Author Archives: Matt Smith Personal and Professional Coach

Is compassion weakness? We can create accountability and attend to each others emotions.

I have written and spoken many times about how I struggled as a manager within a culture that valued a command and control approach to leadership. A culture that sees empathy and compassion as weak. This is a stereotypical masculine paradigm, the one that says the expression of any emotion in a work setting isContinue reading “Is compassion weakness? We can create accountability and attend to each others emotions.”

Health, happiness and age

Well it has been an awfully long time since I have written a blog. My last blog was looking back on my Nursing career and looking forward to my new role in Organisational Development and Coaching. Since that blog I have experienced some minor health issues. I say minor as that is what they appearContinue reading “Health, happiness and age”

August! An emotional month.

I always knew it would be an emotional one, especially with the background that is going on in my family (something I alluded to in previous blogs, but do not yet want to go into details). The month started with a bang, when Ben (the Bass player on the right in the picture above) andContinue reading “August! An emotional month.”

That was a long week!

I think it was the heat, but boy that was a long week! A lot of great stuff happened but I am knackered today,I am certain we had 2 Thursdays this week. Monday started with some inspirational meetings,talking to some truly brilliant people. There are so many talented and committed people working in the NHS.Continue reading “That was a long week!”

We all have a choice

I read a tweet this morning by Paul McGee (@TheSumoGuy) that invited us to make a choice today. We could choose to be grumpy about whatever was irritating us or getting in the way of our life, or choose to be grateful for what we have and what is around us. I was out walkingContinue reading “We all have a choice”

Doing what I love

This week a calm seems to have fallen over me. As you will no doubt know life for the past few months has been challenging and is likely to be challenging for some time to come. As I mentioned last week I am learning to roll with the punches and keeping picking myself up whenContinue reading “Doing what I love”

Thank you Boys

I have mentioned a few times in various blogs about my love for music, and how music helps me keep an even keel when my resilience is being challenged. At the moment my resilience is being tested. Now part of being resilient is accepting that there are times in your life that will hurt, andContinue reading “Thank you Boys”

Don’t let love, compassion and connection get lost in the rhetoric of protectionism, and difference.

I was having a discussion at work yesterday with with some wonderful people (Anthony Brookes and Janis Hostad) about resilience and how we can support people to recognise and embolden their resilience. We were asking ourselves what enables resilience and we started to dissect Coutu’s 3 behaviours of resilient people. As we were talking IContinue reading “Don’t let love, compassion and connection get lost in the rhetoric of protectionism, and difference.”

It’s been a while

Well what can I say? Life has got in the way a bit recently and I just haven’t had the time or the inclination to write. If I am honest it was more the inclination. I have spent a lot of time wrestling with my emotions and appreciating those emotions. I will not be goingContinue reading “It’s been a while”