Every year we host the Meyler Campbell Annual Lecture, where world experts in their field come to shock, surprise and challenge us into new thinking in coaching.
16 November, 5.45pm for 6.00-7.30pm - West End venue
Neuroscience is the fastest-moving frontier of science. If this rapid rate of progress continues, we will be able to model the human brain, neuron by neuron, in the foreseeable future. This would represent a scientific achievement on a par with mapping the human genome, so it’s understandable that neuroscience, the scientific study of the brain and the nervous system, is in a state of excitable ferment. These ongoing discoveries about how the brain operates have important implications for the coaching profession.
Many benefits of coaching arise from helping people understand and change their own behaviour. Our actions often stem from the unconscious mind and as neuroscience probes the brain’s workings, it opens up our access to the unconscious. This could lead to substantial leaps in the power of coaching to help people channel their individual potential. A deeper grasp of what makes people tick will also allow us to reinforce social interactions that are rooted in the brain, such as empathy, rapport and trust.
We are delighted to announce that Dr Geoff Bird, Head of the Social Interaction Lab in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Birkbeck University, will address these thought-provoking issues in this year’s Meyler Campbell Annual Lecture on 16 November. Geoff is an expert in the neuroscience of social interaction with a particular interest in the study of autism. He has also served as a Science Policy Advisor to the UK government.
Neuroscience is thirsty work, so we’re delighted to say there will be a Drinks Reception to follow, sponsored by the Coaching Group of Sherwood PSF Consulting to celebrate their twelfth year of providing high performance coaching and consultancy services to leaders and senior practitioners in the professional services sector.
Was the ‘credit crunch’ the planet’s first case of ‘global Groupthink’ – where cohesive groups of the world’s most highly intelligent high performers, sometimes even acting with the best of intent, got it appallingly wrong? And what do business coaches need to learn from it, so we can help prevent it occurring next time, next place?
A positive approach to ageing can have huge impact. Professor Felicia Huppert outlines five key points that make a difference in performance and wellbeing when getting older, as UK life expectancy increases by five hours per day!
The current economic slowdown and transitions that companies are going through is creating a favourable environment for corporate psychopaths. This was just one of the warnings posed by Dr. Paul Babiak at the 2008 Meyler Campbell Annual Lecture – ‘Psychopaths in the Boardroom’.
Professor Herminia Ibarra, formerly of Harvard, now of INSEAD, and author of “Working Identity”, one of the top ten essential books for coaches, spoke about her new research on the identity shift people must make to grasp the strategic, complex, roles at the very top – and the types of transformational experiences that aid this critical leadership transition.
Professor Carol Kauffman, who has taught for twenty years at Harvard Medical School, and has herself over 35,000 hours of one to one work, challenged coaches to re-orient their approaches given the startling research results from the new science of Positive Psychology. Her Lecture ranged from research results round the world, through the convergence of technology and coaching, to some of the early practical applications and tools spawned by Positive Psychology.
Professor Felicia Huppert, neuroscientist and Co-Director of the Centre for Study on Ageing at Cambridge University, devoted her Lecture to the revolution now occuring in life expectancy. Peoples’ “mental maps” about life expectancy are often 15 to 20 years short of the new reality: a tertiary-educated British middle-class male aged 60 is now predicted to have average life expectancy of 91. Professor Huppert challenged coaches and leaders to re-evaluate their financial models, fundamental assumptions, and pay-off periods for investment, against this data.