Potato

Potato

So many different ways to enjoy the same thing!

Creative People

Interesting quote that I picked up on igoogle from Human Resources daily quote re creative people;

“Psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that creative people have one trait that most makes them different from other individuals – complexity. Csikszentmihalyi’s summary of exceptionally creative people: smart but naïve, often introverted, both humble and arrogant, more androgynous than others, both conservative and rebellious.”

Collaborative learning at work. Towards Maturity

 An extract from a recent report.  Towards Maturity

“Over the next 3 years employers reported an expected a certain level of growth in the use of the collaborative properties of the web:

• 32% use moderated chat rooms / discussion groups (rising to 49% by 2010) 
• 40% use e-tutor support to learners ( rising to 51%)
• 24% growth in online collaboration between learners 
• 49% provide online access to in house expertise (but only rising to 52% by 2010)
• 43% provide collaborative learning via mentors & coaches ( rising to 47%)
• 19% use blogs and wiki’s (rising to 34% by 2010)”

Searchme

Introduction to Searchme

This looks good, great for visual learners

EMCC Conference Initial Thoughts

I’ve just returned from the EMCC (European Mentoring & Coaching Council) at Ashridge. It was a great learning opportunity. Instant highlights for me included; ‘Creativity in coaching supervision by Alison Hodge, ‘Coaching with the brain in mind’ by David Rock and ‘Virtual Coach/Virtual Mentor by Zulfi Hussain & David Clutterbuck.

I’m just in the process of trying to work up a research proposal for my MA (Coaching & Mentoring) and want to focus on the latter area. It seems to me that there is so much scope now for virtual & remote coaching as part of a rich multi-media approach (that includes social networking). It appears that there is limited empirical research that has been done in this area & I’d really like to make a difference.

My challenge now is to decide;where should I focus, how can I narrow this down & what can I refer to in my lit review?

Any thoughts would be welcome

I’ll share more detailed thoughts re the conference once I’ve had a chance to reflect (as always!) 

EMCC Conference

I’m looking forward to attending this conference next week. The trouble is how do I decide which sessions to attend. I will share my thoughts after I’ve attended.

Self efficacy & coaching (part 2)

If self efficacy is accepted as a valid concept, here are some ideas & considerations of how it could influence our coaching practice;  

• Focus on building specific self efficacy perceptions rather than outcome expectations
• Influence the building of high self-efficacy by   providing feedback on coachees capabilities and performance (including challenge),
• Give and encourage the coachee to consider positive vicarious experiences,
• Give coachees feedback and encourage them to value others feedback regarding their capabilities
• Encourage learners to reflect & judge their own ability in the task at hand (including physiological factors)
• Encourage self-observation of specific behaviour, self-judgement of progress towards a specific goal and self-reaction of evaluative judgements of performance
• Discuss self-efficacy with the coachee
• Consider how coachees self efficacy beliefs may affect the goals that they set for themselves
• Consider using anchoring as a technique to increase expectancy of specific task performance
• Encourage the coachee to set themselves (culturally appropriate) challenging goals
• Combine goals & feedback for optimal performance
• Help coachees identify areas in which they are dissatisfied with their performance and also have a high self efficacy for optimal effort towards chosen goals
• Support coachees in breaking down tasks into sub-goals, encourage them to monitor their own performance and give feedback to enhance performance
• Consider how personal evaluative standards and self efficacy can synthesize in order to increase intrinsic interest in meeting goals
• During assessment with a coachee use specific measures to determine benchmarks
• When agreeing goals or discussing change or performance use specific & detail focussed questions
• Listen for statements made by the coachee that would indicate high or low self-efficacy perceptions and construct questions designed to increase self-efficacy.   
• Encourage coachees to understand how failure can affect perceived self efficacy in order that future negative repercussions on performance can be combated
• Ensure the coachee has a specific understanding of the task/goal
• Suggest exploring additional development options in areas that may increase self efficacy (e.g. technology, complexity)
• Consider levels of optimal perceived self efficacy differences that may exist in an individualist or collective culture.
• Consider the influences of collective self efficacy in collective cultures

How people learn

Great resource here

Thanks Don

Wake up!!

 Here’s some creative thinking & persistence!

Simon’s Cat ‘Cat Man Do’

Another bad day!

Bad day