Smart Thinking
The Smart School Blog

XNick Bolton E-mail: nick.bolton@www.thesmartschool.co.uk Info: Nick Bolton is founder of the Smart School and provides the vision, passion and energy that makes the school such a unique place to be. Within the school he now heads up the unique Rapid Results Business Coaching programme and delivers some of the Master Classes.Posts by the author (30)

Keep your eye on the road!

Let me reflect for a moment on an amusing, if somewhat painful, event.

I am currently cycling around Belgium for a week, setting out from Dunkirk and cycling to Bruges, Brussels, Ghent and Veurne.

One of my new gadgets is a state of the art satnav for my bike which plans the best route for a cycle and allows me to see every twist and turn I can expect to encounter.

And that’s where my problem started. Read more

Filed Under From the Director's Chair

XSonia Gill E-mail: soniagill_@hotmail.com Info: Sonia is the founder of Heads Up, an education consultancy which combines her years in education and senior business leadership to develop leadership skills and high performing teams in schools. As a psychology graduate Sonia has always had a keen interest and passion in developing people, this led to her to coaching which further compliments her consultancy work.Posts by the author (6)

To advise or not advise; that is the question

I’ve always been a bit anti-advice giving in coaching sessions.  After all it’s not coaching is it?  However the more I coach the more I realise that this is a time and place for advice.  Not a very big place, in fact so far I’d say less than 1% of total my coaching time has involved giving advice and if I’m being really honest all of it was in one coaching session I had last week.  Which was a big surprise for me!

I’m working with a client who, at short notice, found out she had to attend an assessment centre for a role she’s applied for.  The days were to be filled with a variety of activities, spanning a range of competencies and certainly challenging all who attend.  It was great to hear how calm, measured and confident she was in her approach this which was exactly what we had been working on.  Her biggest concern was the actual interview itself and we talked about why, how she felt about the many other elements of the assessment days, what she would like to achieve at the end of the coaching session, what the challenge for her was and so on. Read more

Filed Under Transformational Coaching

XHolly Worton E-mail: holly.worton@gmail.com Info: Posts by the author (7)

Coaching for a proactive life

The other day I was on the Tube, reading a book, when I overheard a segment of the (rather loud) phone conversation of the person sitting across from me. Clearly he hadn’t done something he had said he’d do, but all I heard was his response to the situation: “Well, it’s not my fault because I forgot.” And he kept repeating: “Well I forgot, so it’s not my fault I didn’t do it.” He was clearly convinced that forgetting to do something was a valid excuse for not actually doing it.

So many people have this attitude in life: blaming others for their mistakes, or for not being happy in life, or for not being where they wish they were. They may blame friends, family members, or even the government. These people generally live a reactive life: simply reacting to what they believe happens to them.Coaching is all about living a proactive life: taking responsibility for the outcomes we experience, and planning our steps so we can get to where we want to be in the future. It’s about taking charge of our own lives: accepting that it’s our responsibility for where we are and what we’ve got, and understanding that if something isn’t working, we need to be the ones to make changes. Read more

Filed Under Transformational Coaching