“I have been here for 7 years and I deserve to promoted to this (leadership/management) position” said the indignant team member. The problem was she had never worked harder or longer to complete difficult or urgent tasks, always saying it was 5pm and she had been there since exactly 8am. She had meticulously taken all […]
I observed a monthly meeting of a senior leadership team. Present were the CEO and COO and their 8 direct reports – all general managers. When it came time to report on deliverables, the bulk of the reports explained why their objectives hadn’t yet been met. As the last excuse was delivered the CEO shot […]
If you’re like most Australians, Tuesday was the day you watched your favourite summer sport, relaxed and socialised, watched the fireworks and maybe thought about how grateful we are to be Australian. If you want to achieve even more value from the day, start thinking about your people. The Australian of the Year Awards are […]
Work is rapidly evolving. People are becoming far more conscious of what matters most and it isn’t just about work. People are well and truly over the old ways of performance management and command and control. They are looking for meaning, value, appreciation, being included and making a difference. Technology has enabled us to be […]
Just saying “I’m holding you accountable for delivering this” does not mean that accountability has been achieved, even if the response is “OK”. I recently sat in on the monthly meetings of an executive team over three months and heard the leader repeatedly say “I’m holding you accountable for our agreements today”. The problem was […]
This follows my last blog post about the four challenges introverts face. Apart from working with extrovert clients, mostly senior leaders, I too am largely an extrovert and have been assessed by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as an ENTJ. Here are the four biggest challenges that I’ve found extroverted leaders experience: Talking Too Much With […]
The in-house architect was important to the success of the development project. She was talented, creative yet pragmatic and realistic in her technical design output. The leadership valued her work highly. But she was painful to work with. She was never wrong - in her opinion. She was rude, even brutal in her criticism of […]
Employee engagement is high on the business agenda these days as we seek to overcome the challenges of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Every week we see brilliant tips to improve employee engagement. When we look closely at them all we see they resemble Frederick Herzberg’s Dual Theory of 1959, sometimes called the Two-Factor Theory. […]
“I am holding you accountable for this to be done on time and as agreed, OK?” said the general manager to her direct report. “Sure” was the reply. At the due date and time the direct report said “I’m sorry but there were too many other interruptions that were of immediate priority. I’ll have it […]
