Food for Thought

The Next 7 Habits of Highly Effective Coaches is the new addition to my mini series inspired by the style of Paul Coelho‘s “Manual of the Warrior of Light“. You can find the first 7 habits here.

• Habit 8 – Play to Stay Alive
• Habit 9 – Know Thy Self
• Habit 10 – Use What You Know
• Habit 11 – A Good Teacher is a Good Student
• Habit 12 – Dare to Be Different
• Habit 13 – Motivate with Flow
• Habit 14 – Harness Your Empathy

BONUS: You can download the entire series published in the PragProg Magazine:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Coaches (aka Seven Coaching Patterns)
• The Next 7 Habits of Highly Effective Coaches (aka The Next Seven Coaching Patterns)

For more ideas on personal and team development, take a look at “The Dream Team Nightmare – Boost Team Productivity Using Agile Techniques“. Happy Coaching!

Habit 14 – Harness Your Empathy

Some say it’s impossible for a man who’s warm to understand a man who’s cold. Empathy is the first step towards understanding. It’s a key skill that all of us can develop. Empathy begins with an open mind.

Exercise: Lunch with “The Other”

Choose a colleague who often has opposing viewpoints to yours. Invite them to lunch. Explain you’d like to better understand their thinking and that you’d appreciate if they’d be open to yours. You promise to both keep an open mind and listen deeply. Bon appétit!

For more information, see: Ted talk by Elizabeth Lesser on Take ‘the Other’ for Lunch.

About This Blog Entry

The Next 7 Habits of Highly Effective Coaches is part of a mini series inspired by the style of Paul Coelho‘s “Manual of the Warrior of Light“. You can find the first 7 habits here.

Habit 13 – Motivate with Flow

One of the greatest sources of satisfaction is achieving flow in what you do. Instead of motivating people through reward and/or recognition, create an environment where people have the chance to practice and get good at what they do. The satisfaction derived from flow will be greater than anything extrinsic has to offer.

Exercise: Free Flow

Identify a goal and a timebox (eg 15 minutes). Then do an activity in that timebox that enables you to get closer to your goal. Notice how you felt as you focused on the task at hand. What did you achieve? How can you flow again? How can you flow on demand?

For more information, see: Ted talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow, the secret to happiness.

About This Blog Entry

The Next 7 Habits of Highly Effective Coaches is part of a mini series inspired by the style of Paul Coelho‘s “Manual of the Warrior of Light“. You can find the first 7 habits here.

The Challenges We Face

Are you feeling stressed? Do you feel uncertain about the future? Everyday we find ourselves facing different challenges, accomplishing various tasks and constantly adapting.

As mankind has evolved, we’ve become more conscious and informed of who we are and how our minds work. Resilience, previously considered a personality trait, is now a vital modern-life skill which can be developed to help us better deal with everyday challenges as well as great adversity.

My friend Lauren L’ecaros and I have created a brand new 75-minute session to help us all better understand how resilient we are and figure out how to become more resilient in order to overcome our next big challenge.

Check out this presentation complete with speaker notes on Slideshare released under the Creative Commons Share-Alike-By-Attribution licence. Have fun with your colleagues, friends and family:

Going for Hope