In most leadership material you read you’ll come across the need to be self-aware.  I agree, it’s a very important element of growth because if you’re not aware of the need to change it will never happen, right?  But how do you do develop self-awareness?  Often times when I’m running a workshop on leadership I start with awareness and how to develop it.  To do this I always start off with the concept of the Self.  One way the Self can get into conflict is when there is too great a gap between the Actual Self and the Ideal Self. (more…)

What do you look for when hiring or selecting the leaders in your organisation or team?  A no-brainer of course is that they have the technical skills, that’s a given.  But what next?  Here’s a list of 10 key leadership characteristics that you should look for when viewing potential leaders*. (more…)

Recently I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a couple of days at “The happiest place on earth” – Disneyland – with my family.  Being interested in how effective organisations run I paid special attention to how Disney runs things there.  I was impressed at how everything ran to very strict procedures, safety being the highest priority of course, but I was left a little disappointed at the seeming poor engagement of the staff.  A lot of them (more…)

Every so often I work with a client who gets quite irritated by the things that people are doing around them.  For example, one client I worked with used to get extremely irate at his flat mates.  He used to go barmy when he’d be the last one to get up in the morning and all the curtains in the house are closed, the rubbish is sitting in the corner of the kitchen or the bin is overflowing, food and dirty plates would be left on the counter top from last night’s dinner.  He’d leave the house after cleaning up after his flatmates and with every step he’d mentally spit and fume about his flatmates and their disgusting habits.  Then he’d arrive at work…ready to start the day.  You can imagine how things would go from there. (more…)

Your success in any aspect of your career will often come down to ensuring that those who need to know are in the know and those who need to make those critical decisions have enough information to do so in a reasonable amount of time.

Here’s a quick list to help manage your stakeholder expectations: (more…)

“Curiosity killed the cat…”

The other night my youngest daughter came into the bedroom, she had a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep.  Bringing her back to bed I asked her what the nightmare was about.  She said that mammy and daddy died and she was really upset.  I explained to her that in a dream that doesn’t mean what she thinks. (more…)

I must admit that I’ve been on the receiving end of ‘constructive’ feedback more than I’d like to admit and I used to dread those situations.  I’d start to recognise a pattern where, out of the blue, I’d receive an email requesting me to attend a 30 minute meeting with the boss and I knew I’d done something wrong.  These days I recognise the importance of receiving feedback and now I even seek it out because without feedback we simply can’t grow.  Feedback systems are all around us…in nature, in our environment (more…)

If you’ve ever wondered what makes up a balanced individual so have psychologists since the beginning of the discipline.  Many renowned psychologists have put forth their view on what makes up a mature personality but after extensive research into the topic the following traits have become known as the Big 5 Personality Traits.  How many do you have? (more…)

In a previous blog talked about a few different strategies for giving feedback.  Feedback is, of course, vital to us all if we want to become better at what we do and it’s important that we communicate this in a way that it is heard and taken on board.  There are times, however, when we need to provide more than feedback.  When one of your more experienced team members stuffs up and should’ve known better it’s important that they understand this also. (more…)

Have you ever been frustrated by not being able to get your message across?  Or maybe it’s not your message that’s the problem but perhaps the way it’s delivered causes people to get the goat.  A very good friend of mine and a great coach in her own right, Emma Parker, shared with me a terrific acronym (TADAR) that she uses to help improve, not only her own communication, but that of her team.  As well as using it as a guide herself, if one of her team comes to her with a message that they (more…)