Archive for January, 2013

31
Jan

5 We are not afraid of dying.

by Una Hearne. I remember a lot of funerals when I was a child. Two grandparents and three uncles anyway. Large gatherings of extended family, ham sandwiches and fizzy drinks. My dad told me people are afraid of death, that's why they don't want to talk about it. People spoke of death in hushed tones. I understood the reverence, after all it is a huge thing. But afraid of it? I never truly understood that. Death always seemed pretty natural to me, inescapably part of life. Ok, I was an odd kid, I'll ...

24
Jan

4 What’s gone wrong with recruitment?

by Una Hearne. The most common, and potentially most ineffective, way to go about job hunting is to send your CV into recruitment agencies. The idea is to match suitable candidates to a particular role. I'm just going to say it - it's not working for most people. In my opinion it would be equally effective to pick names out of a hat. Recently I have noticed: For a very small number of people, who's CVs have all of the relevant key words and who fit technical job descriptions precisely, recruitment agencies can still ...

18
Jan

by Una Hearne. One of the key skills in coaching is listening. Listening in a way that we don't often encounter in our lives. For me, the best description is by Nancy Kline in her book Time to Think. In the introduction she describes how her mother listened to them as children: "She simply gave us attention. But the quality of that attention was catalytic." Nancy then goes on to describe how later studies of thinking in students showed that: "The important factor in whether or not they could think for themselves, afresh, at a ...

17
Jan

by Una Hearne. Easy! When you have reached your goal. You got the job / went on holiday / got promoted / have a successful business or whatever. Right? Well. Maybe. And then again, maybe not. It depends on what you personally mean by success. We have all sorts of notions of what success means - money, houses, cars, lifestyle, achievements, awards and accolades, the lovers, the family, the friends - all that nice stuff. The feeling of being successful of course comes from inside you. It is the meaning that you personally attach to the stuff ...

16
Jan

1 There are limits!

by Una Hearne. Does it bug you when coaches and inspirational speakers tell you that you can do anything you want? Absolutely anything, with no limits? It really bugged me over the years. We all know there are limits. Time, for example, is a hard limit, we cannot create any more of it than we have. We have to prioritise what we spend our time on because we simply cannot do everything. No matter how many secrets we read. Having said that, the idea that life is just the way it is and ...