Just a quick note to let any of our readers know that I will be in Thailand twice this month, conducting leadership training.
If anyone is interested in meeting me to discuss your leadership or executive coaching requirements feel free to contact me via the Self Leadership website contact page www.selfleadership.com.
Look forward to hearing from you – Andrew Bryant
In this 4 minute video clip I explain the self leadership distinction between Responsibility FOR your thoughts, feelings, speech and behaviour and Responsibility TO our relationships and contracts.
Monday May 25, 2009: Executive Coach and Meta Coach, Andrew Bryant will present ‘Masterful Coaching’ at the Singapore International Coach Federation (ICF) chapter meeting.
Together with Executive Coach, Dennis Heath, he will facilitate a debrief a video of masterful coaching by Meta Coach Michelle Duval.
If you are in Singapore and want to see how masterful coaches, build rapport, ask questions, probe for meaning, and co-create new behaviours and reinforce resourceful thoughts and actions, then come along. Details here.
Every executive knows that they must have a vision and mission statement but in times of crisis these important documents can be forgotten.
It is a bit like if you were in a boat and have set your course, but the boat springs a leak and you spend your whole time bailing water and have no time to steer.
William Bridges created a model of change and transition that is highly relevant in today’s financial readjustment. Continue Reading »
Andrew Bryant will be speaking at the Singapore HR Congress & Business-Connect Exposition 2009, 14 to 15 April 2009 at Raffles City Convention Centre.
The thought provoking title “You can’t teach leadership at a seminar” highlights the need for a strategic approach to leadership development. Andrew is guaranteed to give a highly engaging, interactive an memorable presentation – so don’t miss it.
“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 »
“We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren’t managing their employees’ careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It’s up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years.” – Peter Drucker (HBR 1999)
Self Development is intrinsic to self-leadership as leadership and learning are inseparable. So as Drucker says, we must take responsibility for our own growth and success – we must be the CEO of our own mind and body. Continue Reading »
Fear is a part of our every day lives and to achieve Self Leadership we must understand and work with our fears so that they do not prevent us achieving our objectives.
Or as the bard, William Shakespeare, put it, “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we might win, by fearing to attempt”. Continue Reading »
The Singapore Ministry of Manpower states (Sept 2008) that whilst most CEO’s in Singapore expressed a willingness to develop the next generation of leaders, very few of them are proactive and strategic in doing so.
This NATO (no action talk only) will result in Singaporean managers being unable to cope with the dynamic state of today’s marketplace and workforce.
For Leadership development in Singapore, what is sadly lacking are the culture and skills of mentoring and coaching. Senior leaders in Singapore are, by upbringing,either traditionalists or baby boomers and their values differ markedly from the Gen X and Gen Y managers who need developing. The former usually value ‘a job well done’ and the the ‘trappings of success’, whereas the latter are hungry for meaningful work and are very open to coaching and mentoring as they value personal development.
A Gallup study showed that whilst most CEO’s ‘mentored’ by taking employees to lunch, very few had any formal mentoring programs in place. It is my experience, having worked with many Singapore companies, that most current leaders, whilst tactically very proficient, have received little or no coaching or mentoring training.
Leaders are ‘made not born‘ and most develop their leadership during adverse work situations – just like what is happening now! Unfortunately a number of organisations are currently cutting their leadership development budgets rather than focusing on what will make the difference in the long-term.
What do you think? Please comment.
BTW: I shall be speaking on this very issue at the Global HR Leadership Congress 2009
(Copyright Andrew Bryant – No reproduction without permission, thank you )
“It’s not our abilities that show us what we truly are; it’s our choices.”
These words, spoken by Professor Dumbledore to Harry Potter, are a profound reminder that leaders require self leadership.
Viktor Frankl, the Nazi death camp survivor and founder of logo therapy, said it this way, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Interestingly we do not always get the best education in making choices. I recently spoke to a father who told me that he was having difficulty disciplining his teenage son; he had said to the boy, “Whilst under my roof, you have no choice.” With some empathy I shared a perspective that he might be handicapping his son’s abilities to learn to choose. Our choices have consequences and perhaps we need a gradient of consequences as we learn the power of choice?
As Self Leadership International we take this approach with our staff, we give them tasks that require them to make choices. With new interns or employees we limit the consequenses of those choices away from business critical areas, but as they grow in confidence we give them more and more rope ( but not enough to hang themselves!).
I have been involved in training leadership for managers for many years and this concept of empowerment is one that they often struggle with. I think it might be linked to a lack of permission (as with the teenage son) to make choices for themselves that prevents them from allowing others to make choices.
Here is a simple self leadership approach to making choices:
It takes a high degree of self awareness to run through this process and we make many choices by ‘gut feel’ but gut feel is our unconscious processing of choices. Leaders train their gut feel or intuition by paying attention the results of their choices and the choices of others.
May you make good choices this year.
(copyright Andrew Bryant – no reproduction without permission)