Change Poem

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Bernard Chanliau

Scream into the stormChange, wind of change
Feel the wind rustle your past
Dead wood and stagnant lakes
Disturbed by change

Stand tall as lightening strikes
Feel fear frisking your face
The pain in your heart
From clutching the past too tight in your fists

Step into the firechange nature
And rise with the flames
It’s time to release the old
To make room for the new

Will you boil in the cauldron
Or just bounce on the bubbles?
Hit the edge
Or be sucked up by that soup?

Disappear in the darkness
To transform in the light
Touch your sorrowchange
To realise your life’s dream

Rise in the morning
Alive and refreshed
The challenges of yesterday
Blown away in the wind

The memories remain
But your mind makes the choice
To store anger
Or embrace wisdom for your voyage of lifenature change

Move with the ebb and flow
To hold strong in your journey
Change is a challenge
For creating YOUR life’s dream

(Author: Lorna McDowell)

Share|
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments Off

2012 ICF Global Coaching Study Summary

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Bernard Chanliau

This research sheds light on the current state of the coaching industry—highlighting the industry’s growth and uncovering trends that have since emerged. The 2012 study includes responses from an astounding 12,133 coaches in 117 countries.

“The study shows that people everywhere are turning to professional coaching for the positive difference it can make in their lives and communities,” said ICF President and Master Certified Coach Janet M. Harvey. “ICF is committed to ensuring that consumers of coaching get the quality of coaching they deserve.”

Key themes emerging from the 2012 study, as highlighted in the Executive Summary, include:

• The profession appears to be growing, with an estimated 47,500 professional coaches generating close to $2 billion (USD) in annual revenue/income.
• The profession remains concentrated in the higher-income regions of North America, Western Europe, and Oceania. Collectively, these three regions account for 76 percent of the estimated global total of professional coaches, well exceeding the 11 percent share of global population living in these regions.
• Despite the critical mass of coaches found in the higher-income regions, the evidence from the study indicates faster growth in coaching has emerged in markets outside these regions, such as in Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Coaches are looking confidently to the future, with expectations over the next 12 months of increasing demand (clients and sessions) leading to growth in annual revenue and income from coaching.
• Key issues for the future include tackling obstacles such as untrained individuals who call themselves coaches; availing of opportunities to increase awareness of coaching benefits; and answering the question of whether coaching should be regulated.
• The global average annual revenue generated by professionals providing coaching services is approximately $47,900 (USD). This figure represents income generated solely from coaching or from providing coaching services.
• On average coaches offer almost three (2.7); most commonly consulting (62%) and training (60%). It is also important to note that according to the results from the 2007 Global Coaching Study, over half of all respondents stated that they have offered some of their coaching services pro-bono.

Further details can be access on the ICF website: http://www.coachfederation.org/

 

Share|
Posted in Executive Coaching | Tagged , | Comments Off

Getting Wise to Why? Making Organisation Culture Count

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Bernard Chanliau

Supervision as a “Wisdom Illuminator” and the Doorway to Touching the Spirit of the Organisation in Corporate Culture Development By Lorna McDowell (2008)

Executive Summary:

•    There is a new climate of organisational culture  evolving – the “Why?” generation who  need to access a greater level of meaning in order to ‘engage’ in the 21st century organisation.
•    Massive innovation potential and motivational power exists through sculpting and accessing the ‘truth spirit’ of an organisation, the unspoken thoughts and ideas that often lie beneath the surface – companies such as Virgin and Apple were ahead of their time in recognising this.  Without attending to culture at a more meaningful level – beyond staff surveys and team building days – organisations sink into a ‘quicksand’ of confusion, disengagement and underlying anxiety which results eventually in employee turnover or poor business results.
•    Dialogue circles and ‘supervision’ wisdom spaces are an ideal vehicle to support this process, both 1-1, supporting internal coaches and through groups.
•    The challenge is to integrate and channel “supervision” into the organisational systems and business processes that deliver business success, so that the wisdom space can flow throughout the systems.

Organisational transformation

“Whatever we call it – supervision, wisdom space, illumination space … what it actually involves is re-learning how to ‘be’ and how to ‘think’.  It is a simple process and an ancient wisdom at heart, which can truly help organisations and the individuals within them step into their true power and potential and create the future.”

You can download this white paper from Lorna McDowell written in 2008 however still very much relevant in today’s context: Wise to Why – Culture Transformation

Share|
Posted in Organisational Analysis, Systems Thinking & Consulting | Tagged , | Comments Off

Xenergie launches its new Systemic Team Coaching Certificate in Q2 of 2012

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Bernard Chanliau

Taking advantage of unprecedented time of change and opportunity provides Xenergie with the opportunity to move beyond outdated leadership tools, designed in the era of linear, mechanistic organizational structures. We have the chance today to design new dynamic tools that engage organizations, managers, and leaders in a new conversation – one that allows them to create a new paradigm for business.

One of these ‘tools’ is our new 9-months Systemic Team Certificate programme responding to market needs:

  • Respondents named Team Coaching as their top 4 priorities in the recent Autumn Coaching at Work Annual Readers’ Survey (Dec 2011).
  • In the 2011 Sherpa Executive Coaching Survey, two new trends in leadership development were mentioned: team coaching and coaching skills training for managers based on extensive input from executive coaches who sent their comments on the state of the industry.
  • Hawkins, author of Leadership Team Coaching (Kogan Page, 2011) speaking at the European Mentoring & Coaching Council annual conference in Paris on November 2011 states “Team coaching is at the point where individual coaching was 30 years ago and buyers of team coaching are not sophisticated and individuals don’t know what it is” “What most people ask for is team facilitation.”
  • There is a growing awareness among professional coaches to move to the right hand-side of spectrum (see below) in order to enhance collective learning agenda and impact

So what’s the meaning of all of this?

Leadership team coaching from XenergieAs a company, Xenergie has specialised in team performance from its inception in 2001.  We began in the area of team experiential learning in the outdoors using the Belbin Team Role methodology and working in conjunction with Killary Adventure Centre in Connemara, west of Ireland.  Since then, we have evolved our approach over the years to incorporate a number of academic models, cutting edge learning practices and a coaching-based approach that helps to bring personal learning to the fore.   These include the Tavistock tradition of role consultation and psycho-dynamic analysis, group behaviour, integral leadership, Belbin Team Roles and Theory U group change and innovation models just a name a few.

Continue reading →

Share|
Posted in Groups & Teams, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Xenergie launches its Extravision Programme at ESB (Electricity Supply Board) Ireland

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Bernard Chanliau

Xenergie Extravision provides a reflective action learning space to review professional practice and add to continuing professional development for those involved in coaching within organizations, with the objectivity of an external coaching supervisor/mentor, qualified in coaching supervisory practice.

What is Extravision and Professional Supervision?
Supervision is now widely recognized as a professional necessity by most Coaching Organisations/Institutes in Ireland and the UK, in order to maintain clarity and freshness of insight amongst coaches. It is also a source of continuous professional development and mastering practice. The word ‘supervision’ is slightly confusing, which is why we refer to it as Extravision within Xenergie. It is not a test of competence.

Coaching supervision is a time set aside, on a regular basis, for coaches to reflect on their practice with a professional who is experienced in both coaching and supervision. In a supervision session the person being supervised (supervisee) usually presents a specific case or various issues arising from his/her coaching practice. This takes place on either a one to one or small group basis. Continue reading →

Share|
Posted in Executive Coaching, Systems Thinking & Consulting | Tagged , , | Comments Off

i-Spirit – To Infinity and Beyond

Posted on October 10, 2011 by lorna

A Tribute to Steve Jobs, Discoverer of our Times

InnovationRIP Steve Jobs. In the Zen tradition, the spirit in me bows to the spirit in you.

The world may think it has lost one of its greatest inventors, but through Steve we discovered ourselves.   The power of “i”, if you join up the impacts is profound.  How many lives have been liberated through the freedom of “i”?  How many of us found beauty in “i” that we couldn’t find elsewhere? How many wondered at the sheer power Apple as a business as Jobs led it seemingly to infinity and beyond?  The number of eulogies and tributes this week is testament to the power of one man’s spirit in the business of our times.

I believe Steve’s spirit is very much “i-alive” and will be for decades to come.  Think of all that he has created and all the creations that have spawned from these creations and those creations created by those creations, oozing and pollinating the “i” x-factor.  Manna from heaven, the elixir of life… he had it and in Apple, tried not to “bottle it” and clone it, but to release it for others to discover too.  What a success he made of that, the mark of a true leader, one who still “is” and can be in all things “i” once they are passed from this life.

Jobs would claim that he never invented those things; he discovered them. They were always there, someone just needed to “connect the dots,” to put the parts together into a whole no one else seemed to see.   Just like Christopher Columbus discovering America – it was always there; he just found it and persuaded the powers that be that the world was not in fact flat, but round.

Continue reading →

Share|
Posted in Systems Thinking & Consulting | Tagged , | Comments Off

Passion Purpose Potency Conference November 2011

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Bernard Chanliau

Release Cultural Gridlock from Xenergie UKThis is the new International Experiential Learning Conference sponsored by the Grubb Institute, held at Branksome Place, Surrey, UK.

A group relations conference is a ‘real time’ learning laboratory where participants can analyse their leadership styles and experiment creatively in expanding their repertoire of leadership skills. Together with conference staff, they can critically examine different models of organisational functioning and appraise their leadership performance.

Group Relations and Institutional Transformation technologies provide an underpinning framework. Systemic, psychodynamic, integral, developmental, holistic and spiritual frameworks are drawn on for exploring the processes taking place below the surface in people, in groups and systems, as we engage in a constant process of co-creation of lived experience, in the here and now. The capacity to take up authority in working roles in our organisations, consciously, transparently, intentionally and purposefully is enhanced by our curiosity about what, our bodies, unconscious processes, nature, spirit, and our global cultural contexts are revealing in the here and now that shed new light on the day to day organisational life.

To register your interest and for further future information please contact the Pre-Conference Administrator: j.pooley@grubb.org.uk

Registration will open at 11.00am on Wednesday 9 November, with lunch at 12.00 noon, and will end at 1.00pm on Wednesday 16 November 2011.

PDF 3 image xenergieDownload Conference brochure: BME – Conference

Share|
Posted in Groups & Teams, Organisational Analysis, Personal Development, Systems Thinking & Consulting | Comments Off

Unlocking the Grail of People Engagement

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Bernard Chanliau

How Team Coaching breaks through barriers by increasing resilience, neutralising conflict and releasing collaboration

By Bernard Chanliau and Lorna McDowell

As never before the pressure is on in organisations to do more with less, except now the grail cup of productivity has an urgent and growing emphasis on the ability to transform, innovate by developing  ’high-performance teams’ who can drive business results.   Additionally, there is new pressure for companies to walk their talk of excellence and join up their disconnected fiefdoms into clear, aligned, collaborative and focused activities that strive for an honourable purpose and celebrate diversity rather than constricting it.  The day of the lone ranger is over.

The benefits of working in teams within organisational contexts are well documented and include aspects such as increased responsiveness to challenges (i.e. increased innovation) by bringing together complimentary skills and cross fertilisation of ideas, improved organisational effectiveness and increased performance and productivity.

However, enabling the idea of cross-functional teams in practice is far more involved than gathering a few heads together and hoping for the best.   Key to the architecture of success of such initiatives is the development of awareness, capability and process to help the team members function together. Continue reading →

Share|
Posted in Groups & Teams | Tagged , , | Comments Off

How is Bolivia Leading the World in Bigger Thinking?

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Bernard Chanliau

…and Why focusing on the Question is More Informative than the Answer

In 1791, on the cusp of the French Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote the Rights of Man, positing that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights and their national interests. Two centuries later, as the world is embracing simultaneous social revolutions of a scale unseen in the last centuries, Bolivia launches the first ever Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth in the face of its own ecological collapse, which has by and large been happening beneath the news radar of the West.

Conscious Business In this declaration, the Bolivian Government, led by the suitably named Evo Morales, posits that everything is connected and that, as a living entity, the earth has as much right to life and nourishment as do its inhabitants and that our short-sighted ways must change if the planet is to survive. We are in this together and all countries must listen and unite. As Paine stated, rights are basic needs that exist as part of nature, they are not privileges but fundamentals to sustaining human and planetary existence.

Continue reading →

Share|
Posted in Organisational Analysis, Systems Thinking & Consulting | Tagged , | Comments Off

Sustain-Ability and Connecting Up The Spirit of Your Organisation

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Bernard Chanliau

As we enter the 9th and last wave of the Mayan calendar, how will the evolutionary  development challenge unfold in the corporate world and what does this mean for leadership of these times?

Bernard Chanliau and Lorna McDowell, co-directors of Xenergie, have been following the Mayan calendar through their own business journeys, since travelling to South America in the last 20 years. In the first of a series of articles on “Sustain-Ability and Connecting up the Spirit of your Organisation” they explore its meaning for corporate leadership.

On the 9th of March 2011, announced by the terrible Japanese tsunami, we entered the last 9th wave also known as the ‘Universal’ wave of the Mayan calendar (tzolki count). According to ancient Mayan’s , the Cosmos was made up by ‘Nine Underworlds’, most inherently expressed very powerfully through their biggest pyramids, which you may have seen if you have had the chance to travel to Central America.

Each ‘Underworld’ cycle carried and developed a special frame of consciousness for the life that it creates and therefore represents a major ‘wave’ in the unfolding of Consciousness through Creation as per the diagram. This last wave is designed to lead the universe and the human beings to their highest state of awareness development. For the purpose of this article we will not dwell too much on this cosmic pyramid however it is worth to note that this last framework’s initiation is about transformation. This ninth cycle of the universe is designed to generate “unity consciousness” by the end of calendar year, as oppose to “duality consciousness” which has been so far dominant in our civilisation. Unity consciousness is a mental model that perceives how everything is connected and acts from that place of connection, not separation. According to what we now know from studying ancient scripts and humanity’s gradual developmental growth of understanding over the years about our own history, it was the Yin/Yang-polarity favouring the left brain half that created human civilization beginning 5,100 years ago.

Continue reading →

Share|
Posted in Organisational Analysis, Systems Thinking & Consulting | Tagged , , | 3 Comments