Time Saving Techniques To Boost Your Productivity

The proverbial quote the early bird catches the worm is, more than ever, a significant guiding principle in modern day business management. Starting early or being ahead of the pack increases your chances for succeeding and the sooner you start, the sooner you will achieve success. Clearly this goes hand in hand with utilizing time saving techniques to help you achieve rapid results without compromising your productivity. There are many systems available that are specifically devised to save time and optimize... Read more »

Reveal your own Leadership Power from Within

Are leaders born, or are they made? That’s a question and debate you hear often, and each side feels that it’s right. In truth, though, both are right. You have everything inside you that you need to become a leader. You may not realize it, but you do. If you don’t realize that you have the leadership qualities you need already, however, you can also go out and learn how to become a leader. You already have everything you need to be the great leader you are. Find these qualities within yourself. Becoming a leader is a process, not an instantaneous occurrence. If you′re not in a leadership position today, it’s not likely that you′re going to be in one tomorrow. Rather, it’s a... Read more »

Compensate to Motivate Your Sales Team

When I speak to business executives, one of the challenges I often hear is that their sales team is not doing the things they feel are most critical to the success of the company. I then ask to see their compensation plan. After a thorough read, I share my impression of the message of the compensation plan and ask if this is their intention. That’s when things get scary! They look at me blankly and say, “No, our intention is for our sales people to ___” For them, the disconnect has been exposed. What many forget is that the blessing of sales is that a compensation plan doubles as a job description. However, that blessing is also a curse as a compensation plan... Read more »

The Number One Failing of Really Useless Leaders

Now I’m sure you′ve read Stephen Covey’s excellent book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’. But if you haven’t, you should. It’s an inspiring summary of the seven simple but motivational things you need to do to be an inspirational leader. And it can help you to build an inspirational leadership style. I mention Covey’s book because my recent research tackles the other end of the scale. I’ve been looking at ‘The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders’. You′re probably asking how a study of the failings of really useless leaders can help you: it’s just another angle on leadership, right? Well,... Read more »

Leadership Lessons from the Presidential Election

Business executives don’t have to win votes to get appointed. But to be a successful leader, in the corporate world or the political world, you need to know who you are and what you stand for. Even if you’re not the next president of the USA, I urge you to spare five minutes to read these questions. It’s a challenge, I warn you. The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Governance developed 15 questions for presidential candidates. It might be worth taking a look at the HowYouLead website. But if you don’t have time to review the site, here’s the list of 15 questions, translated for managers and leaders in business. Who Are You Really? 1. Values: What are your... Read more »

How to Learn from Your Leadership Mistakes

We learn most from our mistakes. It’s true. But problems occur for us when we forget this. Or when we deliberately deny that we made a mistake. And - if we′re honest - most of us do this, from time to time. So in this article I want to share with you the IMPORTANCE of learning from your mistakes. AND how best to learn from your mistakes. These ideas were first captured for me in a little known book by Calhoun Wick and Lu Leon way back in 1993, but their thinking on how to learn from mistakes has never been bettered,... Read more »

The Ultimate Leadership Strategy

Put people first. It’s the great cliche, isn’t it? When a business school professor like me asks you ‘what’s the most productive leadership style?’, you know the answer don’t you? Put people first. But if everyone knows the answer, why aren’t more people doing it? Why aren’t executives focused on motivating and inspiring their people? The reality is that people put profits first. They focus on the short-term financial gain without realizing that there is a direct link between putting people first and building outrageous profits. In one of the very few great books on this topic,... Read more »

Three Steps to Unleashing Your Team’s Potential

Most people could perform at a much higher level than they do if their boss created a suitable environment for them to flourish in. In many instances, it’s the boss who is holding the team back by trying to control it too closely. So ask yourself, do you set unnecessary boundaries for your teams? If you have no idea, maybe you should ask them. “How am I holding you back?” you could ask. One useful technique to adopt is a KISS strategy: use it in this discussion and you won’t go far wrong. Ask your people these four questions: 1) What should I KEEP doing? 2) What do I need to IMPROVE? 3) What should I STOP doing? 4) And what should I START doing? What else can... Read more »

Are You the Worst Leader in the World?

The question I am most often asked by managers is: ‘Why won’t they do what I want?’ This is usually followed by: ‘And why don’t they work harder?’ As leaders and managers, we often assume that, if our employees really wanted to perform better, their performance would just increase. We assume that people’s ability to boost their own performance is totally within their own control. This is just not true. Decades of research into motivation and performance don’t back this up. Jobs can actually restrict performance, for instance. Think of a production line where the performance of any single worker depends on the speed of the whole line, not on... Read more »

Leadership… It’s Not Just For Managers

The other day my nine-year old daughter and two sons (seven and five years old respectively) were playing with neighborhood friends. Out of the blue, my two sons came running home upset because the girls in the group told them they didn’t want to play with them. I was puzzled. Wasn’t my daughter also in the group? How could she allow these girls to tell her younger brothers that they couldn’t also play in the group? Why didn’t she defend her brothers? I sat down with my daughter and asked her about what had occurred. The bottom-line was that the popular opinion of the group was that the boys... Read more »