Human Dynamics

People have spent anywhere from $200 to $2000 with me, depending upon whether they require coaching, and the length of time they feel they need to continue on with that coaching. Business clients tend to spend more than private individuals do (though having said this, some individuals do come back to do more sessions, simply because they place a high value on learning). 

I started doing Management Systems Consulting thirty years ago and added Human Dynamics Facilitation to my skillset roughly ten years into that period. 

This varies by client. Some only need help solving a particular process problem ... others need help implementing an entire system (such as a Quality Management System). Others have employed me solely for my process mapping skills, so that they could get better control over their core business processes. Many retained me solely for help with people problems - e.g., help with an individual whose skills they value and want to keep, but who is creating friction with other members of the organisation. I encounter many such 'political problems' that need to be sorted out. I would say that most of my Management Systems work has revolved around solving People, Communication and Process problems. 

The answer to this question is YES and NO. NO on the deep core temperament level ... YES on the learned behaviours level. I often teach people the difference using a particular picture that paints a thousand words. I have many such pictures actually, and these often take the form of associative word picture diagrams - similar to the one you see in the Dialectic video above. Many clients comment that they wish their school teachers had taught them like this, as they would have done much better at school. I couldn't agree more, and this is one of the main reasons that I created them in the first place. A great deal of understanding is made possible when people can all quite literally get on the same page. 

You can discover the particular sequence of events that led to this on the About Us page. Whilst this page gives a kind of timeline view of my journey to becoming a Human Dynamics Facilitator, it doesn't really give you the 'news behind the news' of the story. The news behind the news in this story is comprised of the various skills that I got to learn, as well as the great books that I got to read, along the way. Moreover, I am fortunate that I was born with a temperament that tends toward an interest in continuous improvement. I can't really take any credit for the temperament that I was born with - nor some of the skills that I was fortunate enough to learn along the way. As with many things in life, time and chance happen to us all. Though I often say that even though time and chance happen to us all ... those who are wise spend more of their time becoming so well informed .. that they are able to exercise more choice about the chances that they take and therefore, the future that they make. 

The answer to this question is similar to the answer I gave earlier, YES and NO. NO on the deep core temperament level because you can't change the temperament that you inherited from the great genetic lottery (although you can modify it somewhat by learning how to maximise the strengths whilst minimising the weaknesses). And YES, on the learned behaviours level it is possible to change (though in my experience, many people find it extremely difficult to change certain learned behaviours, especially those that have become deeply entrenched habits - there is often an emotional component to these that makes change very difficult for them to achieve). 

Even though my work would be categorised as coaching-help rather than self-help, it too won't change your core temperament (although it will change how you tend to see things as a person of that particular temperament*). In my experience, most forms of self-help are actually slower and less effective than if you had engaged with an experienced mentor. The best approach is a combination of both of these methods, whereby you actually engage with an experienced mentor...whilst also maintaining a passionate self-help attitude and corresponding level of involvement/commitment. 

*My work changes how people see things because it enables them to become objective viewers of their own behaviour, versus solely being subjective viewers of it. As such, they learn how to modify their behaviours so that they will be much less likely to keep repeating sub-optimised patterns (deep self-awareness really is the key here though). One of the great paradoxes of life is that we only know ourselves from the inside out (subjectively) - we don't get to fully know ourselves from the outside in (objectively). Through the research materials that I have accumulated, as well as the skills that I have developed, I am able to give people objective knowledge of themselves (effectively adding the outside in view, to the inside out view). I hope that this makes sense to you at this juncture. If not, just mention it during your free look and see session, and I will be happy to show you some pertinent word pictures designed to impart a better understanding of this. 

Once you discover which deep core temperament you inherited from the great genetic lottery, your life choices and relationships will make a whole lot more sense - not to mention your pattern of self-sabotage. Self-sabotage is something that we all tend to do to varying degrees - whether we are consciously aware of it or not - and we really don't get to understand how all of this works, until we learn to understand the pattern underpinning our sub-conscious behaviour. Suffice for now to say that the client testimonials above were all given by individuals who felt very deeply that they had become better people as a result of the outcomes made possible by this work.