03 Jul, 2007
Editor's Note
The editors of Growth Edge are pleased to introduce our newest issue, which focuses on coaching at both the theoretical and practical levels.
In this issue, Kenning welcomes new partner Paul Atkins to the fold. As will be apparent from Paul’s biography, he brings tremendous experience in the areas of executive coaching and leadership development, anchored by impeccable credentials in applied psychology.
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03 Jul, 2007
Kenning Welcomes New Partner
Kenning Associates is pleased to welcome Dr. Paul Atkins as a partner of the firm. Paul has expertise in the areas of executive coaching and leadership development and has coached and taught management practices with hundreds of managers to improve their capacity to manage critical relationships, communicate effectively, select and develop staff, make effective decisions, and manage complexity through thinking clearly, ethically and systemically. 03 Jul, 2007
Act II: “What’s Missing?”
For leaders, the answer to the question “What’s missing?” begins with how we answer the initial question, “What matters?” What matters involves clarifying what matters to us as individuals, and what matters to those parties we identify as stakeholders.
When we clarify what matters, we are able to appreciate the conditions under which we feel most alive. We are sufficiently clear on the values we cherish. For some aspiring leaders what’s missing involves being able to identify their stakeholders and determining what matters to themselves and their stakeholders.
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03 Jul, 2007
From the Introduction of Talk Sense: Communicating to Lead and Learn
Imagine a newspaper company that controls 70 percent of the advertising revenue for its metropolitan area. The executives have sense made of who they are as a company and of their relationship to their market. Then direct mail advertising arrives, and newspaper ad revenue begins to plummet. The executives scramble to make sense of what is going on as each month more revenue disappears. In this unnerving situation, they wonder, "Will this rate of decline continue?" "Who are those guys? Our biggest advertiser is talking with them." "Should we lower our rates?" "What should we do?" (More)
03 Jul, 2007
Individual and Organizational Change – or the Place of Paradox in My Work
“What I’ve been doing has been really working for me. Really, it has. Fifteen years, and this hasn’t been an issue. I feel like if I do what I do any other way, I’m destined to fail. My way is the only way I know. But, at the same time, it really looks like I need to get with the new program. If I don’t, it seems like I’m destined to fail.”
And this is what it sounds like for many of my clients. Paradox is a central element in much of the work that I do, both as an organizational consultant and an executive coach. I often deal with the space existing between the way things have been to the way my clients want things to be, a paradoxical pull between the past and the future. Is this simply the expression of a transition? Possibly. However, for the people and the organizations with whom I work, it feels very hard, very real, and very much like a paradox. Both directions feel necessary and valid. Doing either is important; doing both is, of course, impossible.
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