Motivation

5 things that could cause a girl’s motivation level to slip from marvellous to miserable when travelling around the country, running training courses:

• Waking in the early hours to discover an intruder at the end of your hotel bed…which, on closer inspection turns out to be life sized cardboard cut-out of Lenny Henry, which you hadn’t noticed when you’d wearily slumped into bed at midnight on arrival.
• Washing your hair in ‘soft’ water when you’re used to the hard water of the south – leaving you looking like Toyah in the 80s.
• Trying to tame said hair using a hairdryer attached to a desk with a cord which does not allow you to stand anywhere near a mirror.
• Discovering there is no iron or ironing board in the room and that ‘all the boards are out’ when you call reception.
• Realising that you’ve left your new boots at home and that the only footwear you have to accompany your smart black suit are gold FitFlops or your brown Uggs.

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Executive Coaching

Thought for the week: Everything that is achieved on earth is first conceived in the mind.

In March, my business partner Gavin sat down to watch TV, opened a beer and waited to be entertained by one of his all-time comedy heroes; Eddie Izzard. The programme, which was the first of 3 episodes which ran on BBC3, turned out to be a documentary, charting Eddie’s progress as he ran 43 marathons over 51 days. 5 weeks training and off he went. The programme reduced Gavin to tears. Bewildered, confused and utterly inspired. How could anyone achieve such an amazing feat? Especially a guy that is more at home in stilettos than running shoes?

So, it wasn’t exactly a surprise when Gavin announced a few weeks ago that he was going to train for his first ever triathlon, involving a 750m river swim, 20k bike ride and a 5k run to finish.

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Team Skills

I have an idea for a new reality TV show in which I would, of course, be prepared to feature. Take six very different, independent women from various walks of life and plonk them all on a foreign island somewhere for a week together and see what happens. So committed am I to this idea that I have just tried it out. The ‘team’ in question consisted of me and 5 other women, 3 of whom I did not know before my holiday. And we interacted exactly as one might expect.

How do I know what one might expect? Because team development usually follows a very similar pattern. Bruce Tuckman first described the four stages of team development in 1965 as;
Form, Storm, Norm, Perform.

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Myers-Briggs® Personality Types

When holidaying abroad it is a really good idea not to fall asleep in the sun, get sunstroke and spend the next few days consigned to the villa bathroom.

That said, should you sustain said sunstroke, it’s wise to ensure that your fellow villa dwellers are marvellously compassionate beings who think nothing of cancelling evenings out to keep you company; hold your hair back while you throw up…(again) and lend you their sunglasses / head scarves / fake tan to a.) prevent a recurrence and b.) make you look like you’ve been lying on a beach for days rather than bent double over the loo.

You may have gathered that I am less than well, as I write from my holiday villa.

From my vantage point on the sofa, however, I have been able to watch my two friends, whose Myers-Briggs® personality types are ENFP and ESFP at close hand.

On the face of it, their profiles are quite similar.

Both prefer Extraversion (E) – i.e. they like to talk, get energy from being with other people and from experiencing new things. Conversation has not been in short supply as we’ve sat on the patio late into the night sharing a bottle of wine.

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