Coaching The Elephant

Short, structured stand-up meetings help teams stay aligned without getting caught up in lengthy discussions. By sharing recent progress, upcoming priorities and obstacles, team members can improve communication, identify problems early and maintain momentum, whether they work remotely or in person

An effective team coach helps a group understand its dynamics, recognise patterns and unlock its collective potential rather than simply directing individual members. Through attentive observation, timely interventions and greater awareness of how people interact, a coach can help leadership teams navigate challenges and work more effectively together.

Despite growing awareness of the importance of mental preparation, some athletes still see working with a mental performance coach as a sign of weakness. The article challenges this stigma, highlighting how seeking support is a proactive way to build confidence, improve focus and develop the resilience required for elite performance.

Physical talent and hours of practice are not always enough to achieve sporting excellence; mental preparation also plays a crucial role. Developing the right mindset and mental skills helps athletes translate their training into performance, manage challenges and make the most of their abilities.

Pressure is an inevitable part of competitive sport, but how athletes interpret and respond to it can significantly affect their performance. By recognising their expectations, focusing on the task at hand and reframing pressure as a challenge rather than a threat, athletes can learn to perform more effectively in crucial moments.

Psychological safety allows athletes to express concerns, acknowledge mistakes and show vulnerability without fear of judgement. By building trust, openness and mutual support, sporting teams can strengthen cohesion, improve mental well-being and create the conditions for better performance.

Mental skills are just as important to high performance as physical preparation, technical ability and experience. Through deliberate practice, athletes can develop the focus, resilience and emotional control needed to handle pressure, overcome setbacks and perform consistently when it matters most.

Mental performance coaching helps athletes and professionals strengthen skills such as concentration, motivation, confidence and resilience. The article explores the evidence behind coaching techniques like visualisation, goal-setting and positive self-talk, and how these can support better performance.

Mental performance coaching helps soccer players develop focus, confidence, mental strength and better decision-making on the field. By addressing psychological barriers alongside physical and technical training, teams can improve consistency and perform closer to their full potential

Attitude is not a fixed trait but a learnable, changeable state - how a person is prepared for whatever the environment presents. Built on the think-feel-act principle, this article maps four stages of attitudinal development, from the challenging state through blocked, avoidant and quitting states, and explains how athletes move back up the ladder.

Teams with high psychological safety keep their people, earn more and are rated effective twice as often. This article uses two nuclear disasters, Fukushima and Chernobyl, to show what happens when authority cannot be questioned and concerns have nowhere to go, and argues that hiring talented people means little without an environment where they will speak.

Beyond credentials and resumes, every leader has distinctive strengths that shape their impact. Drawing on coaching more than 200 Executive MBA students at Booth School of Business, this article describes how to identify those superpowers through self-assessment, peer feedback and coaching, and how to put them to work under real business pressure.

Only 12% of leaders show effective interpersonal skills, and barely a third of employees trust their leadership. This article examines the two personality dimensions behind those numbers, sociability and interpersonal sensitivity, and argues that trust and a genuine sense of belonging are what convert individual competence into collective performance.

Only 12% of leaders show effective interpersonal skills, and barely a third of employees trust their leadership. This article examines the two personality dimensions behind those numbers, sociability and interpersonal sensitivity, and argues that trust and a genuine sense of belonging are what convert individual competence into collective performance.

The Semmelweis reflex is our tendency to reject evidence that contradicts what we already believe. From the physician who cut childbed fever mortality tenfold and was institutionalised for it, to Kodak dismissing digital photography, this article traces the pattern through politics and business, and offers de-biasing techniques for leaders who want to avoid it.

Psychological safety is not the engine of performance; it is the anchor that has to be raised before the ship can move. Using the 1977 Tenerife runway collision, where a flight engineer hesitated to challenge his captain, this article shows how hierarchy silences people, and why managing our own image at work can quietly cost far more than it protects.

Has traditional leadership become obsolete? This article argues the opposite: leadership still matters, but it has to absorb new expectations. It distinguishes leadership traits from leadership styles, and examines social stewardship and servant leadership as two responses to a world that now measures organizations by stakeholder value, not only by profit.

Remote work is not a temporary arrangement, and forcing people back to the office is not a leadership strategy. This article argues that communication is the most critical and most underestimated part of managing distributed teams, and offers three practical approaches: deliberate face-to-face time, understanding differing communication styles, and building a virtual water cooler.