Self Leadership Coaching Blog

Have you ever wondered how to plan a presentation or speech?

This short video will certainly help.

How do you know when your employees are feeling disengaged or demotivated?

The following behavioural markers should give you a clue:

• Following the letter of the instruction rather than the spirit as evidenced by, ‘But you didn’t tell me to do X” when X was implied by the instruction and necessary to the completion of the task.
• Going early and coming late, using up all sick days and even taking unpaid leave days. Days off are mostly on a Monday or Friday.
• Increase use of social media, youtube and instant messaging at work.
• Silence – not contributing to discussions or dialogues.

When I am conducting workshopswithin an organisation I hear the following complaints from dis-empowered of demotivated employees:

• “My boss doesn’t listen.”
• “Why isn’t my boss here as he needs to hear this stuff?”
• “Why don’t senior management do what it says in the value statement?”
• “I can’t influence head office in USA/Europe and they make unreasonable demand on my time and resources.”

Motivated and enaged employees are more creative and productive; disengaged employees will lose customers, money and have more accidents at work. Therefore to re-engage employees you should talk to your staff and listen to the answers. Ask questions like;

• “What do you like best about working here?”
• “What do you like least about working here?”
• “What would you change if you could?”

Of course if you ask these questions you must be prepared to do something about the answers otherwise it will increase cynicism.

And what if you are feeling de-motivated and disengaged? Then get back in touch with what your work means to you above  and beyond the paycheck. What about your work gives you an intrinsic sense of achievement? Ask yourself, “if this was my company, how would I behaving?” Above all look for the fun and pride in what you do because your work is an extension of who you are (see posts on Self Leadership).

In Australia,  almost one half of organisations are not effective in finding and developing leaders, which identifies some critical challenges for employers if they are to take advantage of the economic recovery – this situation has been  revealed in a recent study by Drake International.

The report, Gearing up for Growth,  found that 44% of organisations rated themselves not effective in finding and developing leaders. Furthermore, improving retention of skilled employees was the most important people challenge facing employers in a growing economy. This was mirrored in the report’s findings that 72% of organisations expect to face skills shortages this year at the same time as accelerating staff turnover, with one-quarter of employees expecting to move employers in 2010.

“With economic recovery now gathering pace, as further evidenced by the IMF forecast, employers are recognising that they have a critical challenge to remotivate and engage their workforces [and] leadership will be one of the key drivers behind the growth that corporate Australia and businesses will have to focus on.”

Improving the retention of skilled employees was also top of the list of people management priorities for employers (94%). Whilst this is an Australian study, the same could be said of countries such as Singapore. This situation is partly caused by cutting back on leadership development during the downturn and so the wisdom of a strategic approach to leadership development is now evident.

Source: Human Resources Leader

As a Leo/Ox I don’t believe much in hororscopes but with Chinese New Year celebrations in full swing I cannot ignore the current zeitgeist.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the tiger is a symbol of power and authority and therefore leadership; unfortunately the style of leadership represented is poor on relationship.

Poor people leadership is something I encounter on a daily basis; just recently I was conducting a Coaching for Managers program and one senior manager told me his boss had refused to attend saying, “I don’t believe in that s#!t”

On the flip side I have been working with some great people, recently, who really believe in developing people-skills and are seeing the business results to confirm their belief.

If this is your first or fiftieth time reading this blog, I hope my posts, in some small way, make the Year of the Tiger profitable, productive and harmonious for you.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Managers and leaders are ultimately responsible for the results that they achieve through people, it is therefore essential that they understand the principles involved in raising the performance of their people and teams.

The formula in the above diagram that brings the essential components into focus and causes us to realise that if; expectations, ability or attitude are at zero then results will be too. Continue Reading »

There are many definitions of leadership but my favourite in terms of its practicality is:

“Leadership is getting work done with and through others, whilst gaining their trust and cooperation.”

In a modern matrixed organisation, the ‘others’ that we need to lead may be our subordinates but just as likely they will be our peers, our bosses and our clients. Continue Reading »

Coaching, circ. 1984

As part of my study of leadership and business, I recently read a classic— Tom Peters’ 1985 book, A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference.  This book followed his best selling book on great companies, Search for Excellence (1982).  By the time I read over 300 pages, I knew that I was going to use a number of quotes on “coaching.”  Then I turned the page to Chapter 18.  It has a one line title, Coaching. Continue Reading »

2009 could be associated with many negative emotion; fear, anxiety, uncertainty, regret etc. This is not all bad because emotions have ‘motivational consequences’. If we view our emotions as a feedback system, we can use the information to change our behaviours or make better choices. Continue Reading »

As Christmas approaches we get time to reflect upon what we have learned from 2009; here are a few things that come to my mind.

It has undoubtedly been a tough year with a global financial meltdown and  H1N1 amongst the challenges we have all faced – so what have we learned? Continue Reading »

I just got a call from Australia, from James who needed a coach for one his bank’s people in Singapore. The reason I got the call was that James had heard about me from Yuvi who had previously used me for some communication training and the reason he used me is that he had heard about me from Carole who had been introduced to me by Stephanie who I met at a conference in Kuala Lumpur!

How much was that conversation worth? Continue Reading »