Leadership Skills

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Can we take positivity too far?

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Can we take positivity too far?

Many years ago, there was a period of dislocation in my work life and I was suddenly scrabbling to relaunch my independent career with no work on the horizon. At the time we had very little savings and I was the main earner for our household of four. I was feeling worried and anxious.

 

A friend, who lived abroad, was briefly in the country and we had a chance to catch up. She asked how I was, and I started to explain my financial worries and work concerns. Abruptly she cut across me to say, ‘But when you’re working you earn good money, right?’

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Why Sexual Harassment is a Business Issue

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Why Sexual Harassment is a Business Issue

First some facts and figures. 60% of women report workplace sexual harassment. But an estimated 90% of incidents go unreported. Meanwhile approximately 94% of organizations have a policy about this in place. Hmm the maths is beyond me but, put these figures together, and I would say the policies just aren’t working.

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Could it be the active recruitment of incompetent men that stops women getting to the top?

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The central cause, argues Tomas Chasmorro-Premuzic, of the low numbers of women recruited into leadership, ranging from 36% in bottom tier management to only 6% at CEO level, isn’t that they aren’t competitive, assertive, bold, talented or in some other ill-defined way, enough like men; but rather that a persistent systematic mistake is made during the recruitment process. A mistake that leads to many of the opportunities, up to 74% according to one survey quoted, being filled with incompetent men.

Hence the question isn’t: how can we get more women into management, but rather, how do we stop so many incompetent men filling the available positions?

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How can we bring the benefits of Appreciative Inquiry to stuck change projects?

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How can we bring the benefits of Appreciative Inquiry to stuck change projects?

There are various signs that a change project has got stuck. One is that the senior managers are working all hours while everyone else is sort of waiting, not knowing what to do. Another is frustrated change agents pointing to the plans and diagrams all over their office walls while talking about their problems of ‘resistance to change’ and ‘lack of buy-in’. Yet another is a workforce that is demoralised, demotivated and rapidly losing hope of any improvement any time soon.

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How a dose of humility helps leaders succeed

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How a dose of humility helps leaders succeed

In our narcissistic world the idea that being humble can help us succeed sounds counter-intuitive. Isn’t being successful based on making sure our achievements get noticed?

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Some Challenges Posed by Hybrid Working and How We Can Meet Them

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Hybrid working, for many a necessity induced by lockdown, is rapidly becoming a work pattern of choice for the future. Goldman Sachs are one of the few organizations so far to have declared against the trend with their boss David Solomon rejecting the idea of remote working, labelling it an “aberration”. The more common view seems to be that the working pattern has changed for good. Google, for example, expects 20% of staff to work from home permanently in future, while Microsoft is to make remote working a permanent option. This shift towards more flexible working patterns poses some tough questions for managers and leaders.

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What kind of conversation are you having today?

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In many workplaces conversation is regarded as an adjunct to the real work of getting stuff done. All too often a request for a conversation is experienced as an interruption, a distraction from real work. Seen as a necessary evil, the objective is to complete the conversation as quickly as possible so all involved can get back to work. While the topic of conversation may be regarded as important, the quality of conversation doesn’t even register. This is very unfortunate as the quality of any conversation will have an impact beyond the moment. 

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Did you know? Build in Wellbeing from the beginning

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Lots of people feel instinctively that happiness and wellbeing at work must be important. But are they a business necessity or a ‘nice to have’. Surely it makes more sense to ensure your business is profitable and thriving before you start worrying about how people feel?

Increasingly research suggests that investing in employee wellbeing by ensuring positive work relationships, an emphasis on strengths-based development, and worker happiness has productivity pay-offs. So why delay, start promoting positive psychology practices at work today!

Take a coaching approach - 7 top tips for developing talent in your team

A key challenge for leaders and managers is developing the capacity of their staff or team. Taking a coaching approach allows you to focus on drawing out motivation rather than trying to push it in!  It allows you to create energy and motivation and it is usually experienced as an empowering process by your coachee. It helps people develop their intiaitive and sense of ownership of their work and tasks, and, in general, converts potential into capacity.

Here are seven tips to help make your coaching conversations highly productive.

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Guest Blog - Talent and determination get you there, but how do you get them? by Saira Iqbal of Zircon Management Consulting

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We know it's important, where does it come form?

One of the most successful men I know grew up in the roughest streets of Bristol, and shared a cramped bedroom with his five brothers until he could  leave the family home and ‘escape’ to his second choice university.  Now a multi-millionaire cabinet minister, each of his milestones made it more and more apparent that his success was no simple stroke of luck.

There were no useful networks that his working class parents were a part of, there was no private school education to teach social poise; but there was drive that came from great ambition and pure determination.

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Making your own mission

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Unclear objectives are sometimes unavoidable, the dangers and how to avoid as learned in Bosnia 

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Book Review – Holocracy The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy: Brian Robertson (Originally published in AI Practitioner)

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Brief account of the book

The book has noble, honourable and inspiring intentions: it offers holocracy as a ‘new operating system’ for organizations that will create a ‘peer-to-peer distributed authority system’. This operating system creates empowered people who are clear about the boundaries of their authority, about what they can expect from others, and are able to be highly effective in their roles.

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Book Review – Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies PROFIT from Passion and Purpose, by Raj Sisodia, David Wolfe, Jag Sheth (Originally published in AI Practitioner)

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Brief Account of the book

The book is based on two rounds of research undertaken by the authors in collaboration with their MBA students. They identified the organizations initially by asking the question ‘Tell us about some companies you love. Not just like but love.’

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Five Top Tips for Having Great Meetings

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Many people find meetings challenging. These five tips will help your meetings be more successful, enjoyable and productive. 

You can purchase our E-booklet that will take you through preparing for and running a great meeting in a step-by-step way here

 

1. Start with something positive

How? Ask everyone a question like ‘What’s been your greatest success, big or small, since we last met?’ or, ‘Which of your achievements over the last month are you most proud of?’ or ‘Which of your staff do you feel most grateful too, and why?’

Why? Because sharing good news boosts mood (and shares resources) which enhances creativity and problem-solving abilities

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8 Principles Of Practice For Achieving Change

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1. Grow the strengths and resourcefulness of people

It’s all too easy to focus on how people aren’t equipped for the change: they don’t have the skills, the knowledge, the experience. How their existing strengths and resources (including their extended network) can help them answer the questions and engage with the challenge that the change poses, can be less obvious. By deliberately helping people recognize and access their existing strengths and resourcefulness we can increase their resilience, tenacity and confidence in the face of change, making the steep learning curve less daunting.

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How To Keep Your Employees Engaged At Work

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Engaged employees are a business imperative: they perform 20% better and give 57% more discretionary effort [1] Organizations with a high level of engagement have better quality, sales, income and turnover, profit, customer satisfaction, shareholder return, and business growth, and success. [2] It is estimated that currently only 19% of employees are highly engaged in their work, while active disengagement cost the UK economy between £37.2bn and £38.9bn a year [3]. 

Organizations often struggle to understand what creates engagement. Positive psychology research is revealing that employee engagement is primarily a psychological and social process. There are a number of steps organizations can take to increase engagement.

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Seven Tips for Running Your Own Training Session

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How do we make training stick? We know that investing in the human capital of our workforce by upping their skill level is vital to any organisation, but if you've ever sat through a boring training session - or when that brought back unpleasant memories of school - you know that there is high significant chance this time and money will be wasted. Here I list and explore seven tips to help your training sessions be impactful and enjoyable, for you and your trainees.

1. Step out of the expert role

Often we are asked to run a training session due to our expertise in an area. Strangely this can be a challenge as we encounter what is known as the ‘expert problem’. Essentially our own knowledge and skill are so integrated that we can’t easily separate out the elements to construct a good training path; and we have forgotten how new and challenging this all is to the novice. The danger is that we inadvertently overwhelm or confuse with our expert knowledge.

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How To Increase Your Effectiveness As A Manager With Strengths Cards

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Increasingly being an effective manager is about helping others to be their best. People’s natural strengths are at the heart of great performance. While there are great psychometrics around to assess people’s strengths they aren’t always available, suitable, or affordable. A pack of strengths cards is portable, re-useable and infinitely applicable. Below are eight ways managers can use a pack of strengths card to enhance their effectiveness.

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Entrepreneurs And Owners - Five questions that will add value to your bottom line

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Save smart - make savings and improvements without the hidden costs

In the quest for ever great efficiencies, productivity and general cost saving, a few key questions can open up new avenues to improve performance and profitability.

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Bite - Sized Positive Psychology: The success round

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Much research has now confirmed happiness has many benefits. One easy way to use positive psychology to bring these benefits into the work place is by opening a meeting with a ‘success round’. All too often in meetings we plunge straight into the business of the day. Starting the meeting by giving people a chance to share a recent success not only boost people’s mood in the moment, it also prepares them to engage more productively with what ever is to follow. As an added bonus,  we learn lots about what makes our colleagues tick.