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Knowing is fun – learning, much less so. For a small business, it’s often costly. Here are a few lessons you should get to know early: Care for Your Employees  Successful small business owners are known for their ingenuity and their willpower. What they’re not as known for is for how they treat their employees.

Interviews are hard for business owners. In my business coaching sessions, it comes up often with clients, and rarely in a positive way. Business owners value the fact they need to employ more staff, and the growth of their business is a validation of this. However, they view the whole interview and hiring process as

While not all employees are chronic procrastinators, many businesses might boast their fair share of them. As an owner or manager, you may already understand that procrastination is not emblematic of laziness or even a lack of motivation, but it can feel that way when your business faces important deadlines. Procrastination in its elemental form

Covid-19 has forced companies to change the way they motivate their employees. Lockdowns all around Australia have pushed us into our largest recession in 30 years. As a result, many small businesses have had to cut many operational costs, including salaries. Predictably, this has not been met by employees with much enthusiasm. Fortunately, this provides

The best leaders are constantly changing their leadership styles to adapt to their ever-growing and/or evolving businesses. The longer a leader is in a position of authority, the more you will learn about which methods of leadership best suit you and your organisation. There are many ways to lead a business, some of which are

Strong and effective leadership gives companies the extra edge that helps them carve out a niche and succeed. While just about anyone can be a leader, a select number of people go on to become great leaders. Leadership is not easy  and while there is a lot of work to do, leaders are always racing

Curiosity is an attribute that is critical for leaders to succeed in a disruptive world. Agile leaders are those who are highly motivated, have the drive to learn new things and explore. Curiosity is the precursor to these desirable attributes in leaders. What does curiosity mean? Curiosity is an element of cognition. An early definition

The uncertain times brought on by the ongoing COVID-19 poses unique and new leadership challenges to public health specialists and business leaders. Clearly, the right kind of leadership determines the success of nations and humanity in times of multi-dimensional and complex crises. Leaders are expected to provide exceptional leadership even as socio-economic foundations are being

Communications is an intricate skill – it’s not only about what you say but how you say it. There are several critical components of communication, and body language is one of them. Communication includes both verbal and nonverbal cues. While most of us train ourselves to be adept at using verbal cues (words), we forget

Developed in 1964, Vroom realized that performance in the workplace was based on factors impacting the individuals. These included knowledge, abilities, experience, and personality. However, regardless of these factors if the three crucial variables were fulfilled each employee would be motivated to perform at a higher level to make things better for themselves. The first

Fact: The next few months are going to be testing for SME’s and their owners.. It is understandably hard to stay calm and focussed, particularly for those around you, when you (owner or leader) are trying to adjust to a very new and fast changing environment. When we are put in this position of vulnerability, the natural tendency is to

Giving Back the Monkey People don’t need to be managed; they need to be unleashed. ~ Richard Florida, Professor of Urban Theory In 1974, William Oncken wrote one of the two bestselling articles in Harvard Business Review: “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?” The piece compares an employee’s dilemma to a monkey. When the manager

I’ve been writing about the need for managers and leaders to improve performance (this post) by helping employees to think better and improve their abilities to problem solve. Until managers learn to do this, they will continue to contribute to employee disengagement. Starting a coaching conversation is an ideal way to encourage self-directed learning. How

Teaching People to Think Leadership practices need to keep up with the realities of organisational life. There’s an increasing gap between the way employees are managed and how they want to be managed. One cannot teach a man anything. One can only enable him to learn from within himself. ~ Galileo Galilei With so many

Hand on your heart – ask yourself -are you totally satisfied with your job? You are not likely to be all that dissatisfied, after all, the job pays the bills and most of the people who you workd with ‘ok’. However, you are unlikely to be ‘super happy’.  A study by Deloitte revealed that meaningful

The true value of a owner/manager lies in their team. (Besides, the more productive and proactive the team, the better the manager looks.) If you run a startup, one of your primary responsibilities is to get your team working at its highest efficiency. Here are four ways you can encourage your employees to be more

What happens when a business owner has self-destructive or business harming leadership behaviours? What happens when family members don’t get on well in business? What do we do? How do they change? It makes me think of my favourite skit of all time (watch here), starring Bob Newhart. (Younger clients might struggle to recognise that