Self Leadership Coaching Blog

I have just returned from a client meeting, where the client needed to train its sales people to effectively increase sales.

Increasing sales is one of the key actions that is going to help this client weather the recession and profit afterward. After identifying the urgent need to train trainers to equip the sales team with product knowledge and values based selling skills across 14 countries, the business development manager told me, “Yes, we need this but I was told yesterday that there is a freeze on discretionary spending.”

I wanted to yell, “Since when is learning discretionary?” Continue Reading »

Are you Gen Y or do you manage Gen Y?

These are two important questions that you can help me answer.

1. Do we need to manage Gen Y any differently than previous generations (Gen X, Baby Boomers, Traditionals)?

2. Does Gen Y need to learn to manage upwards to update their bosses? Continue Reading »

Do you ever wonder why people behave the way they do? Are you curious about whether someone is a right fit for a job or a team?

All will become clear when you understand the psychological background of personality.

The word personality comes from the Latin persona, which refers to the masks once worn by actors to give clues as to the emotions driving their behaviour. Today the term personality refers to the sets of predictable behaviours by which we profile a person. These sets of behaviours are known as types or traits and profiling tools are known as psychometric tests. Continue Reading »

Interruptions are one of the most powerful time wasters.

The simple reason is because for each activity that we engage our brain in, we need a period of warm-up (just like in any sport), and then only can we start performing at the peak of our potential.

The problem is that if we get interrupted in the process, we need to go back to the warm-up phase again. And the more we get interrupted, the less chance there is that we ever reach the peak of our brain potential. Therefore we end up wasting precious time. Continue Reading »

A lack of effective presentation skills (public speaking) will seriously harm your career prospects. Whether you are starting out in a company or are the CEO, you will be judged on your ability to present ideas in way that engage the audience.

But fear not! The ability to present or speak well is within everyone’s grasp. I have coached the most boring of CEO’s and the most timid of junior staff to speak and present with impact. Continue Reading »

Businesses today face change all the time. If you’re not changing that means you’re standing still, and that just does not make good business sense. Change can take many different forms. An organisation can be bought, sold or taken over. Mergers happen all the time. Economic conditions, exchange rates, and government regulations all create ongoing challenges not only for business leaders but for employees as well.

Continue Reading »

Many training and change initiatives including coaching are a waste of time and money because they don’t deliver results. Organisations tend to measure people in terms of performance and potential and so any investment in people should show results in either or both of these.

In Singapore,  Self Leadership International transforms people’s performance and potential by impacting how they think and how they feel about what they do and by assisting the organisation to create a culture that will support the behaviours required for success.

There are many approaches to  ‘leadership development.’ but what makes the difference is the methodology. Continue Reading »

Aristotle taught us that to influence and persuade effectively we need to have ‘ethos’ which translates as ‘character’. In Aristotle’s Ancient Greece you would be known by your actions and words; today nothing has changed except that our actions and words are now open to the world wide web.

It would be naive to not consider how your character is portrayed on the web because your client’s and competitors will certainly check you out. Websites such as Linked In are excellent for a business profile and Facebook can be powerful means of connecting if used with caution.

I recommend an excellently balanced article titled ’5 Reasons to Care About Your Online Presence, and 3 to Forget About It.’

Guard your character because once lost it is almost impossible to regain.