Self Leadership Coaching Blog

If you give enough presentations, there’s a good chance that someday you’re going to find yourself the target of an uncooperative or hostile audience member. As in most crisis situations, you will be in good stead to have a plan of how to respond. There are many verbal techniques available which will help you handle hostile or difficult audiences, some of which I am able to outline here. These are all tried and tested over the course of the last 10 years during my own personal training and presentation courses. Use them with confidence – they really work! Continue Reading »

“If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.” – Sun Tzu

On May 26-27, 2009  Self Leadership International will be conducting a 2-day “Leadership for Managers” Program in Singapore.

If you are interested in developing your leadership skills and mindset to cope and prosper during with this current economic climate then you should consider this program as an essential investment. Normally we run this program for large multi-national companies but the public run gives the opportunity for SME’s to send their managers for a world class training. This program is also ideal for those MNC’s that want a cost effective program for selected managers.

For full details of the program you can click here or contact Radu at our office on +65 6887 4335. Continue Reading »

Listen to a Podcast on the the Power of Influence.

Have you ever wondered why some people get what they want and others don’t?

Can I make a suggestion?

Remember a time when you really wanted something; something you couldn’t have right away but something you would have to wait for, you pictured it in your head, you imagined what it would feel like to possess it and you could feel the pull.

Continue Reading »

Communication skills are the glue that holds together relationships and the oil that lubricates business and sales.

Good communication skills are essential to lead yourself and influence others. Poor communication causes pain, conflict, loss of productivity and profit.

Listen to a  podcast on Communication Skills. Continue Reading »

I am speaking about leadership development, coaching and mentoring at the Human Resource Directors Forum in Sydney, Australia on April 2nd 2009. If you or your company requires any leadership development training/consulting or executive coaching, I currently have April 1st and April 3rd available. Please contact Self Leadership International if you are interested.

Is their a difference between leadership and management? Can managers lead and can leaders manage?

These are perennial questions in the field of leadership development and the answers vary depending on who you talk to.

The concept of a leadership pipeline is that as we start supervising/managing we will be more transactional (performance management) and as we move up through the organisation we will become more transformational (visionary/inspiring). Continue Reading »

Confidence is a key success factor for modern managers and leaders and yet many lack confidence in the following areas:

1. Managing downwards when subordinates have higher qualifications or are qualified in a different discipline
2. Influencing peers or external stakeholder when there is no direct authority
3. Managing upwards even in a matrix organisation Continue Reading »

With the way today’s organisations are structured you probably work as part of team, even if it is a virtual one. Working in a team means getting work done with, through, and for others – and the thing about other people, is that they are different! It is this difference that makes team work both exciting and frustrating.

An important realisation when working in a team is that the way you perceive and respond to the world (your personality) is NOT the “Right Way” or “The Only Way” to do things. This realisation reduces our frustration and opens us to the possibility of collaboration rather than compromise.

The team work cycle highlights the need for different personalities. Continue Reading »

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 »