Beyond Information: Designing Leadership Development That Creates Behaviour Change
Leadership development isn’t about filling people with more information. It’s about creating the conditions for meaningful conversations, reflection, experimentation and growth. Knowledge is important, but it’s conversation, practice and reflection that create lasting behaviour change. That’s the philosophy that guided the design of a strengths-based self-leadership pilot I’ve spent the past months co-designing with a […]
Is Feedback Really a Gift?
Someone whose work I follow closely recently posted a meme rehashing the corporate mantra I grew up with that “feedback is a gift.” Throughout my career, every time I’ve heard someone say this, or something like it, I’ve always felt myself wince. The traditional view goes that feedback is something that helps us improve, to […]
How Do You Influence Without Influencing Strengths?
I’ve been working with a leader who wants his team to get better at influencing. In particular, influencing upwards, getting more traction with senior stakeholders and speaking up and having more visibility and impact in meetings. We have been working together using CliftonStrengths – a tool that helps individuals and teams understand their natural patterns […]
What Reminds You Who You Are? The Restorative Power of Art
What reminds you who you are? Today David and I took ourselves on a little Friday lunchtime date to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra to see Arthur Boyd: Tapestries. I knew I would enjoy it but I didn’t expect to be quite so moved by it.The exhibition brings together, for the first time, […]
What’s happened to my ambition?
Sitting with a coaching client this week, I heard a familiar question: “Angelina, I just don’t know what’s happened to me.” It’s a question I hear often from the women I coach, particularly those in their late 30s, 40s and 50s. These are capable, experienced and often senior women who have worked hard, built successful […]
Why Fiction Makes Life Richer: A Love Letter to Books and Reading
Happy Book Lovers’ Day! 📚 A day celebrating reading, libraries and independent bookstores. I’m enjoying a slow Sunday morning read in the company of my spaniel Alfie. We are currently reading Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, a wonderful story about how life looks compared with how it feels. Mature adult relationships, grown kids […]
Feeling Stuck? Why We Don’t Have to Wait to Feel Ready
A close friend recently said to me, “I’m just so stuck. I know all the right things to do, I just can’t seem to move.” My heart hurt for her and in true coach-style I sent her some books and coaching worksheets I’ve used over the years, (I also sent her some lovely ‘care’ gifts), […]
How to Find the Right Coach for You
A friend recently asked me how to find ‘the right’ coach? She’d been given a coach at work as part of a leadership development program. She knew coaching could benefit her, but she didn’t feel the coach she’d been allocated was quite the right fit. I don’t believe there’s one perfect coach for every person. I think […]
Designing a Strengths-Based Leadership Program From the Ground Up
I find it really satisfying to create a program from the ground up. Over the past months, I’ve been partnering with a corporate client to design a strengths-based Self-Leadership Program for one of their leadership cohorts. It didn’t begin with a slide deck or pre-conceived ideas about tools or models. It didn’t even have a […]
Redefining Success: What Does Success Look Like in This Season of Life?
I feel like I spent the first half of my working life chasing the success I was taught I should want. Now, in this stage of my life, I’m much more interested in creating a version of success that feels meaningful to me. I’m noticing the same thing in many of my coaching conversations, and […]