“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Albert Einstein What do a sock, a ter...

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What does DNA stand for?
By Marti Janse van Rensburg

I started the chapter I wrote on diversity for Sunny's book (Stout-Rostron, S (2009): Business Coaching: Wisdom and Practice) with the following quote:

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What does your T-shirt say?
My favourite t-shirt says: "I am not dead yet". It used to be black, but is now a somewhat washed out version of dark grey, and I have to wonder whether there is some Freudian message in that. I bought the t-shirt in London after seeing Tim Curry in Spamalot. Imagine an older Dr Frank-N-Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show playing King Arthur in the stage version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail - it was a blast and the t-shirt is a happy reminder.

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Ode to a Veld Blommetjie
Confucius said: "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."
Do you remember that childhood sibling rivalry of sitting in the car, and arguing about where the boundary line is between you and your sibling on the seat? Do you remember the surreptitious creeping of a finger towards that often imaginary line to annoy the other one? Well as I am writing this, North and South Koreas are playing this game - the consequences are just more severe; that is depending on how your parents dealt with the sibling rivalry of course!

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Skewed perspectives and laziness
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away, and think this to be normal, is obviously an indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." Douglas Adams in the Salmon of Doubt.

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I was at the airport early one morning on my way to Cape Town and was intrigued with how different people treat their kids, and the impact on the behaviour of these kids.

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I have an old chemical weighing balance that belonged to my dad. Whenever anyone, client or friend, talks about balance, I see this intricate and beautiful machine. Chemical balances these days are plug-and-play machines. You put a substance on it and it tells you the weight.

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Last month, in part I, we looked at why feedback is important for learning, self-development and growth and also why it is so hard. We then looked at starting the process by being aware of how we react when we receive feedback. In this, part II; we will look at how to prepare for and give feedback and how to turn feedback into practical results – both for you and for others.

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We are probably all aware of the saying: “feedback is the breakfast of champions” coined by Kenneth Blanchard. Most of us however pay only lip service to it. Why is this? Surveys indicate that about 75% of today’s executives reckon they are in the top 25% of their profession.

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I had one of those jaw-dropping moments the other day. The moment where you are so stunned by what you hear that you wonder whether you are dreaming. What I heard was that a certain executive employs only people with a J on their Myers-Briggs profile as managers. Considering that half the population are not J’s this excludes about every second person from his list. It is also hugely illegal and could result in his company facing litigation.

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Remember the movie Multiplicity where Michael Keaton’s character clones himself? I recall seeing the movie more than 10 years ago and being intrigued with the idea of having the opportunity to do all those things I want to do (not have to do) at the same time

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Myth no 1: Happy teams are successful teams
I am a huge fan of mythology, with mythology defined as storytelling with a purpose, this purpose being to tell you about life and how to live yours. It is easier to read than philosophy that more or less does the same thing. It is therefore intriguing for me that we use a version of the same word to denote something we believe to be true that is actually not necessarily true

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