Category Archives: Wisdom
Practical wisdom

I’m inspired by a presentation at the 2009 TED Conference from Barry Schwartz on the increasing need and value of what he calls ‘practical wisdom.’ He actually mentions Aristotle and the Greek values understood as the ‘virtues’ at one point, ….»
Thinking/doing good

“Doing good makes us feel good. Altruism enhances our self-esteem. It gets our eyes off ourselves, makes us less self-preoccupied, gets us closer to the unself-consciousness that characterizes the flow state” (1). In other words, caring for others creates a ….»
How trees grow

It sounds counter-intuitive that, while a tree is rooted in the ground, it actually feeds on what it extracts from the air. I think this is a compelling metaphor for business (and life, if it comes to it): we ….»
After a certain point, money is
meaningless

Just for fun, here are some thoughts from much better heads than ours … A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business. Henry Ford After a certain point money is meaningless. It ceases to ….»
Failures are inveitable! Brave failures are necessary!

Some formulae … High Self-Efficacy: Failure = lack of effort Low Self-Efficacy: Failure = lack of ability A Brave Failure = learning + spur to greater effort or effect A Brave Failure builds resilience Effort & ….»
Positive psychology

Positive Psychology has three central concerns: positive emotions, positive individual traits, and positive institutions. Understanding positive emotions entails the study of contentment with the past, happiness in the present, and hope for the future. Understanding positive individual traits ….»
Education-zen

“The problem of the steady change of ideas (or the perpetual need to imagine new ideas) also demolishes the notion that the essence of education consists in mastering certain contents or materials. You are not little birdies sitting in the ….»
Coaches as Uncles and Aunts

Putting together a coaching bureau is an interesting challenge. I’ve been working on this for some months, gathering together half a dozen friends and colleagues with coaching experience in a group I hope will make a very wide range ….»
Business Ethics

Business ethics is an important field for Edgeware because it’s in the ‘change the world’ bit of our DNA. You don’t ‘adopt’ ethical practices; you can’t operate without ethics, even if you couldn’t name them and you don’t have a ….»
6 Word Memoirs

Smith Magazine invites us to summarise our lives in six words – ‘Six Word Memoirs’. I thought, ‘Easy! I have the Edgeware motto, near enough to six words: make money, have fun, change the world. I could lose the article ….»
Coach as Cartographer

Everyone is coaching or being coached; there are life coaches, career coaches, personal coaches, fitness coaches, executive coaches, coaches for getting out of bed in the morning and coaches for getting to sleep at night. Why do we need coaches ….»
Intentionality and Creative Leadership

I’m fascinated by the emerging field of ‘experimental philosophy‘, where it seems that philosophers are stepping away from their armchairs and using research methods from psychology to tackle philosophical questions. Like intentionality. This is interesting enough in itself, but just ….»
Generosity

I can think of four things to say about generosity. It’s a quality of behaviour which requires very little in the way of resources but which has enormous power to influence and change things, beginning with yourself. Firstly, generosity is ….»
Hard Wired for Stories

We are social animals We are hard wired for stories We use stories to sing the world: Body as Land, Land as Story Discourses arrive after the singing, as both agents and actors We make category errors all the time, ….»
Physician, heal thyself

A working hypothesis: every coach needs a coach. Like every shrink needs a shrink. Something about keeping yourself honest, setting up a sounding board for reflection on the practice, shrugging off the Mantle of the Expert (something I learned from ….»
Incompleteness

“In 1931, the Czech-born mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn’t be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms … of that mathematical branch itself. ….»