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How good are you at receiving Acknowledgement?

on January 25, 2012 · Be the first to comment...

Are you editing your day and filing it away like a checked to do list, or are you stopping to acknowledge your achievements and success?

I am really good at giving feedback. At acknowledging good service, great writing, great insights and the like. At the beginning of this New Year I have been challenged by three independent sources to hear praise and acknowledgement. To be willing to hear and receive more. I do hear it and am always grateful for it, these people meant, “yes but REALLY REALLY hear it!”

So, I am listening and noticing more at the start of 2012. I did a quick reflect yesterday in my inbox, cards and phone and pulled the snippets below. Yes, this really is from the last week! It’s amazing how powerful feedback is when you put it all together and read it.

These are genuine comments lifted from my files. I say this because I do know of some bloggers who frankly- make this stuff up. (I know- You’re shocked to learn this dear reader).

So why am I sharing these gems?

I’m sharing it to encourage you to go and look at what feedback you are getting about your work and your life more generally. To stop and look at the power of your feedback even if just to take a look back at the week.

We skip through life living in the moment or the next moment and rarely stop to take stock and pay attention. I’m suggesting that it’s helpful to-reflect and notice.

Here’s the feedback and something about what I notice when I actively look at the compliments of the last week.

“Marie, thanks for your many special care tips

-       This one dropped into my mailbox just as I started feeling victimized and sorry for myself :-) “

My work makes a difference in people’s lives sometimes when I don’t even know it and don’t DO anything in that moment-Because they pickup the practical inspiration tips from this site.

“I just wanted to say thanks again for the Exploration days last week, I know you are sending us an evaluation and wanted to send this now in any case.  I found the session inspiring and re-energising, perfect at the start of a new year.  You have an amazing ability to balance the business world and personal growth.  I think you pitched the session perfectly giving those new to the ideas an insight and yet there was also great depth to the exercises too.  I was surprised just how quickly you managed to get us all to open up and know what we were really there for (Only at Huna courses have I seen anything even close to as effective)”.

“I haven’t shut up about the course yet and have desperately been trying to get my wife on it. Have been doing my “three a day” with the family every night as well. The course has been a massive boost to be honest. Desperately hoping that the magic doesn’t wear off”.

When people REALLY like what I do they sit down and send me unsolicited feedback. I get quite a lot of this and it’s lovely.

“ I loved your piece on the men you worked with last week. It really made me think how we sometimes deny men their male-ness and wisdom.”

People read my blog and I don’t even know they’re reading it. I like the fact that it makes people THINK- it’s the reason I write it.

“ You are my very precious friend and I love you”

Friends are such an important part of life and I am grateful for them every day. Expressions of LOVE are such a big part of my work and of who I am. Giving and receiving love is really what life is about. 

“Great course, excellent facilitation, I feel so much more confident in my coaching skills after these 2 days. Thanks Marie.”

“Just a quick note to say thanks for everything on the course – for one relatively new to management, it has been genuinely inspirational”.

Enabling people to think differently and see possibility through speaking, teaching and coaching runs through the whole of my career. INSPIRING new managers or managers who need a “revive and refresh” gives me a great feeling. We never forget an inspiring teacher. I like being that.

“ Marie Taylor, you are a genius. “

I like my brain and I’m happy to be considered to be “of extraordinary intellect and talent”(the definition of GENIUS) from time to time.

“My dear, lovely sister, thank you for all of my wonderful birthday celebrations. You are one of the many gifts in my life-always.”

Family are so important to me as we have lost a lot of people too early in their lives in ours. So, marking and acknowledging birthdays is important. Being considered a GIFT- in the family, well, who wouldn’t value that?   

“A brilliant facilitator- we need more of this type of learning intervention- much more. Thank you for helping me to think the thoughts of the really brave. My team will be the better for it and I will be a much better leader too!”

“Looking forward to our adventures this year- so glad to have you to share them with.”

I’ve had many an ADVENTURE in life so far and I do like a good adventure (must be reading all those Enid Blyton books growing up). Generating bravery and a sense of adventure in both thoughts and of the spirit is what I aim to do through my teaching and speaking work. It’s nice that others feel it too.

“Even when you are angry (your version of angry-which in my world is slightly irritated) I still think you are fabulous.”

How FABULOUS  to have people around me who accept me being mrs grumpy of godawfulday from time to time.

 

I am overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed, gracious and grateful.

So- Over to you. What are YOU hearing? What great feedback are you letting skip by you?

What are you doing that really makes you THINK?

What and who do you LOVE?

Where is your inspiration and who do you INSPIRE?

How are you using your gifts of your GENIUS brain?

What and where is your next FABULOUS ADVENTURE?

Have a listening and really really hearing it all kinda week.

Marie x

Categories: Life Insights, Success Wisdom

Digging through our Roots and Planting new Trees in New Landscapes

on November 25, 2011 · Be the first to comment...

 

“There exists a different state of mind beyond our cultural conditioning and programmed assumptions”.

 This quote is from Buddha’s four noble truths. It originates from the 6th century BC when cultural conditioning was different and yet was, it seems, as rooted in our thinking as a frame of everyday unconscious reference as it is today. People viewed their current experience and thoughts through the lens of their historical understanding and experience.

 We don’t know what we don’t yet know. We live most of our lives taking our assumptions as the basis of our understanding and living out our experience through the limits of our repeating patterns. We learn these repeating patterns from our own child and adult experiences and those of the people around us. Their stories, rituals, mythology and experience of the world has influenced not just our experience, but our thinking about that experience.

 This means that sometimes we do things, think things, say things and interpret things out of habit. We assume that we know how a situation will play out, what others think, what they will likely say in response to us, and how others in our life will respond in a given set of circumstances. We don’t. We are assuming these things based on our past experience or more likely, the experience we remember which may not be accurate.

 If we get rid of our assumptions and just come to situations with an open mind and a sense of possibility. From a calm, accepting place of whatever happens and whatever comes is fine. From within that space, go create some new stories.

 “There is a path to this different state of mind, whereby we let go of an old identity, and realise our own perfect nature.“

 So, check where things are not going well for you at the moment and ask yourself, what am I assuming here?

How are my old learned patterns showing up?

If these are not useful to me, what will I choose instead for the future?

Categories: Life Insights, Success Wisdom

THANKSGIVING –Oh Happy Day

on November 24, 2011 · Be the first to comment...

In the spirit of giving thanks for the rich harvest of life today. I invite you to think about who and what you are grateful for. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and those temporarily inhabiting. Enjoy!!!!

 Today, I give thanks …

 For family who are just the best, even when they are acting out like pains in the posterior. Especially when they tolerate me being a pain in the bum on the VERY rare occasion that that happens.

 For friends who make me laugh and cry out loud. Who challenge my thinking and my self-perception, reminding me that my ego is in fact fairly small and it could come out more when invited.

 For clients who rock my world so often with their insight and preparedness to continue growing into ever more successful human beings.

 For you dear reader. I appreciate that you take an interest in what I have to say and my take on this precious life of ours.

 For the coaches I have worked with in this past year who have held up mirrors, shined a light, challenged my thinking, and generally helped me to be a better coach and a more rounded individual.

 For those people who have moved on from me in this lifetime during this year for their lessons and their love. 

 For  everyone who supplies me with anything that makes my days easier to manage from my lovely cleaner to the ocado delivery guy.

 For those people who organise things that I just turn up to; trainings, dinners, network events and days out.

 For my body that keeps carrying me around and works like a well oiled machine when I look after it and treat it respectfully.

 For my mind that stays healthy and keeps expanding and reminds me that the quietness within takes practice.

 For the roof over my head and the many roofs I have visited around the world this year which have provided shelter whatever the weather. 

 For water, light and heat, both natural and artificial for their sustenance. 

 For living in a democracy like the UK which works fine most of the time.

 For the occasional miracle and that I don’t always know from where and whence it came. Just that it did.  

 Here are some peeps I am grateful to who fall into the category above. I apologise if I have missed you off here. It wasn’t my intention. It’s simply that there is so much to be grateful for in life.

http://mandyevans.com/

http://www.empowering-solutions.co.uk/

http://www.robertholden.org/

http://www.billohanlon.com/

http://www.stevechandler.com/index.html

http://www.theultimatecoach.net/profile.html

http://www.marianne.com/

http://www.supercoach.com/

http://www.theboothbyinstitute.org/

http://lynnrobinson.com/

http://www.sekanikolic.com

http://www.aventesi.com/

http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/about/danpoynter.cfm

http://sethgodin.com

http://marthabeck.com

http://brucelipton.com

http://hayhouse.co.uk/

http://www.alternatives.org.uk/

http://besomebodyinc.com/category/poetry/

http://www.jennywilliamscoaching.co.uk/

http://fionajacob.com/

http://www.suetrinder.com/

http://www.idacoaching.com/explore

http://amazinglifedesign.com/

http://www.maryhaines.com/

http://ovationcoaching.com

http//bevinlynch.com

http:thelindseypractice.com

Mark Beasley

Jenny Ashton

http://mediopartnership.com/p/about-medio/meet-the-team/steve-tarpey

http://www.coachcharrise.com/

http://www.krayna.blogspot.com/

http://spicelearning.com/

http://www.positive-belief.co.uk/

http://elesecoit.com/

http://thatconfidenceguy.com/

http://onlinebusinessgym.com/tag/marion-ryan/

http://www.markshaw.biz/

http://www.compuaid.co.uk/

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/

http://www.bt.com/

https://www.facebook.com/

http://twitter.com/

http://hootsuite.com

http://www.ocado.com/webshop/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/

http://lovefilm.com

 And a light never forgotten……

 http://www.justgiving.com/Jeni-Purdie

Categories: Life Insights, People & Organisations

Silence, observer sports and a golden ticket

on November 23, 2011 · Be the first to comment...

The path of least resistance is silence.
 
The path of least resistance is always silence. If we don’t express our feelings and thoughts to others we don’t have to deal with their reactions to them. We don’t have to deal with anything in fact. If we choose not to express thoughts but dismiss them. If we consider them merely a constructed reality that don’t impact us if we don’t let them in. If we just accept them as, well, thoughts. As thoughts  that are not worth thinking. It makes life a great observer sport.
 
We don’t have to do, say, or feel anything. We just need to be with our evolving consciousness somewhere in a cave on a mountain observing. We may be observing to the point of not even noticing, what is going on all around us.
 
We don’t need to feel anything. If we don’t feel anything, particularly vulnerability, we don’t risk rejection. In fact, we could live in a bubble and feel absolutely nothing at all if we choose. We could simply take the view that everything is perfect as it is. That the world was ticking along as it ought. Presumably, this would mean that poverty, hunger and violence are just projections created by our thoughts. As they’re not real, we don’t need to concern ourselves with them. Right?
 
As Brendon Burchard says: the path of least resistance leads exactly where that park ride in his book leads to. Carts looping the loop.
Are you looping in this thought dismissing dimension?  If this post makes you think, great.

If it doesn’t- it’may already be too late.
 
www.lifesgoldenticket.com

Categories: Life Insights, Success Wisdom

Are you being terribly British about gratitude?

on November 22, 2011 · Be the first to comment...

 

  “We act as if gratitude and appreciation are our good china and our fancy tablecloth and bring them out on really special occasions.” Marci Shimoff.

 

 

  Let’s face it. On the whole, we brits are still a tad reticent about the old gratitude piece even   though it’s the 21st century. Before you send emails- I said “on the whole.” Meaning in the main, the majority- not necessarily you dear reader.

 I often work with people who find it difficult to express thanks and general appreciation of each other, be those relationships intimate, family, friends, neighbours, or work colleagues.  I do mean often by the way, not occasionally.

 We attribute giving thanks and appreciation as somehow an act of special dispensation. That if we articulate it too much, appreciate people a great deal. If we say, that was or you are “great, thanks, thank you, wow, brilliant, marvellous, stupendous, wonderful, a star, a delight, brilliant, amazing and the like on a regular basis, these regular statements somehow diminish the impact of appreciation when it is given.

 Marci Shimoff is right. It is like keeping the good china and the best tablecloth in the cupboard for high days and holidays when visitors who are seemingly more important than those who live with us, work with us or are in regular contact with us come around. We want to show them they are special on this special day and we have made an extra effort.

 Why? Life is too short for keeping your best bits in the cupboard.

There is so much to be grateful for. Even if we are not interacting with others, there is much to say thank you for. Only this morning, I noticed that the pre Christmas fundraising requests are coming in from the regular charities whose envelopes land on my doormat asking if I could just “give a bit more” this month. So, over my morning cuppas (I always have two), I am grateful that I am with sight, living in a democracy and have never had to experience a member of my family or a friend returning from a war zone with a part of their former selves missing. I give thanks that I turn on the tap and there is clean water, that we have a welfare state which means older people can be taken care of within 4 brick walls. I’m grateful to the window cleaner who came and polished the panes this morning- he does a job that I hate and if he didn’t call every 6 weeks frankly I would at some stage be living like miss Haversham with people knocking on the door to see if I am still within. I’m grateful for the BBC and Radio Four in particular who wake me up to the world every day.

 So, get your best china out of the cupboard and keep it out.

 If you dare, break out completely and join our American cousins on Thursday and consider what you are grateful for as you eat your dinner. Say it out loud to whoever you are with. Go on. I dare you- make your appreciation awesome!

 Marie xx

Categories: Life Insights

Running and Ruminating on the Basement Steps of Suffering

on November 21, 2011 · Be the first to comment...

 
Are you making it all too difficult by ruminating with the room mate in your head?
 
 “The primary cause of our suffering is not our experience, but our response to our experience; what we think about it.“ Buddha. 6th century BC.
 
Stuff happens and I think if the Buddha was looking at our lives today he would suggest we stop thinking about the negative. That we might change the locus of our or focus away from sense making that upsets us or causes disharmony in the head. We choose how we respond to life situations be they problematic or not.
 
Part of that choice is in how we think about what has happened, is happening or may happen. The way we think about and interpret that experience is what affects us most rather than the experience itself.
 
So, if I audition for a role in a play and I don’t get it. I can choose to feel rejected by the experience, can see it as a learning opportunity for next time or can make decisions about whether I want to go to any other auditions.
 
If I focus on the rejection, the mere use of that word or words like rejected, dejected and affected may cause a reaction, may move my focus to not feeling good enough. It may encourage me to feel “less than”, may encourage me to consider myself as a failure, may leave me feeling like a victim. It may encourage me to consider that I have a stamp on my head saying “reject” and every time I go for a part I will likely get the same rejection response because it’s so obvious that I am not good enough. After all, the marking on my forehead is there for all to see is it not? Do you feel sorry for poor me yet?  Have I suffered enough do you think?
 
Let me illustrate……If I focus instead on the fact that I live in a city of possibility where there are hundreds of plays staged every week. If I focus on the fact that I have secured parts in plays before, that I love the auditions and the experience of going to different theatres and meeting other actors. If I see not getting a part as a blessing, because I get to go and explore what else may be out there, my life moves on and I am the one saying “next!” Would you see me as someone who suffers or someone who has had more positive experiences in life than the average actor?
 
Same circumstances, different focus. Same experience, different  thinking.
 
It’s just a choice and we are only ever one interpretation of our circumstances away from delight or towards it.
 
Marie x

Categories: Life Insights, Success Wisdom

Are you just looking or really seeing?

on November 19, 2011 · Be the first to comment...

 
I have been thinking about how sighted human beings usually see before we speak. So,our first filter often comes through our visual assessment of what we believe we are seeing. but, what exactly do we see? Well, I believe we see what we are looking at and are looking for. The issue is, that,what you see, what I see and what the person standing next to us sees in a given scenario,is not necessarily the same thing.
 
Let me illustrate…
 
I like to look at art and sometimes I deliberately look at art that I don’t particularly like on first sight. It normally sits within the category of renaissance paintings. I find it challenging to do this. I do it because it expands my awareness . I don’t find this type of art easy on the eye. So, I am interested in how I look and how I really see.
 
I might look at the whole painting and take in the big view of the story or my interpretation of the story it presents. Then, I might hone in on one aspect of it. Then an aspect within that small part of it. Or I might go straight towards the detail. So many times when I look at something, I see things I have never seen before, even in paintings I have viewed many times.
 
For example. If we take Rogier Van Der Wedens Magdalen reading  http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/rogier-van-der-weyden-the-magdalen-reading        
 
We know this is a painting fragment, so already, we know we are not seeing the whole of the picture. The fragment originally sat within something, was a part of something else. When I look at it, I wonder where this is. Is it a holy place, a house, a waiting area? My mind wants to assume that she is in the house of someone she knows and is reading a book whilst waiting. There are 2 other people. One is standing up and one sitting and this leads me to conclude it’s an informal setting. The figure in blue and red seems older and has a walking stick and something like a set of beads in his hand. A set of holy beads or worry beads I wonder?
This leads me to consider is he worrying or praying and if so, about what?
 
It seems a serene scene. Magdalen is reading a holy book and looks relaxed. Yet, if we expand our awareness, go to the window and look to the figure outside on the right. Zoom in on it and you will notice that the figure is aiming a bow spear at something. He looks like a guard. This introduces a sense of possible threat into the scene. A threat I didn’t see at first. In fact I didn’t see it the first three times I looked at this painting for real in the National Gallery in London. Once I saw it, I experienced the painting differently because it raised more questions than it answered for me. Instead of a little scene, it became a wider set of possible stories.
 
So, what we see and how we interpret that, depends on our depth of seeing, our depth of noticing, the questions we ask, the possible answers we give ourselves in response, and the direction and depth we are looking at during the time that we are in a state of observer.
 
It follows that what we say and speak of will depend on what we have noticed. It depends on whether we are looking at the biggest picture, imagining the fragments of the bigger piece that we cannot see at all, or, at the other extreme, the tip of the spear in the hands of the person outsid;or something in between.
 
Wherever you look before speaking, consider this.
 
You may be looking in the same direction as your friends, family, co-workers or fellow learners, yet what you see is sometimes different. The story you are telling yourself about what you see is only one version of the information presented. This difference in seeing will inform your thinking and will influence what you speak.  
 
It may explain why everyone doesn’t think like you or relay and relate to a situation in the same way as you do. It may explain the source of some misunderstandings and conflict.
 
Whatever it means to you. I hope you find your awareness expanding as a result of reading this.
 
Marie x

Categories: Life Insights

The wheel of tortuous thinking

on November 18, 2011 · 2 Comments

lighteningAre you torturing yourself in your head?
 
“All our desires, disappointments, negativity and fear, are a torture chamber of our own cognitive creation”
 
This quote is from Buddha’s four noble truths. It originates from the 6th century BC, so, I think it safe to say that it falls in the category of ancient wisdom.
 
To my fallible mind this tells us that anything unhelpful is our own head creation. We desire the undesirable and seemingly unattainable in an attempt to create our own self-fulfilling prophecy of torment. We make appointments with the “dissing” of ourselves and others by gossiping and engaging in negative self talk. We see the negative and sit in the state of victim moving in a downward spiral like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole. Then, just when we consider that there is a possibility of experiencing things differently, we go find the fear and stick it in our heads anyway.
 
We create the thinking that torments us. Sometimes we can do this to the extent that it sits with us like a familiar foe. We may even fool ourselves into thinking that this thinking is our friend. It can look like a friend because it becomes familiar. The more we think about it, the hamster wheel of thinking keeps racing.  Before we know it, we have created and collected other negative thoughts. The hamster wheel of negative thinking is so full it becomes heavier and heavier as we travel faster and faster running with this pile of similar thought types hitting us like mind lashing, head clashing pains in the proverbial.  
 
We created it, we fed it, we ran with it, we made it our cognitive credo. The good news is, we can just learn to stop the wheel of tortuous thinking. It starts with noticing, and from that place, slowing down the head and experiencing the absence of thinking. Experiencing a space for great thoughts to come in as invited guests who we will nuture, love, feed and sustain.
 
It’s all a choice. It’s your choice.

What choices are you making about thinking that are making your head spin and spiral ?
 
Marie x

Categories: Life Insights, Success Wisdom

The fear of overcoming what is uncertain

on November 2, 2011 · Be the first to comment...

I love this video of Theodore Zeldin talking about being a manufacturer of courage.   

Click to watch

He talks about a famine of understanding and of our fear of not being understood. I think this is a great piece to help us think about the portrait of people’s lives.

 I’ve just come back from South Africa. During my travels, I went to a township on the outskirts of Cape Town. I hesitated about going, because it felt voyeuristic. However, I was reassured by our wonderful, informed guide, Jonathan,a black South African who lived in this township of 50,000 people, that it was important to visit.  Jonathan, (his given name from the catholic missionary school system he grew up with), assured me, that people in the township wanted visitors to come and see how they lived. Wanted people like me to hear their history, their oral story, their ancestral experience from them directly, rather than a sanitised version from a white guide. 

In part, people wanted us to see how they live nearly 20 years after the ending of apartheid. So that we will understand what it was like for the older people. The people who 50-60 years ago were taken from their brick built garden homes. When their furniture, fridges and the kind of belongings you and I will see when we look around our homes, were thrown into a van and taken outside of the then city boundary to a new place. A site where dwellings had been built for whole families of 5 or 6 people to live in 2 rooms. Some of these still stand. You can imagine them in your minds eye if you have seen the cellblocks at Auschwitz or Alcatraz.

 Some building of new homes, began before each of the national elections in the nineties and noughties. The building work stopped again after those election results came in. Our white guide advised us when we were driving into Cape Town, passing mile upon mile of corrugated iron shanty town that this is how most black people preferred to live. That even when people were given houses, they built a shack alongside them in order to sub let the house and make money out of what they had been given. He told us this by way of explanation. To explain why people in the townships needed educating and needed to be given jobs and to pay tax so they could integrate and understand the value of things like having a nice home.

Thandiwe (Jonathan) described it rather differently. He said that yes, people sometimes sublet to younger relatives from out of town who were sent by distant relatives to come and find work in the city to support the family. The new build houses had mostly been built for the older people, many of whom had lost their adult children to AIDS and were now responsible for their grandchildren. To support the grandparent and the family generally, more able-bodied relatives would come to find work. During that time, the elders would live in a shack built alongside the house. Thandiwe also said that some older people just could not settle in the houses and were frightened of having their homes taken away again. One set of visible facts and two versions of a story. Whichever way you look at this situation , it’s about fear. It’s about an absence of dialogue between strangers.

 I guess if a black minority group took governmental power in London tomorrow, pulled my family and those families around mine out of our homes without warning. If they loaded a van with the few belongings that we had the time to gather and took us outside of London, to a place I didn’t know. If they dumped me there with further to travel to work or school and no transport, I might find it difficult to trust when the mayor of London said “come back”.

 So, make my day- Overcome uncertainty and the famine of understanding. Have a conversation with a stranger who has fewer resources than you this week, and ask yourself….

 Who am I seeing when I don’t see the story of the person with fewer resources than I have, through the lens of the story I have been given about “them”?

  Who am I seeing, when I look again, and consider for a moment, that  “They”. “Them”. “He”. “She” are connected to me.

 (By the way, Thandiwe means, “loving one”. I’d rather be a loving one than a Jonathan any day of the week wouldn’t you? )

Categories: Life Insights

Rogue Trading – Careers built on gambling

on September 16, 2011 · Be the first to comment...

There’s a reason why the gaming industry often has contractual terms preventing their staff from holding an account or betting in their own shops. When people work in betting shops, online gambling and tracks , frankly the temptation to bet on anything and everything that pops onto your radar during a working day is too great. So, generally,they go and have a flutter in the betting shop down the road at lunchtime instead. Most of the time, they can’t help it you see.

They love taking risks. They thrive on the thrill of the potential win. The idea of losing pops up of course, but it soon pops off as the unconscious mind tells itself. “It’s only a tenner” , then “it’s only a twenty”. Then there are those who know what they’re doing but can’t stop because they’ve got themselves into so much hot water that they feel they have to keep going because the next bet will get them back on track (excuse the pun).

The Banking industry is not very different. It’s a risk and reward business.   In the gambling industry people setting the odds really know their sport, their news, the probability of anything in fact. The odds reflect the likelihood of an event happening and this changes as events unfold. The value of the odds on offer reflect that. Profit is made by assessing risk and reward in favour of the gambling organisation.

In the banking world, traders effectively influence prices by trading. They are recruited based on their ability to asses risk and reward really fast and well. They aim to buy low and sell high and in making trades daily they influence the market. Specialist traders really do their research. They know their markets and the products they trade in. They understand how currency fluctuations can affect stock minute by second. It goes wrong when they lose their wining streak. When they’ve made a mistake in the likely balance of risk-reward. When, they’ve taken a gamble with the firm’s money. When this happens, the temptation is to find a missing tenner or a twenty ( normally with a few noughts on the end)  The trading world is unforgiving. It has to be, because they’re playing with other people’s money. If you lose your mojo well you will quickly find your no longer drinking mojitos and eating caviar canapes. You’ll be down the dog and duck nursing half a lager with a packet of salted nuts. (no pun intended)

I’ve coached and consulted in both of these sectors, so before you start writing comments about how it’s not really like that, this is a naive representation of how the world works in these areas and the like, read it again. I’ve taken the explanation down to the simplest level deliberately.

Many people in both of these sectors are good at what they do most of the time BECAUSE they’re good at taking risks and they like to see the rewards from those risks in their salary and bonus. If you were the VP in a gambling or banking organisation you would really want these people on your team. You would actively look for the risk-reward psychology.

There is a single but important difference between these two areas of activity. Gambling in the UK is regulated to the hilt both for consumers and for the way the organisations handle their activity in real time. If they get the odds wrong and there’s a run on the betting receipts, the company pays out and investors make a loss. On the other hand, if a UK based bank runs out of money, its investors make a loss and the taxpayer pays up too. Time for a bit of banking reform to separate out retail and investment banking anyone ?

Yes Kweku Adeboli has done a terrible thing.  However, he has gained some sympathy in my book by owning up to his own actions. To me, that’s worth a lot.Being willing to take responsibility for his actions knowing the consequences of owning up holds a modicum of integrity for me.

The sooner we realise that some careers are based on gambling and stop being shocked when a risk taker takes a risk too far and tries to cover it up, the easier it will be to regulate trading.

We need to wake up and grow up.

Marie x

 

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