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09Nov2018

A better way of voting

  • By Ian Bradley
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I recently consulted with a professional practice where four senior partners were selecting a managing partner. I suggested that the process of discussion might be more critical than the actual vote since the partners could benefit from a frank discussion about their relative strengths, deficiencies and workloads. I didn’t give much thought to the mechanism
07Jul2009

Executive & Sports Coaching: unsettling parallels

  • By Ian Bradley
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I finally had enough hitting erratic backhands. Opponents were deliberately targeting my tennis backhand, and for good reason as the ball would either fly-off my too-open racquet, or alternatively, plummet into the net. In a last desperate effort before turning to racquet-ball, I engaged our club pro who coaches, not executives as I do, but
13Mar2009

Prediction: face the facts

  • By Ian Bradley
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In my executive coaching practice in Montreal, many of the business issues that I discuss with my clients concern prediction. These prediction problems are rarely conceptualized as such, instead they are couched in jargon of the particular business using words such as “forecasting,” “planning” or “analysis”. However, the underlying psychological process is prediction. For example,
22Feb2009

Meetings and managed conflict

  • By Ian Bradley
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In my practice as an executive coach in Montreal, I often hear managers complain about the stress of conducting business meetings.  Their major worry is conflict. My first response is almost always: “you’re lucky, especially if those anticipated conflicts contain the seeds of contrarian ideas that might help the business.”  In today’s economic climate; heaven
12Feb2009

Problem-solving: my view on coaching

  • By Ian Bradley
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A friend recently asked me about my practice in executive coaching. He was curious about what the major mental health problems the executives that I see in my practice face. He had in mind the typical collection of diagnostic entities such as depression, anxiety, or perhaps more behavioural deficits, such as, perfectionism or excessive self-criticism.
03Feb2009

Dialectics

  • By Ian Bradley
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Dialectics in Sports and Business: As a psychologist involved in helping professional athletes as well as senior executives, I have found numerous similarities in the challenges facing both groups. One such similarity is the dialectical tension of two potentially opposing tendencies – individual competitive achievement and team playing. As students of philosophy appreciate, a dialectic
23Jan2009

Life can be lonely at the top

  • By Ian Bradley
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Executive coach as a confidant Nowadays it seems that everyone has a coach- a life coach, an exercise coach even a financial coach. In my case, as an executive coach who is also a clinical psychologist, I have the advantage of being able to draw upon a vast array of psychological knowledge and techniques to
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