April 23, 2017

Women: do they make good coaches?

When I started my career in IT, I was often the only woman on the team.  What I observed was that men operated differently and I had to learn to adapt to a new set of team social rules.  In my experience men are;

  • much more direct
  • may even shout at you when irritated
  • not hold a grudge afterwards.

Having a mentor to help with this learning became an imperative for me and was enormously beneficial.

If like me you are in the second half of your career, you may have ruminated on how you operate in the workplace.  Meeting up with a former manager from my youth, he reminded me how when I first worked for him I did not speak up in a group situation, even when he knew I had some good ideas.  This is not an uncommon trait in a woman at work. read more

By Alison Wem, ago

Your soul map: 2 ways to design your soul map

Some people like to take their template and jump straight in with colouring.  Others like to consider the template and where the important people in their life should sit within it before they start to colour.  The choice of approach is yours.

If you decide to take the time to consider the layout of your soul map, the questions you might want to ask yourself are;

  • Who are the important people in my life?
  • Where would I place an individual on my soul map?
  • What are the relationships between individuals?
  • Do they have an important relationship with me?
  • Is a life lesson being learnt?
  • Who is helping with the life lesson?
  • Is there a natural grouping of individuals e.g. grandfather and grandson, cousins who always gather together at family functions? If so place them together in your soul map.

Often life lessons show themselves as repeated challenges.  For me my life lesson was about defining and maintaining my personal boundaries.  Before I realised this I had a series of very challenging managers, each getting progressively worse.  I really wondered what I had done to deserve them.  When I realised that they were helping me to learn a life lesson, I approached the situation differently and managed it much better.  My next two managers were wonderful so I must have gone someway to learning my lesson. read more

By Alison Wem, ago