it. Each person will be encouraged to air all their perceived issues on an individual basis.

A session with you to determine the approach to solving the problem. This could include a group workshop, one on one sessions, life coaching sessions, executive coaching, project management coaching or a combination of all the above.

A one day workshop to air all common issues in a communal setting with a set agenda. Group discussion to focus the group on the top 5 issues identified in the one on one consultation session.

About Gilbert Labour

Mr Labour has recently completed a book illuminated by his life and executive coaching experience Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace. It is a study of corporate psychopathy and the price people, who are exposed to its brutal and vicious force, pay.

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.

Executive Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 80

Executive Stress Revisited

The first law of stress is that you are always on a journey between two destinations: low stress at one end and high at the other. As soon as you reach one the natural order is to set out to reach the other.

To prevent the natural order, from low to high, requires a huge amount of work on fitness, diet and exercise (amongst other things). To encourage the natural order, from high to low, similarly requires a huge amount of work with initially not much progress.

Think that retiring to a desert island with 10 million dollars will eliminate all stress in your life? Think again. There is no life that has existed and currently exists without a certain level of stress. Stress is as important as oxygen and water for a living thing.

I like to think of stress as a permanent chess board in your brain with a game always on. Some permutations of the pieces and consequently how the game is poised at any particular time will leave more stressed and other permutations will leave you less stressed.

There is always the potential to be more stressed when your current position is less stressed and vice versa, that is, there is always the potential to be less stressed when your current position is more stressed.

In other words whichever state you're in (less or more stressed) the natural scheme of things is for the one state to transform into the other over time (and back again). So inside your head you're continually at war, in a campaign against an enemy that will never be defeated.

There is a continual shift from one state to another and this shift occurs against a background of your current circumstances whether it be personal, relationship, financial, work, business or health. There is no permanent state of nirvana where are will always feel under less stress.

Less stress is only a temporary destination that will oscillate back to more stress as given circumstances do and will change. It requires work and effort to keep a state of less stress and prevent returning back to the status quo, at least for the time being.

Conversely, more stress is only a temporary destination that will oscillate back to less stress as given circumstances do and will change. It requires work and effort to move from a state of more stress to one of less stress.

That is a good thing because a certain level of stress is healthy. It means you care, you give a damn, it means what goes on around you matters. It also means you are willing to put time and effort in changing the things that you care about for the better.

The ideal is to build a physical and mental fitness platform that keeps your level of stress delicately poised between high and low, in a fairly narrow range that is naturally healthy for you.

About Gilbert Labour

Gilbert Labour is a life and executive coach practicing in Australia. He has had, for a number of years, a leading web site dedicated to these subjects. So far his web site has experienced over 16,000 hits so he can claim to be influential on a worldwide basis in this area.

His hits come mainly from the US, UK, Europe and Australia/NZ where life and executive coaching is at its zenith. That is no accident. It is the developed countries who have put effort into developing this once nascent movement into the global powerhouse it is today.

Mr Labour has been extremely influential in this growth by assuming a leadership role in a number of areas including corporate psychopathy and in the 'power v influence' debate. He has written, published and presented papers on such wide ranging but related subjects as project management, six sigma, executive coaching and corporate psychopathy.

He has provided input to newspaper articles, learned papers, novels and generally participated in the debate raging on the net about the destructive power of corporate psychopathy on the well being of organisations. This book is based primarily around on a series of executive coaching tips and techniques from his web site.

Mr Labour is available to consult with organisations worldwide on the subjects canvassed in this book including corporate psychopathy, corporate culture, creating high performance organisations, and changing organisations using innovation & creativity.

He is also available to life coach employees or groups of employees on strategies to overcome obstacles and to put in place a successful plan for achieving independence in 2007.

You can send a message to Mr Labour. Please visit the web site dedicated to his new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace for the latest news, reviews, feedback and updates to this book.

Gilbert Labour's Life Coaching New Year Message for 2007

2006 has been a tumultuous year for the world. The life coaching movement can only but mimic what else is going on in the world. After all it can't be any more real than real life. Everywhere people are in crisis and not just in Africa or the Middle East.

In many western countries job conditions are under attack partially as a result of the competition from the mega economies of China and India but also because home economies and companies are being run inefficiently.

One way forward is to cut worker's conditions and wages but that does not necessarily solve the problem for inefficient companies. They still need to compete with India/China whose wages and conditions and cost structure generally are even lower.

Conservative governments are acquiescent in this complicity to deprive workers of their rights fully understanding that lowering worker's conditions, if it ever was a solution, was only going to be a part of the solution.

It may be even compounding the problem by allowing inefficient companies to pick low hanging fruit and not forcing them to focus on fundamental industry wide reform.

With this as background, what is the life coaching outlook for 2007?

Life coaching is and still remains elitist. Generally speaking it is a movement driven by and consumed by professionals with IT professionals at the forefront of industry development and consumption. This is necessarily so because it is a movement directed via the internet so IT skills to setup web sites is key and the people who surf these sites are professionals in the main.

Secondly it is a service almost exclusively consumed by professionals because the fees charged, typically $130-180 per hour, are very high and out of reach of normal workers on average wages/salaries. But this needs to change. Lower paid workers are in crisis and need professional help and support beyond their families and immediate support group. High achievement should be your aim but you can't achieve in the face of punishing and difficult work places.

The solution is to use the methods and techniques of life coaching to overcome existing obstacles and put in place a plan for success in 2007. These include putting in place a platform for performance, controlling mental and physical health issues and using your creativity to provide you with more choices in your personal, business and work life. These strategies are outlined in my new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace.

About Gilbert Labour

Gilbert Labour is a life and executive coach practicing in Australia. He has had, for a number of years, a leading web site dedicated to these subjects. So far his web site has experienced over 16,000 hits so he can claim to be influential on a worldwide basis in this area.

His hits come mainly from the US, UK, Europe and Australia/NZ where life and executive coaching is at its zenith. That is no accident. It is the developed countries who have put effort into developing this once nascent movement into the global powerhouse it is today.

Mr Labour has been extremely influential in this growth by assuming a leadership role in a number of areas including corporate psychopathy and in the 'power v influence' debate. He has written, published and presented papers on such wide ranging but related subjects as project management, six sigma, executive coaching and corporate psychopathy.

He has provided input to newspaper articles, learned papers, novels and generally participated in the debate raging on the net about the destructive power of corporate psychopathy on the well being of organisations. This book is based primarily around on a series of executive coaching tips and techniques from his web site.

Mr Labour is available to consult with organisations worldwide on the subjects canvassed in this book including corporate psychopathy, corporate culture, creating high performance organisations, and changing organisations using innovation & creativity.

He is also available to life coach employees or groups of employees on strategies to overcome obstacles and to put in place a successful plan for achieving independence in 2007.

You can send a message to Mr Labour. Please visit the web site dedicated to his new book Corporate Psychopathy - Death in the Workplace for the latest news, reviews, feedback and updates to this book.

Life Coaching Tips and Techniques No. 119

Life and Executive Coaching Ideas and Thoughts Part II

If you enter the words life coaching in the google search engine you will receive something like 32, 900, 000 hits (32.9 million hits). This web site is ranked no. 10 in that ranking. That is an amazing achievement. What is great about this web site is it is about life coaching not a brochure advertising services. You can get value from this web site just be reading it. The best companies, investment banks, universities and business schools in the world can't be wrong. Psychology departments of leading universities visit this web site. It is a unique presence on the web of my invention but it is a concoction that is soulful and nutritious.

Handling the silence at work when your best friend is gone. How do you survive the emptiness? What can stop you drifting aimlessly? Wandering aimlessly? This is about how to get your focus and (low) intensity back. But remember there is always a price to pay for high intensity if that was your former state.

Always expecting perfection from yourself, 24 x 7 x 365. Living your life problem free, guilt free and substance abuse free. When all the ducks are lined up all the time. What is wrong with this picture? It is simply unsustainable no matter how good you are, no matter how fit you are, no matter how good a performer you have been previously in your life.

Do you get the feeling sometimes that you're wasting your time and even when you're not you're still wasting your time? How do you confront and challenge that perception in such a way that you either demolish it or acknowledge it?

When an organisation is reduced to 'jobs for the boys' then you know it has reached the end of its current growth lifecycle and it is entering the decaying period. This can go on to its inevitable conclusion or as soon as it is realised, the next phase can begin. That is to break the organisation and rebuild from scratch.

The secret to being good great at anything is longevity and health. Longevity so you can experience the highs and lows many times over. Win and lose many times maybe even the same scenario each time. Health so that you can impart your knowledge to others after your nth recovery.

Human beings do not really learn from their mistakes until they have made the same mistake 5 times.

When caught in a rut, innovate, use networking, write and present papers, attend conferences. Develop story and business ideas above all don't stop working. Overnight success is just around the corner (after 5 years hard slog).

There are people who are born to be great at everything they do and superlative at one or two things they really concentrate on. That is not the majority. For most, to be successful, hard work and guidance is the key especially the latter.

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 dif