The nature of modern warfare is changing rapidly. Whether its deterrence, peacekeeping, or active combat, service personnel need, more than ever, to be adaptable, insightful, skilful and able to recover quickly from set-backs.

Thank you for joining me again as I speak to a fellow traveller in life, and the world of coaching, Dr Chris Mackel. Chris is a highly experienced coach with a deep business background. I discuss with Chris his coaching work with senior officers in the British Army. I learn about their career paths, their expertise and their responsibilities - to their troops and their families, to civilian support staff and - when deployed - to the wider communities where they are situated.

Recorded in May 2025, we explore the challenges of modern military leadership - from motivation, to adaptability, to responding to failure, and explore two approaches Chris uses in his work. Chris describes the DISC personality profiler for particular use in his one-to-one coaching work, and the Connect 4 model for use in teams - which focuses on trust, constructive conflict, commitment and accountability.

We conclude with reflections on what this work with the British military has given to Chris, and how his work and wider life is shaped by his Christian faith.

Resources

Disc Assessment

How many CVs do you have? If you’ve applied for a variety of jobs you probably have several, tailored to your prospective employers. I expect you put them in different formats - chronological, skills based, or a hybrid. What they all have in common is what you can do.

But what’s on the CV that other people have on you - the one that reflects who you are - your character CV?

It’s the combination of evidence on these two records of your life impact that will give us the focus of the last facet of a thriving life - a life of impact.

A great way to bring the two together is through my version of the popular and well-known Ikigai concept. Whilst the general shape of Ikigai is tried and trusted, I found that aspects of it didn’t resonate that well with some of my clients. So I re-worked the concept to meet my own audience - Hereditas. I wonder how you would re-frame it for yours.

The four areas I chose around which to explore life direction and impact are these - passions, partners, powers and persistence. The first three of these are focused on what we do - our achievement CV - and the fourth brings into clearer focus the people we are (and are becoming) - our character CV.

Building our character CV requires particular strengths. In my last podcast I explored the cardinal virtues (strengths) of fortitude, temperance, justice, wisdom. Here I complete the set with the theological virtues of faith, hope and love.

Hereditas provides a framework for giving shape to a thriving life, starting with us. There is an alternative. That is to adopt an existing vision of a thriving life and to make that as your centre.

To where are you looking to build your own centre for a life which can go well, feel good, be lived well, and make an impact?

In all my work, these are the most foundational of all the questions I confront. I wish you every success in finding answers which lead to a credible, sustainable, and universally applicable vision of a life worth living.

Resources

Ikigai

For the Life of the World: Theology that makes a difference Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun

The Gospel of Happiness, How Secular Psychology Points to the Wisdom of Christian Practice Christopher Kazcor

One of the more demanding areas to explore in coaching, and in life in general, is how we live out our values. Values don’t just deal with questions of pragmatism - what’s useful or effective - they reflect what we stand for. And to stand for something, usually means that you will find yourself standing against something else. Your values are likely to rub up against other people’s. In short, there is a cost to living out our values consistently.

There are plenty of ways you can identify your values, such as through on-line assessments, working through values card decks, by observing your heroes, or in conversation with a coach or mentor. That’s the easy bit - the challenges arise when it comes to putting your values into practice.

How about this one. What do you do with the challenge of when two of your values rub up against each other? You stand for justice - fairness for everyone - and you stand for loyalty - you privilege certain close relations, be they to friends, family or your team.

What do you do when your values, each of which are good in themselves, clash with each other? There are ways of adjudicating between values when they clash and it makes sense for you to have worked out your own principles for how you will do this before any values challenge arises.

I'd like to offer you some clues. To start with, it’s helpful to explore where your values come from. You can follow your heart, follow your family, follow the crowd, follow the rules or follow the One. When you are clear about from where you are drawing your values, you may well be able to find a defining value around which the others revolve. I provide a worked illustration - a values clash - and six different suggestions about how you could resolve it.

And I share some straightforward and intuitive coaching questions anyone can use to get a better handle on these issues.

The third facet of a thriving life is living it well. I hope that, through your own exploration of these insights, you will be able to live it better.