Inspire Me

Peace Man

The Oxford Research Group, based guess where, has for years been promoting the peace effort by producing deeply well researched and analysed reports on war and peace world wide. More recently they've been running 'off the record consultations' on specific peace related topics, drawing together groups of decision makers and influencers from a broad range of philosophical and functional backgrounds. We are very impressed with their thoughtful and challenging approach, and have been giving them some humanistic shadow consultancy and input, to help them unlock the inner emotional realms that are so relevant to this highly emotive topic. They're a charity by the way, so contributions are welcome.

Life after Retirement

A key message in the humanistic approach is that the individual has the opportunity and arguably the responsibility to make the most of her/himself, and to make a life enhancing contribution. We have been fortunate to work with many big hearted people who already took this position, and who used our help to assist them to put it into action. Some of our favourite clients have now retired - in theory - as in reality they are simply embarking on their next level of participation and contribution. They are putting together very exciting 'portfolio careers', using their professional and personal knowledge, qualities and skills, to have a really good time helping organisations and individuals learn, grow and prosper.

Humanistic Corporate Strategy

It's all very well to teach everyone the value of customer awareness and being nice to one's colleagues, but how do we incorporate the humanistic approach into corporate strategy? One of our clients holds a regular Humanistic Summit session, to consider what's happening in the organisation and what they are seeking to achieve. The discussion moves between the individual and the collective, and the outputs range from personal behavioural intentions to large scale organisational interventions. A key part of each Summit is time spent checking the well-being of the leaders present, and giving each other advice and support. A current theme is 'common intent' for key events - the chaps clarify their intent and the humanistic interventions they'll be using, and review afterwards.

Selfish Altruism

It's fairly obvious that paying attention to the well-being of our people is a kind and helpful thing to do, and contributes to the bottom line. One of our clients has been researching into his own sense of well-being, balance and the interplay betwen work and home life, and has found that other people's well-being has a direct and significant effect on his own. He is now in the process of renegotiating life plans with his wife, his mother, and his daughters - a brave man. And he recently held a work relationship review session with his second in command. The results so far are a noticeable reduction in apparent conflict between work and home life, greater co-operation and creativity between him and his second, and a greater sense of inner peace and harmony for our client.

No Means No!

Boundary management is a key issue for many execs these days - diaries get over full, people run roughshod over each other's commitments - lunch breaks: what are they? Some of the 'career women' we've been working with have realised that due to their natural desire to nurture and support others, they often let people get away with encroachments that are unreasonable and unhelpful to everyone. Our strategy to help one of these ladies with this was rather unusual, and involved loose comfortable clothing and bringing in a self-defence expert - we arranged a Close Quarter Defense session for her. She said it was most satisfying, especially learning three different ways to slap someone round the head! This was not to teach her to deck the next person who demands a meeting, but to help her choose when to say yes and when to say no, and to hold her ground when she needs to. Since then she has been coaching others to hold firm in key situations, and was witnessed calling the bluff of a particularly wily colleague who was trying to pull the wool. In short, a great success, so this is now part of the Inspiring Change curriculum.

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