Why This Story Stirred So Much Emotion — and What It Reveals About Us
Why This Story Stirred So Much Emotion – and What It Reveals About Us A Transactional Analysis Perspective on the Metroline Bus Driver Case By Paul Adams Recent coverage of Mark Hehir, a driver employed by Metroline, has stirred strong public emotion. According to multiple media reports, Hehir pursued a man who had snatched a passenger’s necklace […]
Seeing Ourselves, Seeing the System
Seeing Ourselves, Seeing the System Integrating Individual Awareness and Systemic Insight in Coaching Coaching practice often rests on the assumption that meaningful change begins with the individual. Yet within organisational psychology—and particularly within Organisational Transactional Analysis (OTA)—there is an equally compelling insight: individual behaviour is profoundly shaped by the structures, cultures, and histories of the […]
When Goals Threaten Belonging
When Goals Threaten Belonging Family Scripts, Fear of Success, and the Need for Safety There’s a subtle yet powerful reason many people do not pursue—or mysteriously stall on—goals they genuinely say they want. At an implicit level, success can feel socially expensive. If moving toward my ambition seems to risk moving away from important figures in […]
No One Does It Alone
No One Does It Alone Paul Adams The Relational Foundations of Success, Recovery, and Change We often talk about success as if it were an individual achievement. We admire people who appear to have made it on their own — athletes, leaders, entrepreneurs, or those who have “turned their life around” through sheer determination. The […]
Resilience Is Built on Success
Resilience Is Built on Success Why Small, Frequent Wins Create the Will to Keep Going Paul Adams Resilience is often described as something forged through failure. The familiar narrative suggests that being knocked down repeatedly is what teaches people how to stand back up. There is some truth in this. But it is incomplete. A […]
How We Learn
How we Learn The Foundations of Learning and Development in Coaching Introduction Coaching is fundamentally a learning process. People come to coaching because they want something to change — their behaviour, habits, mindset, confidence, relationships, or sense of direction. To support this change effectively, it helps to understand how learning actually happens. Learning is not simply […]
What Is Coaching?
What is Coaching? Introduction Coaching is often described in many different ways — performance-focused, goal-oriented, developmental, reflective, or strengths-based. While these descriptions are not wrong, they can miss something essential. At its heart, coaching is a reflective partnership that supports awareness of thinking, feeling, and behaviour, and the relationship between them. It creates a space where people can […]
The Origins of Coaching
The Origins of Coaching Where Modern Coaching Comes From and How It Evolved Introduction To understand what coaching is today, it helps to explore where it came from. Modern coaching did not emerge from a single discipline or moment in history. Instead, it evolved through the convergence of several influential ideas about human potential, learning, […]
What Is Your True Reflection?
What is your True Reflection? Introduction Many people arrive in therapy with a sense that they have lost touch with themselves. They may be functioning well on the outside — working, caring for others, meeting expectations — yet inwardly feel disconnected, uncertain, or strangely absent from their own life. Others describe feeling as though they […]