“I’m not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep: I’m afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.” Alexander the Great American author and academic, Brené Brown was in Australia recently and spoke to sold out audiences across the country. Her key message? “The thing that we are missing right …
I am currently in the USA on a family holiday. Being a sports nut I have taken the opportunity to see some sporting events that I haven’t experienced before. The first was an ice hockey game between the Anaheim Ducks and the LA Kings. Unbelievable skill and toughness. The second was a Major League …
There was a time a while back when people used to boast about their long work hours and how little sleep they needed. Some wore it as a badge of honour. There is strong research that shows sleep deprivation inhibits good decision making and therefore good leading. In fact, suffering from lack of sleep can be …
Busy? My guess is that nine out of 10 of you would answer “very.” I’ll even go so far as to predict that you what you are busy with is attending meetings, submitting reports, doing rosters, complying with regulations, reviewing contracts, renewing leases, updating policies, replying to emails etc. You get the drift. Busyness. Kind of …
“I’d be a better leader if I just had more time” I have worked with thousands of aspiring leaders; managers that want to be more influential, but don’t have the time to be. It’s not as if it’s not important to them, it’s just that everything else is getting in the way and they simply …
In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeown encourages us to discern ‘the essential few from the trivial many’. He recommends focusing only on essential tasks, those things that make the highest value contribution to achieving our vision or purpose. (By the way, its a great read / listen. I highly recommend it). In order to make …
A hot topic at the moment is ‘employee engagement’. What is it and how important is it? When two people become engaged it means they are making a commitment to each other. It means that they intend to be loyal and loving into the future. It means that they care, deeply, about each other. How …
I first heard this over 30 years ago when I was listening to cassette tapes by the personal development guru, Zig Ziglar. The words spoke to me then and they speak to me now. Ten years ago, someone told me about something that had “literally, changed their life.” It was a video called ‘The Secret’. …
I’m not much of an historian, and certainly not a military historian, but the name of Field Marshall William Slim keeps coming up in my leadership reading. Slim commanded a British field army in Burma fighting the Japanese in the ’40s. Here are some things that Slim did that made him highly effective as a leader, despite …
Body language tells you a lot. I was working with a team some time ago and the way they sat at the meeting was reflective of each individual’s willingness to take on responsibility. We were talking about some future projects that had to happen and we were breaking the projects down into individual tasks. Responsibility for …