Leadership is one of the key issues of the modern world, and yet it is rarely understood. For the most part, modern organisations tend to think of leaders as souped-up managers, roles made onerous by the weight of attending to minutiae. The reality is that leadership is not the same as management, at least not in my view. In fact, leadership is primarily about motivation.
Category Archives: Web/Tech
The Importance of Mentoring in the Modern World
How many great people reveal that they could never have done what they did without their partner, friends, parents, or an early role-model who believed in them? So, we can see that mentoring is essential, even, bizarrely, for those who self-teach.
Finding Diamonds Before You Go a-Marketing
Marketing, as Peter Drucker observed, was one of the two functions that alone made money for a business – all else was a cost. Thus it is PDI – Pretty Damned Important! It’s a shame, therefore, that it only does – usually – half the job. True, that half it may do spectacularly well, but polished fake diamonds with all the branding collateral imaginable are still … only fake.
Recruitment and Motivation
Recruitment is a serious business. Indeed, it could and can be argued that the number one skill of an effective leader is their ability to be able to recruit effectively. Leadership itself is the primary cause of success in any organisation; how often do we observe the sad demise of so many organisations who have basked in the sunlight of one particular leader’s skill and ability, but this has not been replicated in depth throughout the whole organisation.
Weird and Wonderful for Business!
According to Martin Davidson, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia, business culture can tend to weed out the weird! This can be a big mistake because it is ‘weird’ people, or certain kinds of weird people, that create potency and innovation which enable businesses to thrive. This can be expressed in a variety of ways, but the most obvious is perhaps in the need to avoid cloning people into the culture they join…
What the World Cup 2018 Can Teach Us About Motivation
Whilst the players are to be commended for their heroic efforts and dazzling technical displays, particularly from the aptly named Harry Kane (fear the lash of his free-kick), I believe the success of the team in reaching the semi-finals, along with the psychological paradigm shift and complete transformation of attitude, is down to their coach and leader: Gareth Southgate.
Overcoming Resistance to Change
Carl Jung observed that “All true things must change and only that which changes remains true”. This is a profound paradox, especially when you consider that for all the talk of change there is today, the reality is that most people and most organisations don’t want it.
Six Ways to Boost Your Career
In running training sessions and going into companies, I frequently find myself in conversation with staff and management. At some point, the issue turns from the specific training to more personal matters – their professional development. Unsurprisingly, this topic never fails to interest. How do we develop professionally?
EXTRACT FROM “MAPPING MOTIVATION FOR COACHING” PART 3
We are happy when we are in harmony; according to the Tao Te Chingi, in harmony with the Tao. The Tao is the Way – essentially, the natural flow of the universe and how it operates. It is an impersonal force according to the Tao Te Ching, but there is no problem in calling this ‘God’ if one wishes to. The point is that the universe conforms and complies with certain rules and principles and when we violate these we suffer.
EXTRACT FROM “MAPPING MOTIVATION FOR COACHING” – PART 2
Coaching starts with considering the issue of self-awareness for the simple reason that the person who is not self-aware has – by definition – no awareness, or consciousness, that there is anything on which to work within one self. This applies as much to self-development as it does to coaching a client. If a cat scratches its fur going through a barbed wire fence, we know it has become ‘aware’ of the injury because it will start to lick the wound relentlessly in its efforts to heal the scratch.
The Mapping Motivation Series 