Category Archives: Master-Apprentice

Mastering ‘Effortlessness’

My good friend and colleague Jock MacNeish has recently written a short article about effortlessness. He describes the scene of an old solo sailor manoeuvring his way out of a Flemish seaport.

Jock describes the important role that practice and experience have in enabling people to work out the best way to do what they are doing. I’d also add an openness to learning because without that you won’t keep looking for better and more effortless ways to do what you are doing.

You can read all of Jock’s article here.

What would you add?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Mentoring in the mould of the Master-Apprentice approach

As a trainer of mentors and facilitator of mentor-mentee relationships I like to keep my eye out for developments and thinking in the field. Over the weekend I had the pleasure to read a newspaper article from a retired professor named Jim Mroczkowski. In his article Jim explains a mentoring relationship that occured after a shift from one university to another. He describes the relationship as being more like a master-apprentice relationship than a modern mentoring relationship and attributes the success of his career to the foundations that he learned during his time as an ‘apprentice’. Jim’s article is titled Lessons Taught and Lessons Learned and is worth the three minutes that it will take to read the article.

The success of his experience got me thinking. How present are master-apprentice relationships these days? Might there not be some perfect opportunities for such relationships to develop today? Are any of our members currently participating in such relationships and if so, how do they work?

I would be delighted to hear your thoughts on these questions and to hear your experiences relating to master-apprentice relationships.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com