Monthly Archives: August 2018
Choosing my crew carefully
As much as we would all love to be good at everything in life, success often depends on realising that we are not! When boat sailing my small cruising catamaran, I often take to the water with those who possess additional skills or knowledge that I am sorely deficient in. It’s not the main reason I take them with me, but it helps! My younger son, a marine engineer, has an ability to analyse a practical challenge, identify the problem and then fix it. And we’re both happy to laugh at my ability to defer the difficult jobs until he arrives. Mike, my crew for a weekend back in June, is retired and has a love of all things mechanical. Tom, an equally-experienced sailor, is a semi-retired engineer and possible part-time contortionist who can turn his hand to most things; …
Two tools for raising team effectiveness
I was talking with someone from a small (two-person) team recently. Working for a small charity, their responsibility was for fundraising a challenging amount of money for the year. Dividing the work and opportunities evenly between them didn’t seem to be working and both were feeling stress levels rising. And then they were offered some psychometric profiling. It clearly identified one person as being relatively introverted, focussed and with good attention to detail. Her colleague could hardly have been more different. Outgoing, bubby and extroverted, she drew her energy from meeting with people and found paperwork draining. What a revelation this understanding of each other brought! Instead of dividing the work evenly, they split it by temperament. Our introvert spends more time researching, applying to trusts, completing the paperwork (yes, even her colleague’s paperwork!) She feels a new freedom and no …
Maintaining an Edge
Among the Twitter Feeds I follow are some related to Plymouth, ‘Britain’s Ocean City’. I have family links to the area and it remains a favouritespot. I even have a ‘country retreat’ which I keep nearby. Lest you have visions of grandeur floating before your eyes, let me explain: It’s a small sailing catamaran, measuring 7mx3m, and there isn’t quite enough height in the cabin for me to stand upright. Something I learned years ago was the importance of keeping a sharp knife to hand when sailing. Ropes can get caught and on rare occasions, this can lead to danger unless rapidly cut. Because salt water is very corrosive, a stainless-steel blade is likely to outlast an ordinary steel blade – the downside being that stainless steel loses its edge more quickly. So I keep a handy knife sharpener on board so that I can …
Grammar School
Ah, English grammar! The seemingly ever-changing world of sentence structure. You haven’t studied it since high school, but you speak English. It’s natural to know to place your commas and how to order clauses, right? Well, sometimes…. Believe me, I fully understand the perils of writing a blog article about grammar – you will all be searching through this with a fine-toothed comb, looking for mistakes (deliberate, of course!) So, let’s start with a disclaimer: Socrates is widely credited as saying that the only thing he knew for certain was that he knew nothing. Please also apply the aforementioned statement to this lowly writer and bear with me as I step gingerly into the minefield that is the English language. Many grammar guidelines are fluid and flexible. Sometimes, it genuinely doesn’t matter which punctuation mark you use. However, you could …
Confidence to gain competence
As a child, I recall eating my mother’s homemade Rabbit Pie. And it is a rabbit that I think of when I hear the words ‘Come Dine with Me’. Not because of Mum’s Rabbit Pie, but because of a training experience which, for a few moments, left me feeling like a rabbit caught in headlights… Over the years I often seen otherwise competent people struggling to take on a new concept or skill. I vividly remember one occasion when it happened to me: It was a small, three-day training course, during which each delegate would have three opportunities to deliver an ever-improving brief training session to their fellow students. In order to make up numbers, during these sessions I changed role from being the course facilitator to being one of the ‘guinea pigs’ for the delegates. I confess that until …