Author: Shaun Coffey

Shaun Coffey is interested in future making and institutional building. He is an agricultural scientist who tries to integrate fragmented and sector-specific technical and scientific knowledge to address the wicked problems that characterise the real world.
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The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to respond.

I don’t know the exact origins but for many years now I have often said to colleagues that we have two eyes, two ears and one mouth, and that is the proportion in which we should use them.

The management literature abounds with entreaties for us to listen better, to develop listening skills, to be reactive listeners, and to listen first before speaking.

But have we learnt the lesson? Experience would suggest not.

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to respond. (Stephen Covey) Continue reading “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to respond.”

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Love after Love – self-awareness and discovering yourself

The time will come 
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
 at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love-letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on you life.

Source:  “Love after love” from Sea grapes by Derek Walcott. (1976)
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Resilience is life-long learning – a lesson from Covid

Uncertainty is a commonly used word today.  Uncertainty creates stress – and the uncertainty in our private and work lives is escalated in a world being transformed by a pandemic that comes in waves. 

In this uncertain world, there is a lot of encouragement for us to develop a resilient mindset. It’s almost as if resilience is a silver bullet – something you can take to get you through the hardships. However, I have observed a few things over the last week that have caused me to stop and think. We need to be realistic about resilience.  Many people are finding it tough. Here are a few thoughts.

It’s okay to acknowledge and say you are not coping.

Continue reading “Resilience is life-long learning – a lesson from Covid”
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Chronic Problems in Organisations

  • No shared vision and values
  • No strategic path
  • Poor alignment: bad alignment between structure and shared values, between mission and systems; the structure and systems of the organisation poorly serve and reinforce the strategic paths.
  • Wrong style: the management philosophy is either incongruent with shared vision and values or the style inconsistently embodies the vision and values of the mission statement.
  • Poor skills
  • Low trust: staff has low trust, a depleted emotional bank account, and that low trust results in closed communication, little problem – solving or poor cooperation and teamwork.
  • No self-integrity: values do not equal habits; there is no correlation between what I value and believe and what I do.

Source:  SR COVEY (1990)  Principle – Centred Leadership, London: Simon and Schuster.  Pp.165-171