Positive Ways to Motivate Your Employees
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…
Why Starting a Business can Create Strain on your Mental Health
Becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business is like a child taking their very first steps. You will make mistakes, have downfalls, and experience hardship but whilst this may cause immense stress, it is not all negative. With perseverance and a major positive attitude,…
The Most Frequently Used Leadership Styles
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…
Eight qualities of a great leader
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…
The Benefits of Curiosity for Leaders
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…
Build a Culture That Aligns with Staff Values
Is your company slow to react to change? Does your company have many ‘layers/section’ so that your employees feel stifled and don’t have a voice or a say over what goes on within its walls? Are only a few in charge of the decision-making process?…
Adaptive Leadership Is What We Need Right Now
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…
How to Use Body Language to Communicate
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…
How to Motivate Staff – Insights in to Vroom’s Expectancy Theory
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…
Bring People and Ideas Together with Conversations – Real Conversations
George Bernard Shaw pointed out that “the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Communicating is an integral part of our everyday life. We talk for several hours to people each day while we also communicate through emails, texts…
Others are Depending On You – Leading while Adapting
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…
Values – As Warnings (Part 2)
Larsen also states that leaders whose roles are misaligned with their values experience inner conflict, stress, or frustration. It is fairly common in my work as a business coach to come across leaders and business owners who are facing hardships without recognising the reasons. It…
Leading by Your Values (Part 1)
As a leader, the most effective (and many would argue, perhaps the only way) you can direct your life and the lives of others is to truly know what you stand for. Your personal values – the way you choose to conduct your self –…
Coaching Conversation (Part 3)
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…
Coaching Conversations (Part 2)
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…
Coaching Conversations (Part 1)
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…
How to turn grumpy employees into satisfied employees – insights from Herzberg’s two-factor theory
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…
Four Ways to Encourage Your Employees to be More Proactive
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…
Stopping self destructive behaviour
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),…