Blog
2012-09-24
Marie Kaufmann
It’s time to get excited with conflict!
So totally uplifting to read professor Ralph Stacey’s blog on the paradox between conflict and harmony! And yet challenging. Yes, I share his view that our strive for and over-emphasis on harmony is leading us into sticky group interactions where real differencies in opionion or experience have no chance to come up and lead to new beginnings and true innovation! But since conflict is SO challenging to most of us, we need to work on our own relationship to conflict to become less challenged and more apt to lead through conflicts. Avoidance of conflict is not the solution. If you are inspired to go deeper in this topic – welcome to join our workshops on “Process leading and conflicts”. Take a look at our website to find out more.
Read Ralph Stacey’s blog here: http://complexityandmanagement.wordpress.com/
2012-06-27
Peter Spang
Coaching is like music
Some of my thoughts on coaching and the coaching relationship:
“To communicate is to enter the other, while watching ourselves carefully, to enter without taking possession of the other. To take possession of the other is to annul him, to prevent him from returning the gift. It is the refusal to accept his discrete word; it is to violate his inner home without allowing him to enter ours; it is the arrogance of someone who believes himself to be an entirely independent and self-sufficient force and refuses to receive. The univocal gift, without reciprocity, is not communication, but violation.”
The words from M.F. Sciacca, the great Italian philosopher (1908-1975), bring alive some of the essential qualities of a coaching relationship. As a coach, I am a compassionate co-inquirer, someone who not only has knowledge and methods, but also befriends the coachee.
Henry Mintzberg, a Canadian management professor and author, points in the direction that while coaching is a craft that can be taught and trained, it is also something of an art. Art requires creativity, passion and fantasy, and cannot be fully scientifically measured or assessed. In this light good coaching, or good leadership, can be compared with good music: its full quality only gets revealed while listening to it, not while analysing it.
To skilfully develop a coaching relationship is the key to the success of a coaching process. That has to do with the ideas of Sciacca and Mintzberg and also with the ideas of coach and author James Flaherty. He claims that three elements build such a relationship: mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual freedom of expression.
What it truly takes to create a coaching relationship is again and again unique. I still don’t know. But when it happens, I can hear the music.
2012-06-27
Marie Kaufmann
The Örebro region first in Sweden to uplift social welfare to the regional level
The Örebro Regional Development Council has, with the support of Next Stop You, formulated a new program for the social welfare of the region. They are the first region in Sweden to uplift social welfare to the regional level. The aim was to involve hundres of stakeholders and activate the regional leadership for the coming program. You can read more here:
2012-06-27
Anna-Eva Lohe
Excellent evaluations for Next Stop You Leadership Program!
We are proud to note that Next Stop You Leadership Program received excellent evaluations. Overall the program got rated at 9,2 (out of 10), intents were achieved to 80% with the help of the program, and it be recommended to others at 9,5. The words most oftenly used were “Useful, Developing, Fun, Challenging, New Leadership”. Thank you all who contributed to the input, and for creative ideas for further development. Our conclusion is that the program holds a very high standard and has a high integrity to what it promises: strengthening the leadership of complex, innovative change processes and developing the personal leadership.
Next Stop You Leadership Program has been developed from the former Process Coaches Program, that we have been leading since 12 years. We are excited to take this new step – a new program with the best from the old, and new powerful content in the forefront of the leadership and change field.
The next program starts 27-28 August and we welcome all who might be interested. info@nextstopyou.com
2012-06-27
Anna-Eva Lohe
Next Stop Istanbul – a visionary visit
After four days in Istanbul for work and pleasure I feel marinated with new impressions; colours, music, architecture, smells, sounds, and food – you name it! There is no way to hide from the attention that this city demands from you. Your senses are on the alert. At the same time, I notice a particular peace in the middle of it all. Interesting. A part of me feels at home. I really like it!
We had the privilege to stay at Manzara Istanbul, a tourist agency that offers cultural experiences and apartment living with a breath-taking view over the Bosporus. Manzara is run by a passionate German-Turkish couple; Erdogan and Gabi Altindis. In a long conversation with Erdogan and by experiencing how they have taken care of us here, I really got their dream and vision behind their company; to be a bridge between two cultures. They want to make me feel at home in this city of 16 million people including two continents. It is an ambitious intent and they deliver.
Why is that? How can that be?
Thinking of our workshop ”Leadership as an Act of Passion”, what appears to be clear to me is the connection between their business idea and their passion. There is a dream behind what we, the guests, see and experience, which is far broader than the actual services that they provide. I realise that the ambition behind everything they are doing is the drive to invest in the relationships all the way out to the fringes of the organisation. It includes everyone involved in the company; the cleaning and kitchen staff, receptionist, chauffeur. But also the local people around their block, the shop and restaurant owners, as well as the city guide Miriam. It is as everyone is a part of their family. You could call it the Manzara family.
I start to feel at home in the midst of this cosmopolitan stew of cultural spices. It becomes more personal and close. The unknown becomes a friend that feels more intriguing than frightening, more inviting and almost seductive rather than strange and fearful.
Thank you Erdogan and Gabi! Thank you Manzara Istanbul for having us as guest-friends! Thank you for the way you made us feel at home!
PS. By the way. Manzara is Turkish and means view, vision, and also insight. Take a look at their website www.manzara-istanbul.com and enjoy the visit. You will not be disappointed! DS
Archive
- 2018-03-21 A few words on Coaching
- 2016-09-12 Skolutveckling kräver ledarskap och långsiktiga processer
- 2016-09-12 Du som regional ledare – har du modet att ta samhandling på allvar?
- 2016-09-07 The importance of positive emotions to lead change
- 2015-10-30 New partners in Next Stop You
- 2015-08-24 Meditating managers take better decisions
- 2015-05-27 Against Common Sense: managing amid the paradoxes of everyday organisational life
- 2013-02-06 Why Next Stop You?
- 2012-12-11 To work with people is not “soft”
- 2012-10-15 In Afghanistan, the leaders of tomorrow are skateboarders
- 2012-09-24 It’s time to get excited with conflict!
- 2012-06-27 Coaching is like music
- 2012-06-27 The Örebro region first in Sweden to uplift social welfare to the regional level
- 2012-06-27 Excellent evaluations for Next Stop You Leadership Program!
- 2012-06-27 Next Stop Istanbul – a visionary visit
- 2012-06-27 Leadership as an Act of Passion!
- 2012-06-27 Conflicts: our libraries are solving theirs, but how about me?
- 2012-06-27 Honestly, how responsible are you?
- 2012-06-27 Passion between street dance and classical music – take a look
- 2011-12-04 Thank you for celebrating with us
- 2011-11-25 Values – a power missing today?
- 2011-09-28 Do I like change?