•Decisions: How Close Are You To A 100% Strike Rate?
Managers, team leaders and their staff can take as many as a hundred or more decisions in the course of a day, each day and every day. Many of these decisions are, of course, no more than automatic responses to familiar situations in which they have to choose between two or three options. However, from time to time, we all have to take decisions on which the course of our future and that of others depends. Then, it is a question of making sure they are right. Here are 6 principles to guide you...
•Developmental Delegation: How To Kindle The Inner Spirit
If you manage others, one of your most important roles will be to develop the resources that you have under you and that includes the people themselves. Here is a 6-step guide to how to develop people through delegation.
1. Kindle The Inner Spirit. The first step in developing others is the belief that everyone in the team is capable of growth and development. We demonstrate that belief by being genuinely interested in what they are doing and helping them discover ways in which they can...
•Discover The Genius Inside You
Did you know that you are a genius? If that sounds too incredible, and that you can’t possibly compare to the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, or Bill Gates, ask yourself this: are they really any different from you?
The answer is No. They were made exactly like you and you exactly like them. If you haven’t yet discovered your own genius, then it’s because these people learnt how to work on 6 qualities that set them apart from so-called lesser mortals. And do you know what? You...
•Don’t Pull Up The Seeds When You’ve Just Sown Them
Why is it that 95% of people who set themselves goals fail to reach them? In one word: impatience.
The most important and difficult stage of goal-building is the immediate stage after you set your goals. In the first stage, there’s a brief blip of euphoria. But this soon passes and then you hit the arid plateau of learning. It’s in this phase that most people lose their way and give up.
But this is the phase when you have to hang in there despite appearances. Otherwise, it’s like digging...
•Mission: How Leaders Create The Greatest Version Of What You Can Be
A statement of mission is one of the most powerful things you can do, whether you are running a major corporation or a small team. It expresses the purpose for the organisation’s existence, its raison d’etre, and becomes the rallying point around which everyone can unite.
Often managers create mission statements because they think they should and then leave them gathering dust on the shelf. But this is to mistake the real power and purpose of mission statements. If put together with real...
•Teambuilding: The Most Rewarding Act Of Leadership
The experience of great teamwork is one of life’s greatest thrills. Unfortunately, it is also rare and fleeting. If you want to turn your own working group of individuals into a magnificent, all-conquering team, you need to guide them on a journey of 5 steps, from Unshared Certainty to Shared Uncertainty.
1. Unshared Certainty. At the first stage of teambuilding, the team are no more than a disparate group of individuals without any close links. Their main aim is to look after number one and...
•The Counselling Approach: Why You Need These Skills If You Manage Others
One of the distinguishing features of great managers and leaders is their ability to handle the personal problems of their team.
In the past, it was often thought that the personal problems of team members were of no concern to the team leader. But that view is fast disappearing.
Why? For 3 reasons.
1. when people have a problem at work, so does the organization. Whether the problem originates at home or work doesn’t matter. If it affects the person, it affects their work. And that makes it...
•The Difference Between Managers and Leaders
It is often difficult to understand the difference between managers and leaders. Do managers lead? Do leaders manage? To understand how these two concepts are distinct yet different, here are 7 ways to understand them.
1. Course and Steering.
The word "leadership" comes from the Old English word "lad" for a "course". A "lode" is a vein that leads or guides to ore; a lodestone is a magnetic stone that guides; the lode-star is the name for the star that guides sailors, the Pole star. The...
•The Pygmalion Effect
A team does as well as you and the team think they can.
This idea is known as “the self-fulfilling prophecy”. When you believe the team will perform well, in some strange, magical way they do. And similarly, when you believe they won’t perform well, they don’t.
There is enough experimental data to suggest that the self-fulfilling prophecy is true. One unusual experiment in 1911 concerned a very clever horse called Hans. This horse had the reputation for being able to add, multiply, subtract,...
•The Value of Values
One of the toughest jobs a leader has to perform is to act as guardian of an organisation’s values.
An organisation’s values are the things that are really important to it.
In the early days of an enterprise, the values are sometimes the only thing that keeps the business going. When other factors make the chances of survival doubtful, such as funds, markets, and technology, it is the set of beliefs held by the original founders which pull the business through. The beliefs of the...
•Time Travel: What’s Your Speed and Direction?
Our personalities are the key to finding out what kind of time manager we are. Whether we tend to do too much or too little, overwork or underwork, buzz around like a bee or freeze through procrastination, all comes down to one thing: which of the following Time Travellers are you?
1. The Perfectionist.
The Perfectionist is one of the worst examples of a workaholic. They fill up their days with work activities in the belief that everything they do has to be as perfect as possible. George...
•Trigger Copy: How To Use Words That Arouse Everyone’s Desires
Trigger copy is any headline, words or phrase that hits the magic spots in your reader’s pysche. They are words that appeal to your reader’s deepest needs and desires. When you use the kind of phrases that you know will appeal to your readers, then you are onto a winner. Here are 9 types of reader and the kind of copy that will trigger off those desires.
1. The Perfectionist. The Perfectionist is someone who is always on the look-out for solutions to their problems. He or she wants their...
•Vision: How Leaders See The Invisible
The one thing that distinguishes great leaders from also-rans is the power, depth, and breadth of their vision.
Vision is a strange concept. It’s much more than just a goal or purpose. Goals simply state what we aim to achieve. Visions paint a fuller picture describing our most cherished dreams, hopes and possibilities.
1. Seeing Possibilities. The ability to see possibilities that others don’t see is one of the hallmarks of great leaders. Where most of us see just a consignment of goods,...
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