16 Personal Coaching Experiments to Try Right Now

As you are reading this piece, it probably means you have some interest in your personal and professional development. Great! Perhaps you are unsure what you can actually do, whatever age you are? 

This is coaching practice you can try out now. 

I’ve worked as a Psychologist, with 23 years experience coaching more than 700 people on a one-to-one and over 15,000 in groups. 

  

I want you to take a leap of faith, trust me for a moment and try out an experiment.  You’re worth it, as the advert says.

Like a tennis player who wants to excel, you can’t read a book and hope to significantly improve your game. You need to honestly assess how you are playing and experiment with different strokes. 

Here, the aim is to achieve greater satisfaction within yourself and your relationship with others. 

My job, is to help improve performance, support talent when things go array, help develop a person’s wellbeing,connect with others well, and build high performing teams.

I have one observation about those who command a stronger sense of awareness of themselves and their relating with others - they...

     Ask difficult questions about themselves

    Experiment with new ideas and ways of relating
    in the world

Give yourself 30 minutes to trying at least one of these 16 experiments below. They are all well tested and work effectively. Some people prefer to simply blame others, their childhood, legacy of parents, the weather, capitalism, or their jobs for their conundrums.  Making money is also a favourite excuse for resisting change efforts. Self awareness is never enough - it's like sitting in the river and saying, "hey, I'm wet." We need also, to experiment creatively (play).  My most rewarding clients, who achieve the best results for themselves, always do these sort of experiments between sessions, that lead to more creative living: 

Why not try some of these experiments with people you are close to?

If you want to share about the experiment you tried, send me a mail: julia@julianoakes.com

Why are Leaders so Boring? How to Radiate in Worlds that Matter

Most of the time, it is very difficult to figure out who the modern leader is.

What does he or she really stand for beneath scripted platitudes? Are they simply in search of power at any price, just as Eichmann determinedly soared his way through the ranks regardless of the human cost of his promotions? 

I find myself asking whatever happens to the hearts of such men and women, as they turn a blind eye, whilst the more morally sensitive feel troubled and bemused?
Our increasingly homogenised world seems to be inhabited with excessively dull leaders; cut from the same cloth as Mr Machine, in a drab suit and a mind tailored to care little beyond self-interest. Eichmann was profoundly 'banal' as many writers commented during his trial - he wasn't a wild, foaming at the mouth psychopath at all.

One of the strategies the contemporary leader is often excessively skilled at, is deadening himself from the effects and impact of his organisation’s activities. What we might call the “normotic” leader, to borrow the psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas’s term. He numbs himself with action, busyness, gambling, alcohol or other mindless pursuits, so he doesn’t connect with just how out of step he is with his own nature. There is another group of leaders who Freud would say have no moral conscience whatsoever.

 Then there are leaders like Paul Smith.

He falls into an entirely separate category of leader, by aligning his efforts and the impact of his company with his own moral conscience.

Paul Smith is a breath of fresh air, a joyful man, seemingly free of corporate pretence no matter how successful he becomes. My sense is that he doesn’t hide anything from himself in order to soldier-on, dehumanise himself in order to do things he doesn’t want to do. It’s a well know fact how robust his ‘No” can be towards potential investors and partners if he views them as rather money-driven sharks. His growth strategy isn’t the mindless ‘big is best’, “why would I need to open 20 shops a year that have no character and mean nothing,” he says, “when I can open two or three that are really interesting and give people goose bumps?" 

A leader using words like “goose bumps?”

I like it.

In the foyer of the Conrad Hotel in Tokyo, a few years ago, I met this legendary fashion entrepreneur. He was signing autographs, mobbed by fans. He looked fabulous, not just because he looks so funky, but by the sheer gusto of his aliveness.

I was checking into the hotel, proudly carrying one of his holdalls with the trademark image of a striped British Mini Cooper.  

Paul has been a huge success in Japan – as well as worldwide - with over 2,000 local people employed by Paul Smith Ltd., becoming the biggest European designer in the difficult market of Japan with over two hundred shops. Rumour has it that he used to take a small train set into early meetings with his Japanese colleagues and play with it when he got bored.                                                                

Perhaps part of Paul Smith’s success is sustained by the fact that he’s the sort of leader who has a Department of Silly in the basement of his London offices. It houses all sorts of wacky objects to inspire more than creativity.

Such permission inspires play, a sense of fun and connecting that helps us to forget our individual separateness and remember our shared humanity that makes us a team rather than merely a group. Paul Smith’s best leadership advice is perhaps his simple words:

“Everyone gets on better when you just be yourself.”

You cannot do that if you are hiding from the sights, sounds, smells and other forms of knowledge that indicate you are out of step with your own conscience. Who really is that grey, that boring, as the often-dull performances in the corporate office life suggests? Is what we mean when we nickname a leader “The Empty Suit”, someone who has sold his moral conscience to the highest bidder? 

The fantasy of working against one's moral-self for decades, to magically return to an earlier  state of integrity upon retirement, is one of the saddest human illusions. It rarely happens when we've been slowly killing ourselves off, as we perform the false self.

Working in an alive way with the very real dilemmas seems the only way forward.   “You’ve got to somehow keep your purity but still get your income,” says Paul, “ even when each pulls you in an opposite direction.”

To keep your purity means to resist covering your eyes from seeing and looking at yourself and what matters to you. It also means saying you matter, not just the whims of the tribes. 

Don’t give up on yourself, on what makes you truly unique, no matter how high the bribe, tempting the status, or shiny the accolades.

There is surely no higher ambition than to be true to your own conscience. 

With such ambition, people invariably stand a chance to radiate, just like the incomparable Mr. Smith.

What is Narcissism & Can you Teach Listening?

You meet an old colleague for lunch and he talks incessantly about himself. His business is great, his children are perfect and his sex life is implausibly amazing. There is nothing he speaks of to even hint at vulnerability. Then just before he leaves, he finally makes eye contact, needing affirmation in return from your eyes, as he tells you how much he has enjoyed himself.

Such self-involvement is an aspect of narcissism. A healthy degree of narcissism is of course necessary in order to survive. To value others, we need to value ourselves sufficiently. In a market-led economy such as ours, it is necessary to promote oneself (as I am doing now) as well as, our business endeavours (yes, I am writing a book called ‘Bankers on the Couch’ and I continue to coach and build teams).  We massage our appearance in the mirror, on Facebook (my hair rarely looks as neat as the picture here) and in varying degrees create an image designed to provide some self-satisfaction (I’m writing in pyjamas, thankfully you can’t see me).

Perhaps the best way to think of narcissism is on a continuum from healthy to unhealthy, that may vary with time and place. During times of acute stress, we are likely to exhibit more of self-focused traits. In cases of extreme narcissism, the person relentlessly persecutes himself, causing himself great pain and anxiety, especially when he does not live-up to the ideal he has of himself. His self-esteem despite all his glories and achievements is weak and brittle hence the excessive need to prove otherwise.

In extreme versions, the narcissist does not see others at all. The other is merely an extension of the self and judged according to whether they supply what is needed from them. If they don’t, they maybe destined for the reject heap along with others from the person’s past.  Narcissistic interpretations of events tend to put the person right at the centre of what occurs, rarely on the periphery. The friend wins the lottery or gets promoted and immediately he thinks, 'why didn’t I'?

The more troubling aspects of narcissism are hinted at by three observable factors: firstly, an inability to hold eye contact with another person, secondly an interest in appearance/performance, that borders on obsession and thirdly, an excessive difficulty in listening to another attentively. I am often asked, if it is possible to teach those with highly narcissistic tendencies to listen. My answer is that it is rather like a learning to play the piano; you have to want to and it takes a lot of practice to be any good, although it’s easy to make a lot of unpleasant noise. Fundamentally, extreme narcissists often don’t value listening to others because to listen, involves letting go of both control of a conversation and exploiting it entirely for one’s own needs.

We are all vulnerable to the seduction of the narcissistic leader with vision - often an outstanding entrepreneur - who tells us the sky’s the limit, creates myths of dragons to slay and spins dreams like celebrities. The downfall of the narcissist leader is the difficulty of dealing with people different from himself – such as staff with different views and opinions - as others are seen as merely an extension of his own existence. If he had someone whispering, “You are only a man,” as Caesar did, he’d fire him. Any sign of real autonomy, in independent thought, opinion or action, is likely to be judged as disloyalty. This is radically illustrated in the narcissism of Hitler: to agree with him, thus serving as a mirror that reflected him twice his natural size, secured Nazi membership. To disagree with him, was to smash his inflated image of his own glory and meant expulsion, to be made an outsider – a mad person.  This of course, is the fate potential whistle-blowers against corporate corruption and crime, dread. Some naturally choose to walk away from business – many are talented leaders we need at the helm of our institutions - unwilling as they are, to play the role of magnifying mirror to the narcissist leader.

The financial regulators, since Lehmann’s crashed in 2008, have in a sense, been attempting to regulate the pathological aspects of narcissism. The top of the world of finance tends to be led by such narcissists, who create an aggressive, bullying culture in an attempt to force upon the corporate body, a uniformity of thought and action the narcissist needs. Remember, to disagree with the pathological narcissist, is to attack on not only his self-esteem but his very existence. As you can imagine, it is unlikely that such a person receives or handles critical feedback well, and may go to significant lengths to expel and humiliate the person with the courage to give it.

Collective narcissism blossoms when we are employed by an organization that strengthens our ego ideal, our preferred if fantastic version of ourselves as omnipotent and accomplished. (It might help to imagine the blonde heads of the Nazi party nodding and witnessing themselves in reflected glory.) Thus, our personal brand is inflated by the brand of the company we keep, which can operate as a powerful lever of not only commitment but also control. It may influence members to work long hours, collapse work/home boundaries and convince people to tell lies and commit, defend grossly immoral and corrupt practices. Until the financial regulators understand this, their endeavours will fail. But like all brands, whether Nazi or Enron, they can be more than tarnished into non-existence.

At the heart of pathological narcissism is terrifying fear of an abyss inside, and extreme vulnerability. In private sessions with me, if the client has sufficient ego strength to bond and enough sense of security, he will often describe feeling a fraud have difficulties with sleep, with nightmares of ghouls and other frightening figures inhabiting dark nights. Most of all, behind all the bravado is invariably acute loneliness. He’s not stupid, he knows relationships matter and that no matter how omnipotent he feels at times, like all of us, he cannot defy the need for others anymore than he can defy death.

Invariably we will find there is a trauma that runs through many generations in his family, of people who have great difficulty holding another person in their minds. So when I really think about them, sit with them and authentically explore how they feel, they often can only imagine it is to exploit them in some way as some kind of commodity. This of course reveals their life experience of relationships.

As for the extreme narcissist learning to listen, he will first have to believe there is some value in more than barely registering other people and that he may hear something of value.  This moment may come only when his downfall has occurred, the roots of which were most manifest in his inability to listen.

The Psychology of Corruption

The view that India is a society riddled with corruption and almost terminally crippled by it is a stereotype that is reinforced in the Indian newspapers on a daily basis. A brief glance at the front page of The Times of India newspaper, there are stories of bribing of MP’s votes in a nuclear deal and army officers found guilty of a housing scam.   Evidence of the perception – and the stereotype of corruption the country appeared in comments by two Indian Supreme Court justices during a 2007 bail hearing of a former state chief minister who had been sentenced for violating the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988, “The only way to rid the country of corruption is to hang a few of them from a lamp post,” the justice declared adding, “Everywhere, we have corruption.  Nothing is free from corruption. Everybody wants to loot the country”.

Is rampant corruption merely a question of basic human immorality, or is there something more complex that happens in our relationships with one another and the ways in which we derive our self-esteem? A popular social sport in the elite clubs of Bombay is to chatter about the extent to which the various clubs are corrupt, especially how much a large brown envelope under the table should contain in order to gain membership.

Imagine if you will, in a mahogany walled meeting room of one of these old colonial clubs, the all-male, elderly Executive Committee are having their quarterly meeting, when suddenly, a man barges into the room and begins a lengthy tirade against the committee.  He is accusing them of gross misconduct and corruption in the form of receiving bribes from contractors and of giving free club membership to members of the police to get them “on-side”.  The Chairman, visibly frustrated, censors the dissenting voice by having the man forcibly removed from the room.  What this dissenting voice has to say is effectively silenced.  The Chairman then adjusts his tie, and instructs everyone to turn to item 78 on the agenda - whether to invest in an additional swing in the children’s area, near the swimming pool area.  Without exception, everyone in the room is struggling to suppress an array of emotions, including the Chairman who continues to pet his tie in the way a child might pet a small dog.

It is true to say of the executive committee that the dissenting voice is no longer among them; they are free from his presence, from his insulting laughter and his comments. But in some respects, nevertheless, the repression has been unsuccessful; for now he is making an intolerable exhibition of himself outside the room, and is shouting and banging on the door. More repression ensues as the security-staff are told to remove the man immediately.  Which after about 20 minutes, they do.

What this reminds us is that censorship and suppression never quite works effectively or compliantly. This is perhaps one of the most powerful teachings of psychoanalysis – that repression is rarely entirely successful.  That evening in the bar, the man who is dispelled from the room, along with fellow club members, are sipping their whiskey’s and begin to question the motives of the Chairman – “If the allegations aren’t true, why didn’t he let him talk?” says one person, adding “was he in on a deal?”   Of course, many others in the bar overhear the now animated conversation, the volume fuelled by alcohol so much so that a journalist is busy taking notes on his blackberry on the table behind them. Two days later, a news item appears with the headline “Corruption at One of India’s Elite Clubs”. 

But what of the expelled man who made the original accusations?  What happens to him now?  He is of course at home, not to be seen at the club, concerned whether the two police officials might be exercising the real price for their ‘free’ memberships, by hurting him or a member of his family, as the anonymous phone call suggested.  Meanwhile, the Executive Committee decide it is important that they have the right to permanently evict any member from the club in the future, should they feel that they aren’t “serving the interests of the club well”, whatever that means.  So at the next AGM, they propose an amendment to give the committee the powers to effectively dismiss any dissenting voice and essentially remove the members of their basic civil liberties.

Sadly in many working groups, dissenting voices are intolerable; to be silenced and or characterised as mad, in a manoeuvre to justify the expulsion of individual(s) and any accompanying more sinister acts that may ensue.  But why such terrorism towards dissention? Why such fear of thinking and speaking out?  According to Freud and I think this is a hugely neglected aspect of his work, many adults never acquire a true moral conscience.  In other words, what they have is no internalised prohibitions on their own behaviour, no true sense of feelings of guilt concerning how they behave or the consequences of their actions.  What these adults have instead is social anxiety. This social anxiety concerns firstly the fear of being caught doing the wrong thing in the eyes of one’s peers or social circle and secondly, a fear of loss of love which contains an inherent loss of regard by others.

So the herd-like behaviour, devoid of thinking, is essentially about a fear of not being loved.  Of course a person with a higher sense of self-esteem, of greater regard for oneself, is less likely to act immorally. After all, if your moral compass is strongly internal and of your own, you won’t need to receive your self-esteem from others or in a stack of bribes in quite the same way.

What this also implies in my thinking is the best way to deal with people who lack a true moral conscience is to “out” them, or ostracise them and increase the very thing they fear most, social anxiety.

Of course, one might also attempt to emotionally hold a sense of rage, as well as, empathy.  Easier said than done perhaps; after all, it is the poor who suffer most at the hands of corruption.

The 7 Gifts of Choice

“Do not be concerned about such things as differences of nationality, of age, of colour of skin,” the carpet seller told me, “the only one difference that matters, is the closed heart or the open heart. When I sell my carpets, I charge a much higher price to those with a closed heart and cheap, cheap, cheap for those with an open heart.”

The experiment he requested of me, to maintain an open heart, was to walk amongst the poor in the city. “Make human contact!”, he told me, “connect without the dismissive act of simply handing over a few rupees.

A blind man I encountered was begging with his hand out, taking his hand in mine, as we sat together on the pavement. He touched my head, slowly. A little girl I met spontaneously kissed my arms and I kissed hers. A wandering Sadhu and I held eye contact for what seemed like an eternity.

One day, when I returned to the carpet man, an American tourist was insisting that he buy a particular carpet hanging on the wall. He proclaimed, rather verbosely and stamping his feet that he would pay any price, but to no avail, he was told it was not for sale. My carpet friend explained to me that the man’s heart was very closed (if not his mouth) and the carpet would not be happy with him.  “It will be good for him not to get his way,” he told me, “This way, perhaps he will make a little room for God in his heart.” He then poured more tea and another day passed as they always did, without me ever buying a carpet.

Most religions of course, call upon us to surrender to a higher power, to live beyond merely self-driven goals and the endless pursuit of trinkets, carpets, dramas and other worldly ideas that in our deluded way, we believe will bring us contentment and peace. In the Bhagavad Gita it says, “Who so foresaketh all desires and goes onwards free from yearnings, selfless and without ego – He goes in peace.” These were the words chosen for a remarkable and loving woman with whom I spent many hours of silent eye contact and laughter and who passed away this year. Whatever matter we discussed, she would either ask you to focus on gratitude or simply say, “God is great.”


A Course in Miracles, not unlike the Gita in some respects, reminds us that the first obstacle to peace is the desire to get rid of it. In the text, the ego part of ourselves is portrayed as a somewhat greedy adolescent, thrashing around, with endless self-centred desires to manipulate, control, stand-out from the crowd, get what it wants regardless of others, all of which fail to bring any sustainable happiness whatsoever. In the teachings of Jesus, who I confess I had a huge crush on as a child, the ego is essentially a revengeful character – if I don’t get what I want I’m coming after you. This ego of course, these desires, these yearnings, only exist in the mind, hence, why the traditions of mind-training are such a central idea in most religious practices.

In meditation, India’s finest tradition of mind-training, one is taught to observe, in physical stillness one’s mind, the antics of the adolescent ego and is various wailing demands for attention. A simple way to experience the utter insanity of your own mind is to sit still for about 20 minutes and simply focus on the movements of your breath, in and out. Notice what rubbish enters your mind, how the ego loves to inflate itself in grandiosity, self-pity and irresponsible mutterings that the world isn’t doing what you want it to do! The ego loves to complain about what it is not getting, rather than a firmer voice that asks if you are not getting, maybe you should ask how you are not giving. In the Buddhist traditions of non-attachment, including non-attachment to thought of course, I remember a teacher explaining to us, “Treat all your thoughts as guests at a dinner party, do not spend too much time on any one.”

The idea that in order to be happy, you need hair extensions, hair implants, a fake smile, a young attractive girlfriend, a fast car, drugs, diamonds, five apartments and bar in your living room that would shame the British Raj, are merely thoughts that arise firstly in the mind. The biggest con of the ego, it’s favourite devise is that of comparison, the idea that if you have more than someone else, work harder, achieve more to run away from yourself, you will feel an elevated sense of who you are. Perhaps you do, fleetingly and can swagger for a moment as a winner for a while. However, such feelings are never sustainable, because deep down, you know that this happiness is fraudulent and merely based on destructive or distancing urges and a deep sense of not feeling good enough at all.  In short, you smile to the crowd, and cower in the mirror, if you dare look that is. What appears as a call for some change of things in external manifestations is perhaps really a call for an inside job, a change that begins in the interior, in the mind. But changing the internal thoughts of matters regarding self-worth, one’s very ideas of what we need to be happy, requires reflection, being still, a rather ruthless interrogation of oneself and a commitment to peace. What a blessing though, our evolution is in our own hands! It means I can indeed to choose to change my thoughts, and indeed what I utter.  Or as Marianne Williamson, a teacher of A Course in Miracles puts it, the devils not out there in the world – it’s worse or better, depending on how you look at it - the devils in your own mind.

Many years ago, I was asked to give a talk at a New Year’s dinner hosted by one of the American Investment Banks. “On what precisely?” I asked my client. “Anything inspiring about the New Year,” he replied. So the topic I chose was the “The Seven Gifts of Choice.” These Seven Gifts I talked about are the gifts we give ourselves: (1) The willingness to consider that you do not necessarily know what is in your best interests, (2) That maybe there is a greater plan to events and occurrences that you do not understand, (3) Whatever you choose to do begins first in your mind, from either a closed or a loving heart, (4) Purification of the mind is always necessary, through meditation or contemplation, (5) To hold any grievance against another is like eating poison and hoping they will die, (6) Whatever shows up in your life that you do not like, take a ruthless inventory of how you yourself have manifested the problems you have, (7) The best gift you can give yourself is to live with gratitude for all the wonderful people and the gifts that have come your way on life’s journey.


Happy New Year!