Clive Cole
Here is a conventional thumbnail sketch of my skills and experience.
"Clive is a versatile Management Consultant with extensive experience designing and implementing creative solutions for both people issues and business opportunities.
He has excellent organisational skills and can think and communicate simply and clearly. He is a skilled facilitator, executive coach and thinking partner.
Clive has worked in the UK, the Middle East, Africa and the USA and is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK."
Here are some different insights, equally accurate but hopefully more revealing and interesting.
A long time ago, I was taught that there was no place in the business world for emotion. So, surrounded by a lot of people doing the same thing, I duly created a working mindset of thought centred efficiency, devoid of feeling. What seemed like a long time later, I was able to see the connection between this mindset and the monotonous, passionless striving that had, back then, become my daily experience of work. I came to believe then, as I do now, that to personally experience work at anything more than a very basic level, it is essential you discover your passion and then follow it relentlessly.
I was able later, to get another piece of learning from the time I spent, head-down, completely focussed on my work. My realisation was that there is more to life than a desk and a computer. There were other people around me, some who could help me and some that I could help. To do either properly, I would have to go into relationship with these people.
There is also the world outside work. I realised how much I had been missing there too, family, community and recreation. Ironically, paying more attention to all these areas of real life made me a better contributor at work.
In the last part of my corporate career, I discovered something else. I discovered the benefits of working without fear, fear of loosing my job, of missing a promotion, of falling foul of a difficult boss. It was then that I first experienced the benefits of defining myself rather than allowing a lot of outside influences to do that job for me.
To sum up then, in my experience, if you want to discover and pursue your true potential in life – which by the way includes work, not the other way around – you need at least to do these things;
- Find your passion
- Create strong conscious relationships with others.
- Always see the bigger picture.
- Live without fear - define yourself.
Interesting isn’t it, life seems mostly to be an inside job!
No worthwhile web page is complete without a quotation from someone famous, here is mine.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste time living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition. They somehow already know what you want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Steve Jobs, Founder and CEO of Apple.
If any of this makes any sense to you, I would be happy to talk with you about it.
Call me on
44 [0] 1258-471094
Clive offers mentoring, coaching, consulting and facilitation for anyone in the world of work trying to realise their own potential or that of their organisation.
