Posts by Andrew Woodward

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the services of coaches have been in demand more than ever. The crisis has caused widespread disruption to the workplace (CIPD, 2020) and increased pressure on the lives of many working professionals (WHO, 2020). Moreover, over the last eighteen months, coaches have been reporting a greater demand for…

Coaching, mentoring, and counselling all sit under the umbrella of talking therapies. They work because the client is free to speak about topics they may otherwise not get a chance to discuss. The coach, mentor or counsellor listens attentively, and clients often describe this as cathartic in our fast pace of life where we are…

Over the last 100 years, we’ve all been fascinated by the idea that our sibling birth order has a significant effect on our personalities as adults. Birth order differences have been popularised by the psychology articles found in magazines like Time, The Huffington Post and ABC Online. These are not academic journals, so there is…

I’ve been working in the transformation consulting industry for the last 25 years, and I like to think that I’ve accrued a few nuggets of wisdom along the way. So here is one for you. Top-down change programmes rarely deliver the hoped-for benefits. Why?  Because the direction generated at the top of an organisation doesn’t…

The question of how much you should pay for coaching sessions is an interesting one, especially as the industry grows and morphs. So, before I talk about actual cash numbers, it might be helpful to understand a bit more about this fascinating newcomer to the business services industry. The origins of business coaching have roots…

Over the years, I’ve become interested in that one question that vexes executive coaches and potential clients alike. “What makes a genuinely great executive coach”? As a practitioner myself, I’m always working on my skills, developing my approach, and learning new ways of bringing clarity to a situation. I’m constantly fascinated by how to get…

Many Chief Executives find organisational wealth in the financial controller’s balance sheet. There are numbers against all these tangible assets, including buildings, machinery, cash in the bank, IP and even the pipeline of orders for the next financial year. You have probably heard the famous mantra, “Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is…

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins makes it clear that after you have worked on yourself to become a better leader, the next most important thing to do is get the right people around you, described as ‘first who, then what’. In other words, get the right people in your circle and then…

When you think about leadership traits, typically, what comes to mind are qualities like strength, vision, enthusiasm, charisma, and courage. Often overlooked is an essential leadership trait – humility. Sometimes leaders get caught up in promoting their success to a point where they appear shallow and self-absorbed. These qualities inspire very few people. However, what…