Coaching Tips from Philosophy
Coaching Tips from Philosophy – Contents
- Career Coaching Tips from Famous Philosophers
- How does Philosophy provide Coaching Insights?
- 10 Questions to Ask about Your Job or Career?
- Career Coaching Tips from Philosophy
- Business Coaching Tips from Philosophy
- 10 Questions to Should Ask about your Organization?
- Leadership Coaching Tips from Philosophy
- 10 Philosophers, you should Know
- Interesting Facts and Insights about Careers, Business, and Leadership
- The Great Philosophical Questions
- Books about Leadership Philosophy
- Leadership Philosophy – Videos
Career Coaching Tips from Famous Philosophers
Career coaching focuses on work and career. Our focus is on Insights, Resources, and Tools to help individuals manage their journey in their career and work environment. This includes career exploration, making career choices, managing career changes, lifelong career development, and dealing with other career-related issues.
Research attests to the effectiveness of career coaching when aligned with Coaching Psychology. It aims to increase performance, achievement, and well-being in individuals by utilizing evidence-based methods.
How does Philosophy provide Coaching Insights?
Philosophy in Greek means “Love of Wisdom.” It is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, beliefs, and happiness. Such questions are posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Philosophers also raise more practical and concrete questions such as:
- Is there a better way to live?
- Is there a better way to work?
- What makes me happy?
- Why should I care?
Philosophers ask the important questions that individuals need to ask themselves. What questions should you be asking about your Career?
10 Questions to Ask about Your Job or Career?
- What are the trends in my chosen profession?
- What are the trends in my industry?
- What Jobs are disappearing and what jobs are emerging?
- What is the outlook and trends for my organization or department?
- How easy is it to outsource or off-shore my job?
- Are there opportunities where I work?
- Are the challenges in my workplace being addressed, or are they being ignored and will get worse?
- What makes me happy?
- What frustrates me?
- What matters most to me?
Career Coaching Tips from Philosophy
Career Coaching Tips from Philosophy can provide insights that can help you ask the right questions or re-frame your perspective on your career.
“Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forwards.” – Søren Kierkegaard
“Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.” – Immanuel Kant
“Liberty consists in doing what one desires.” – John Stuart Mill
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” – Socrates
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
“The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone.” – John Locke
“If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.” – Baruch Spinoza
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. – Immanuel Kant
“Man is condemned to be free.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” – Søren Kierkegaard
“Without music, life would be a mistake.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” – Nicolas Chamfort
“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” – Plato
“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.” – John Stuart Mill
“If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”
-Lao Tzu
Business Coaching Tips from Philosophy
Business coaching focuses on business leaders. It provides Insights, Resources, Tools, and suggestions to improve personal effectiveness in the business setting. Business coaching is also called executive coaching, corporate coaching, or leadership coaching.
Business Coaches can help business leaders to advance towards specific professional goals. These include strategic skills, planning skills, communication skills, performance management, and organizational effectiveness. Our Insights, Resources, Tools can help support the development of executive presence, enhanced strategic thinking, effectively dealing with conflict, and with building a capable team.
Philosophers ask important questions about society. What questions should you be asking about your business or organization?
10 Questions to Should Ask about your Organization?
- Do I like my immediate supervisor or manager?
- Do I like the people I work with?
- Is my business or organization sustainable?
- Do we have a Disaster backup plan?
- What are the key risks to my business or organization?
- Which part of our business or organization is the least profitable or efficient?
- Where are the opportunities for growth?
- What do our customer satisfaction surveys tell us?
- How transparent is our organization?
- Is diversity valued in our organisation?
Business Coaching Tips from Philosophy
Business Coaching Tips from Philosophy may provide insights that can help you ask the right questions or re-frame your perspective on your business.
“Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
“No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.” – John Locke
“God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.” – Bertrand Russell
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” – Plato
“Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they are not altered for the better designedly.” – Francis Bacon
“It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” – W. K. Clifford
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucius
“Man is the measure of all things.” – Protagoras
“Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” – William of Ockham
(Note: The above quote is also known as Ockham’s razor. It is a principle from philosophy. If there exist two explanations for an occurrence, then the one that requires the least speculation is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation.)
“Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.”
-Soren Kierkegaard
Leadership Coaching Tips from Philosophy
Leadership coaching focuses on senior leaders and helps them become coaches for their team members. When leaders act as coaches they can help their team to reach higher levels of performance, increased job satisfaction, personal growth, and career development.
Research suggests that leadership or executive coaching has positive effects on workplace performance. Leadership coaching is effective for increasing employee engagement and reduce stress in the workplace.
Philosophy asks the difficult questions about how we should treat people and what is the correct moral approach to dilemmas. What questions should leaders be asking themselves?
10 Questions All Leaders Should Ask Themselves?
- Am I doing the right thing for the right reason?
- What do I want my most valued person to say about me?
- In an ideal world, how would I grow my business or organization?
- Do I spend enough time with my Team(s)?
- What is my biggest anxiety?
- After people walk away from me, is their potential activated?
- Who will replace me, and are they ready?
- What would make today great?
- What are the things I am grateful for?
- What are the things holding me back?
Leadership Coaching Tips from Philosophy
Leadership Coaching Tips from Philosophy may provide meaningful insights that can help illuminate your leadership journey.
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” – Socrates
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” – Aristotle
“What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.” – G. W. F. Hegel
“One cannot step twice in the same river.” – Heraclitus
“The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.” – Jeremy Bentham
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Socrates
“To be is to be perceived.” – Bishop George Berkeley
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” – Plato
“Even while they teach, men learn.” – Seneca the Younger
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.” – Voltaire
“The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.” – Confucius
“One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.” – René Descartes
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.” – Aristotle
“The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” – Seneca
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” – Bertrand Russell
“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it.” – Epicurus
“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but of how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” – Immanuel Kant
“It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth.” – John Locke
“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one’s desires, but by the removal of desire.” – Epictetus
“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” – Lao Tsu, Tao Teh Ching
“The brave man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures.” – Democritus
“To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.” – John Stuart Mill
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – William Shakespeare
“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” – Bertrand Russell
“The secret of happiness, you see is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” – Socrates
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
– Bertrand Russell
10 Philosophers you should Know
Philosophy in Greek means “love of wisdom” is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, beliefs, and mind. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved.
Philosophers also raise more practical and concrete questions such as: Is there a best way to live? Is there a better way to work? What makes me happy?
- Confucius
- The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, the correctness of social relationships, justice, and sincerity. Confucius’s principles have commonality with Chinese tradition and belief. He espoused the well-known principle “Do not do unto others what you do not want to be done to yourself,” the Golden Rule. He is also a traditional deity in Daoism.
- Plato
- Plato (428 – 347 BC) was an Athenian philosopher in Ancient Greece, founder of the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is the pivotal figure in Western philosophy, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle.
- Aristotle
- Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a philosopher in Ancient Greece, who along with his teacher Plato, has been called the “Father of Western Philosophy.” His writings cover many subjects and the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. His philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West.
- Socrates
- Socrates (470 – 399 BC) was an Athenian philosopher who was the first moral philosopher of the Western ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, he left no writings and is known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers writing after his lifetime, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon.
- René Descartes
- René Descartes (1596 – 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. One of the most notable intellectual figures of the Dutch Golden Age, Descartes is one of the founders of modern philosophy. His best known philosophical statement is “I think, therefore I am.”
- John Locke
- John Locke FRS (1632 – 1704) was an English philosopher commonly known as the “Father of Liberalism”. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.
- David Hume
- David Hume (1711 – 1776) was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher. He is best known for his influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Hume held that passion rather than reason governs human behavior. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge is founded solely on experience.
- Immanuel Kant
- Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) was an influential German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment. In his view, the mind shapes and structures experience, with all human experience sharing certain structural features. Kant believed that reason is the source of morality, and that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) was a German philosopher whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. At age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward, a complete loss of his mental faculties. Nietzsche’s work became associated with fascism. However, 20th-century scholars contested this interpretation of his work. Nietzsche’s thoughts enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s, and his ideas have had a profound impact on existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked on the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. His book Philosophical Investigations has ranked as one of the most important books of 20th-century philosophy
For most of its history, “philosophy” encompassed any body of knowledge. From the time of Ancient Greek philosophers to the 19th century, “natural philosophy” included astronomy, medicine, and physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize.
In the modern era, some investigations that were traditionally part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology, linguistics, and economics.
“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers”
– William James
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Interesting Facts and Insights about Careers, Business, and Leadership
- The majority of jobs are not advertised.
- For jobs where there are on average over 100 applications received:
- On average less than 20% of job applicants get an interview.
- To create a shortlist, the average time spent looking at a CV is less than 10 seconds.
- Spelling or grammar mistakes are a primary factor for Resumes to be ignored.
- CVs are ignored if your email address is unprofessional.
- When a photo is on a Resume the chances of getting discarded increase.
- In the US:
- Nearly a third of the workforce is employed as contractors or freelancers.
- The majority of employees are “not engaged.”
- LinkedIn is the preferred tool for most recruiters.
- The majority of recruiters look at a candidate’s social media profile and behavior.
- Over 25% of the total internet, time is spent on social networking sites.
- Small businesses generate the majority of new jobs.
- According to Peter Drucker, who was one of the leading researchers into modern management:
- The leaders are the ones who can make the biggest difference between success or failure in any organization.
- Most leaders become successful only through the help of others.
- You don’t need to be a manager to be a leader.
- The best leaders help people to perform to their maximum potential to achieve organizational goals.
- Central to his philosophy is the view that people are an organization’s most valuable resource, and that a manager’s job is both to prepare people to perform and give them the freedom to do so.
“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”
– Aristotle
The Great Philosophical Questions
- Why do we exist?
- What is the meaning of life?
- Is there such a thing as free will?
- How do you know what is real?
- Is there life after death?
- What is the best moral system?
- What is the purpose of life?
- Why is there so much evil in the world?
- Where do we come from?
- What is reality?
BIG IDEAS:
“Strategies for Influence” explores and shares the BIG IDEAS from the Leaders of Influence that can help you with your Career, Business, and Leadership. Click on any of the links below to explore the Big Ideas that have influenced our work and culture.
Books about Leadership Philosophy
- The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, 5th century BC
- The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli, 1500s
- Philosophy of Leadership: The Power of Authority, by Jean-Etienne Joullié and Robert Spillane, 2015
- Start with Why, by Simon Sinek, 2009
- The Philosophical Leader: How Philosophy Can Turn People Into More Effective Leaders, by P. G. Claudel and Pierre Casse, 2012
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey, 1989
Leadership Philosophy – Videos
Leadership Philosophy
Plato on Leadership Crash Course
“Give instructions only to those people who seek knowledge after they have discovered their ignorance.”
– Confucius
Photo Credits: Raphael [Public domain]
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