Feedback is one of those things that is talked about a lot in organisations but is rarely done well. Sometimes, if you can believe it, it’s not done at all! No feedback at all is so much worse than “negative” feedback because without any feedback you don’t know if you’re hitting the mark or not. I put “negative” in double quotes because I believe feedback is just feedback…there’s no such thing as negative feedback, there’s only the meaning you put on it. All feedback is useful and there are certain things you (more…)

I was fortunate enough to be able to travel back to Ireland for a holiday over Christmas. Rather than going directly there we took in a couple of countries along the way to break things up. What a perfect opportunity to get through the backlog of books I’ve been building up over the year, I thought. All those hours of travel…what else would I be doing? Well, it turned out that I was out cold or bleary eyed for most of the travel time and hardly got through any of my books at all! That little experience reminded me (more…)

When I finished my schooling I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. I was always interested in sports and fitness so I naturally gravitated toward being a fitness instructor. After a few years I had a yearning to get into computers and so went back to university to study computer science at night. It was a tough four years, working and studying, but eventually it paid off and I got my BSc in Computer Science but I wasn’t satisfied yet. I signed up for a diploma in commercial management which was another year (more…)

The word ‘agile’ has such polarising effects on people. There are the die-hard project management purists who still believe it’s a passing fad and then there are the agile evangelists who couldn’t imagine any other way of working. Personally I’ve had experience on both sides of the fence and from every angle imaginable and I believe that there’s a place for both. Just as Waterfall is absolutely the right approach for some projects, Agile is equally the right approach for others. What’s missing is the (more…)

We’re in an age where the quick fix is all the rage. We’re all looking for the reward without having to put in the effort, to earn the status without working on character, to be seen as an expert without beating on the trade. I’m as guilty as the next person. I’ve recently become consumed by how to make the perfect poached egg (I love poached eggs!), and after several failed attempts and a few hit and misses, I jumped onto Youtube to see how (more…)

I was having a coffee with a colleague last week and, as it tends to do, the topic of conversation turned to leadership. In this case, it was servant leadership. My colleague expressed his view that servant leadership was great in theory but could never work in practice. “I mean,” he argued, “how can you be a servant to others but still make the decisions, and tell them what to do and the direction to take? There’s too much of a dichotomy to make it work.” I had to agree with him…to a point. (more…)

One of the most powerful leadership styles we can use is the coaching style. Unfortunately it’s also the least used of all the styles which is a terrible shame because it can have a tremendously positive impact on your team and the environment. The GROW model is a very simple tool to help you get started on how to coach people in your team to higher performance.

PLEASE NOTE: Before coaching anyone it’s important to ask (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…)

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…)

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…)