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Showing posts with the label mentorship

Crisis Mentorship for Crisis Leadership

  It's fair to say there's been quite a few crises doing the rounds recently. What many people may not consider when the next crisis hits the news, and the discourse centres the people impacted by  the crisis, are the people trying to lead through  the crisis, and bring it under control. Recent years have shown a rising trend of anti-leadership rhetoric, especially on social media, with the attitude being that no one actually needs  leadership, people are completely  capable of solving every problem they could ever encounter independently, business leaders don't actually do any work, but just take money from hard working people, and deliberately make life harder for people who are already struggling more than enough.  This attitude is driven by concepts such as the wisdom of crowds, which are increasingly being not so much debunked, but placed back in their original contexts - for example, that it is not that any crowd  will have greater 'wisdom' than ...

What Can a Mentor Do For Me?

  Why bother with a mentor? Most of us have encountered the situation of knowing exactly what we want to do with our lives, or where we want to be in our careers, but not having a clue how to get there from where we are now.  The gulf between what we perceive as being "needed" in the role or life we want, and the resources, experience, and skills we have , seems un-bridge-able; there are no stepping stones, the current is too powerful, we don't know anyone with a boat... A mentor is, allegorically speaking, "a person with a boat." They've made the same journey we want to make, often from an equivalent, if not absolutely identical, starting point to us, and so they know  it's do-able for "someone like me" - because they are  "someone like you", and they did it. Unlike a coach, who supports you to become better at something you're already at the very least okay at, and who assumes the perspective of "I know more about this than...

2025 - Offerings, Opportunities, and...Optimism?!

  Calm down. We haven't decided for a total 360 on our brand - we're still The Productive Pessimist, still a bit more "storms, spite, sarcasm" than "live, laugh, love"  - it's just that it seems like a good time to remind people that pessimism doesn't mean doom and gloom and moaning about everything - it's simply assuming that things may not go the way you'd like them to, and planning on that assumption, so that, if they don't, you can dust yourself off and carry on anyway.  After all, if they do  go they way you want...there's nothing stopping your onward progress, is there?! You hit a milestone - press on towards the goal! 2025 In a recent meeting, a retiring colleague from the property sector was asked what he imagined he'd see if he had a crystal ball for 2025; his response was "a steady recovery for the commercial sector."   The commercial sector doesn't just mean commercial property rentals, although that is my...