Quotes from John Whitmore

Learning to create is essential, necessary, vital & fundamental. It is the centrepiece in which you create the life that you really want

Coaching is unlocking people's potential to maximize their own performance.

Coaching focuses on future possibilities, not past mistakes

Whether we coach, advise, counsel, facilitate, or mentor, the effectiveness of what we do depends in large measure on our beliefs about human potential. The expressions "to get the best out of someone" and "your hidden potential" imply that more lies within the person waiting to be released.

As with any new skill, attitude, style, or belief, adopting a coaching ethos requires commitment, practice, and some time before it flows naturally and its effectiveness is optimized.

Unless the manager or coach believes that people possess more capability than they are currently expressing, he will not be able to help them express it. He must think of his people in terms of their potential, not their performance. The majority of appraisal systems are seriously flawed for this reason. People are put in performance boxes from which it is hard for them to escape, either in their own eyes or their manager's.

To get the best out of people, we have to believe the best is in there – but how do we know it is, how much is there, and how do we get it out?

MENTORING Finally, since I am defining coaching, I should perhaps mention mentoring, another word that has crept into business parlance. The word originates from Greek mythology, in which it is reported that Odysseus, when setting out for Troy, entrusted his house and the education of his son Telemachus to his friend, Mentor. "Tell him all you know," Odysseus said, and thus unwittingly set some limits to mentoring.

The capacity is there, the crisis is the catalyst. But is crisis the only catalyst? And how long are we able to sustain extraordinary levels of performance? Some of this potential can be accessed by coaching, and performance can be sustainable, perhaps not at superhuman levels but certainly at levels far higher than we generally accept.

A manager must be experienced as a support, not as a threat Here

Coaching is unlocking people's potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.

The blame culture that still prevails in the majority of businesses works against this, as it causes "false reality syndrome" or "I will tell you what I think you want to hear, or what will keep me out of trouble.

Formular o hacer preguntas cerradas libera a las personas de tener que pensar. Hacer preguntas abiertas las obliga a pensar por sí mismas.

To use coaching successfully we have to adopt a far more optimistic view than usual of the dormant capability of all people. Pretending we are optimistic is insufficient because our genuine beliefs are conveyed in many subtle ways of which we are not aware.

You tend to get what you focus on. If you fear failure, you are focused on failure and that is what you get.

If there was only the "right" way to do something, Fosbury would never have flopped

Los líderes deben pensar en sus empleados en términos de su potencial, no de su rendimiento pasado.

Solo puedo controlar aquello de lo que soy consciente. Y aquello de lo que no soy consciente me controla a mí. La conciencia me capacita.

lo dijo Einstein: «Ningún problema puede ser resuelto en el mismo nivel de conciencia en el que se creó».

Un pequeño grupo de personas con habilidades complementarias que comparten un propósito, metas de desempeño y maneras de trabajar juntas, por todo lo cual se hacen mutuamente responsables. KATZENBACH Y SMITH, The Wisdom of Teams

Všichni rádi v??íme tomu, že problém spo?ívá v druhých lidech. Dává nám to pocit, že jednáme správn? a že my sami nemusíme nic m?nit.

Conciencia implica adquirir un conocimiento de algo a través de la reflexión, de la observación o de la interpretación de lo que uno ve, oye, siente, etcétera».

Stress results from long periods of suppression.