All Posts by Robert Holmes

Maybe it’s because I have just finished trying to read Friedrich Nietzsche’s work that I got to thinking about whether philosophy informs coaching. Philosophers tend to be deep thinking and, oftentimes, shy individuals who inhabit academic spaces like universities. I didn’t imagine they’d have much to say about high performance or good insight into solving […]

How to overcome limiting beliefs You are in a situation you find frustrating, you feel boxed in and without choices. What can you do? Your options are both internal and external – you can try to change the circumstance (stay/leave), or the people in the circumstance (convince/negotiate)… most of which in coaching we would call […]

Tim Ferris (author of The 4-Hour Work Week) makes me look bad. I mean this guy… this GUY! So many hacks, so many short cuts, so much productivity and so many outcomes. It is high time someone decided to start copying him right? On reflection though, whilst I can look one way and feel bad […]

Getting off the (mental health) spectrum: the power of neuroplasticity This article explores how: A mental health diagnosis is not a life sentence Pathologising is not the path out (cognitive redefinition is) Choice gives hope, hope can create a chance at freedom Dr Joseph Michaels, when visiting the facility where Hans Asperger was working with […]

  In a world chasing fame and fortune, it’s not such a bad thing to revise our plans for money, and perhaps even decide to have less. Most business people (especially stand-alone entrepreneurs – or ‘soloists’) struggle in their relationship with money. Why is that? And how can we get back to a place where […]

What comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton? I’ll wager the images which come to mind are very different from Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten. Both Trump and Turnbull are independently wealthy, that’s for sure but would a man like Trump ever be taken seriously in our political landscape? I’m […]

A few years ago ‘bespoke’ was the buzzword. Last year it was ‘ramp up’. Nowadays agile is quite the term, but as always with such words, it has a very fuzzy meaning. So let’s be clear, I am not going to be discussing the Agile Movement (an alternative to project management), software development, a management […]

“No change, no degradation, no perversion… in any grade… has monsters half so horrible… as Ignorance and Want” Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol Have you ever drawn up a target or a goal, using the SMART formula, and pursued it with all your effort only to have the target elude you? Perhaps this gave you […]

Workers in the military have been wearing uniforms since before written history. Today, many vocations insist on a uniform: hospital nurses and doctors’ scrubs; public sanitation officers; bus, train, taxi and tram staff; military, police and security forces; mechanics, stevedores and crane operators; construction workers, infrastructure and mining operators; the hospitality industry and the subtler […]

Have you ever got, when you were stuck thinking on your feet in an interaction that really mattered? Have you reached for mindfulness tools, or confidence tools and found they didn’t deliver the solution? It turns out that beyond the standard suite of assistance we turn to in such times, we have a very powerful […]

Perhaps you know someone who is self sabotaging… experiencing a glass ceiling. Maybe you’ve tried a coaching approach and it hasn’t worked… your client appears to be stuck, or depressed and will not budge. You’re probably dealing with self esteem. As their coach, you might need to develop techniques and strategies for assisting them. Self […]

Work-life balance is important for our clients to achieve because the “life” part of the equation is the support environment for the “work” part. To get better performance at work, our clients need to enhance the environment they are coming from in order to cope with the stress they will face at work.  Getting this […]

The hacker community finds short cuts, fast and effective ways around the system. Hacking has now been applied beyond computers to biology, fitness, skills development and performance enhancement. My interest is in brain hacks – fast ways to create more permanent neuroplastic changes to the brain. Perhaps you’re attempting to hack yourself: playing Lumosity or […]

In my work, both consulting and coaching, the topic of health comes up frequently. Whether it’s an executive working on work-life balance, a client trying to develop the stamina to stick at their goals, or a friend who has hit upon some new research… health always promises to divide opinions. Reasons, motivations can vary wildly, […]

Have you ever wondered who you are, where you get your sense of self from? The answer is your unconscious self, and it may surprise you to learn that we’re largely unconscious beings. That all runs well most of the time, and is especially helpful when high speed physical responses are needed. But things go […]

Have you ever watched a champion tennis player get in the zone? He might bounce the ball three times, spin the racquet twice, cough and then… slam the ball. That athlete and thousands like him use a physical (somatic) process to build state changes (mental, biochemical and emotional) that cascade back down to a higher […]

Have you ever observed that one client appears to be very responsive to your coaching, and another is very reserved? They both get great outcomes, but one of them comes across as kind of resistant. It surprises you when, after the coaching, they say how profound it was – yet you never saw that reflected […]

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The gap between rich and poor is increasing; greed and selfishness seem pervasive in our culture. Why does money seem to slip through our hands? We want it, we love it, we need it but our relationship seems so abusive! When people get a lot of it, we are disgusted. In this discussion, Robert Gerrish […]

There is a 25-50% failure of assignment rate in expats sent to another country to head up the work there. The failure rates among others going through leadership transition such as those who are promoted, move company, move state or change career industry are not much different. Enter the coach. Padraig O’Sullivan has been helping […]

Coaching borrows the best stuff from psychology, social work, facilitation, teaching and neuroscience. But the way coaching packages it up (the coaching frame) is both totally unique and much more empowering. Coaches can be empowered by the way they use the coaching frame in a conversation. It permissions them for confrontation, forward momentum and deep […]

Coaching entrepreneurs requires us to understand where they fall on the spectrum of chaos to structure. Artists, authors and poets might be toward one end, creative, risking taking visionary entrepreneurs might be in the middle and highly structured business builders at the other.

Coaching entrepreneurs requires an interested mind, willingness to coach the whole person (head, heart and body), explore the internal landscape, address over reliance on external and assist them to find their strengths and identify their key differences.

Coaching Entrepreneurs leads in many cases to becoming part of a relationship and watching people go on to their greatness, and this can be truly rewarding.

Flow State is both the optimal state, and a high performance state that opens up realms of productivity, creativity and wondrous experience. Flow State research started 150 years ago, but came into prominence when scientists looked at peak performance athletes and extreme sports (think the X-Games and Red Bull). Now Flow State coaching is being incorporated in corporations, learning institutions and government bodies. Come and get flow!

Are you ready to lead in the 21st Century? Silvia Damiano from About My Brain talks about performance, collaboration, innovation and agility in thinking based on the four “I”s of integrating, inspiring, imagining and intuiting. Learn about your brain and leadership, how it relates to self, the world and others. How does Google do business? How do creative powerhouse advertising firms keep the ideas coming? Leaders, facilitators and coaches should all become familiar with tomorrow’s leadership.

It was professor David Clutterbuck that said, “Bridging the gap between research and theory on the one hand and the coaching practitioner on the other is arguably the biggest challenge facing the coaching profession,” (Coaching Understood – Introduction). Susie says, we need to start addressing the issue of evidence. We need bridging to authenticity.

We talk about our finances, we talk about our diets, we even talk about our sicknesses with friends and family. But one topic remains taboo, our sex lives. Who goes to get relationship coaching & sex therapy when trouble sets in, or head off for a marriage counselling weekend? Jacqueline Hellyer takes on the toughest topic and brings sex into the light. In this interview we also discuss the effect pornography has on relationships and expanding the way we think about sex. I think by the end of this interview you will agree that relationship coaching & sex therapy go together – even if you are not an expert in the field. At least we can be a little less squeamish about it.

Every relationship has one. Many conversations careen toward one. The discomfort zone. When things get awkward, and moving forward gets hard. How much of this is coming from inside us, and how much from inside the person we are relating to? How much does environment, topic, culture or stress have to do with it? More importantly… how do we press past it? Marcia Reynolds gives us strategies for busting the discomfort zone in this episode of the podcast.

Do you use metaphor in your coaching? Most coaching models of human behaviour attempt to understand what we have in common. Clean language coaching celebrates the ideosyncratic, the individual ways a person has and particularly their metaphor. Core to this is the meaning they make of those metaphors and the story they tell. Clean Language takes away as much content imposition by the coach as possible by providing a set of standard questions and a model to use them in.

Asia is the frontier for growth and development, are you part of the Coaching in Asia game? China’s economy has now outstripped the USA and India is chasing hard. Coaching is rising up in every Asian nation, rich and poor, so who is set to play a significant part in that development?

Barbara Anderson talks to us about her adventures Coaching in Asia and come of the critical lessons she has learned from working in large corporations in Australia. Ironically, we must first do away with our rich nation, first world idealism… thinking we have the answers. It would be much more helpful to have a conversation as peers, learning from one another.

Everyone needs to learn to express more empathy. It’s good for business. When clients feel understood they come back, it improves their experience. It builds better relationships and if you’re in the coaching business – it is absolutely central to your survival. The ability to establish rapport with a client very often rests on your […]

Want a fit brain that is resilient, flexible and strong? Learn all about building the capacity of a brain wise leader who knows how to communicate effectively, balance safety and novelty, maintain your own distinctives and be more creative with Dr. Connie Henson.

Think psychologist, think problem people… but not any more! Positive psychology is all about focusing on outcomes, on strengths and the best in productive people. Positive Psychology in Coaching describes what happens when Dr. Suzy Green is around. Founder of the Positivity Institute, Suzy works with schools, universities and business to improve their human resource.

I loved reading about the adventures of Christopher Robin and his childhood friends in Hundred Acre Wood. It was only recently I realized that the author of Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne, gave these childhood characters a range of mental illnesses. Think about it. Pooh Bear has ADHD, Tigger has hyperactivity-impulsivity disorder, Piglet has […]

People talk about finding the child within, as though some part of us got trapped in time, stuck in an inner capsule inside us. The truth of it is though, our unconscious does not know about time and space. For the unconscious self, all time is now. Anything from our past is in some respects […]

Ever wondered how to get an edge in delivering insight to your clients? Want to put more into your service… then look no further than using body language in coaching! Patryk and Kasia Wezowski are experts in reading body language and facial expressions and graduates from their training score over 80% accuracy. Seeing it, knowing and understanding it, then helping your client use it brings the edge.

A lot has been published on the “what” in leadership attitude, approach and changing corporate culture, but little has been done about the “how”. How does one shift leadership attitudes? How do we embrace change, adjust beliefs and shift process internally? Jerry Connor, co founder of Coach in a Box and the Bridge Partnership has worked closely with the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CiPD) to find out the answers to this question.

It has been well said that you should hire your weakness and focus on your strengths, and most of us feel vulnerable in the area of sales and marketing. So it seemed perfectly reasonable that I should get outside help, bring in a marketing “expert” to assist me. I’ve done this twice before, each at […]

Large organisations equip senior leaders and C-suite executives, but what about everyone else in the organisation? Coaching is super expensive, beyond the reach of ordinary citizens and certainly most of the third world. Dr. Matt Barney says we could coach using technology… psychometric evaluation, leadership potential recognition, journalling, automated reminders, group coaching and asynchronous interactions with a coach mentor. This is the work being done by LeaderAmp.

There’s a lot of stuff about your brain in the popular literature right now. Picking your way through the advice can be difficult and at times highly contradictory. Let me try to get brain management down to 5 essential actions for you, drawing from the work of Dr. John Arden who wrote an excellent book […]

There are some significant challenges facing today’s young person that they are just not prepared for. Our parenting goes some way toward helping them, but as parents we rely deeply on the education system for the rest. Unfortunately, the education system is not designed to prepare people for life, at least not life as we […]

Did you know that the Police, Army and Corporations use acting, coaching and role play with individuals? Amy Kersey has carved out a rather special niche for herself, coming both from an acting background and a coaching one. It seems natural she ended up coaching actors, but this soon lead to using both those skills in corporate Australia. The line for that is “corporate facilitator, role player and trainer”.

Neuroscience in coaching simply means taking the study of the brain and using it in coaching practice. Who better to talk to than a neuroscientist focusing on the efficacy of coaching – which he calls one of the “talking therapies”. Dr Pieter Rossouw served Nelson Mandela in bringing healing to the traumatised nation of South Africa. He says “Talking Therapies” are the bomb when it comes to helping people change their brains – neuroplasticity.

Gestalt, meaning “picture” or “story” is so powerful because it makes the implicit more explicit, or as Dorothy likes to say the invisible more visible. It’s like “Pragmatic Magic”. Gestalt therapy was among the most favoured approaches in psychology in the late 1970’s and 80’s, giving way to CBT and other forms of psychotherapy. Dorothy Siminovitch, Ph.D, MCC has brought the school and it’s fundamental principles across into coaching where, perhaps, it always belonged.

Why do coaches excel at brain hacking? In this article, written for Choice Magazine, Robert unveils the most recent research from the University of Queensland department of Neuropsychotherapy on “talking therapies” and how they work on neuroplasticity. Check out the published article in .pdf format here

Coaches who have kept up their practice for 6-10 years bill double the average. They have the long haul in mind, and the stamina to keep it up. They build long term coaching relationships, they deepen expertise. Katherine Hosie has been at coaching since 2003 and accrued 10,000+ hours of experience. In this podcast Kate shares her thoughts on what it takes to go the distance and continue to find the journey rewarding.

Coaching C-Suite executives (CEO, COO etc.), organisations and family companies can often lead to Coaching Boards. Sometimes coaches are asked then to join the board. What should a person be thinking about and aware of as they do this? In this podcast Julie Garland-McLellan address these and other issues such as creating other income streams from public speaking, book writing and board positions.

An HR consultant once told me, “Make sure you stay at a job at least 2 years, otherwise it looks like you have no stickability”. Sage advice apart from the downsizing of the mid 1980’s depression, post GFC I or the “right sizing” in Canberra right now. At such times corporate compassion hits at an […]

Are you pushing for higher performance from yourself and your team? Ever tried the process of state change? Robert’s article “Coaching High Performance through State Change” (click to see the .pdf format) appears in this month’s Coaching World. In it he shares the journey of a client who uses state change in physical, mental and […]