Self Leadership Coaching Blog

Online University has voted this blog a Top Leadership Blog for 2010. Whilst this does not rank in the same league as an endorsement from Harvard Business Review I am pleased that our posts are contributing to leadership, management and coaching practice.

If this is your first time visiting Self Leadership Coaching blog then I suggest you use the search button and look for topics of interest to you. You will find many posts on; leadership, management, coaching, presentation skills, communication and influence.

We welcome your comments and will post them even if they disagree with the post, so feel free to start a discussion. Most of the information posted has come from my experience as a leadership consultant and executive coach, working in Australia, Singapore and across SE Asia and as a life-long learner I am always looking for new ideas and best practice.

Please enjoy – and Learn

Do you know your strengths?
Do you operate from your strengths?

Research has shown that only about one-third of people are aware of their strengths and the management guru, Peter Drucker said that we can only lead from strengths.

A common approach in management and  leadership development has been to measure the gap between a person’s behaviour and the desired corporate competencies; whilst this approach is valid it can downplay the application of a person’s strengths.

My top strengths are; love of learning, humor, zest, perseverance, honest, open-mindedness and perspective. I know this because I have taken a test based on the research of Dr Martin Seligman and Dr Christopher Peterson.

Seligman and Peterson’s research has found six broad categories of the best of human behaviours (virtues) that are intrinsically valued across time and cultures. Seligman and Peterson suggest that these virtues may even be biologically linked in terms of survival of the species. Within each virtue category are strengths that we all demonstrate to a greater or lesser extent.
 The list is as follows:

There is a natural tendency to consider those strengths that you don’t score highly on as weaknesses but, unlike talents, strengths can be built up.

My lowest scoring strength is modesty ( for those of you who know me this is no surprise) and yet this does not mean I am not modest in some circumstances and with the awareness of this I can build it as a strength.

Positive Psychology researchers are now validating interventions to build strengths and the work is ongoing. This has major ramifications for the field of leadership development as we can know with certainty as to how to build up individuals and teams.

At Self Leadership International we have already started to build this research into our coaching and programs. A popular activity is a partner exercise in which each party listens to a success story told by the other and reflects back the strengths that they heard. The result of this exercise are profound in that colleagues who have known each other for some time get a deeper understanding of each other and managers learn to better delegate and build up their teams rather than jump to criticism.

Posted from Singapore 27/10/2010

In my experience one of the most challenging tasks for managers is delegation and one trait of a leader is the ability to effectively delegate.

Management and Leadership require getting work done, with and through others whilst gaining their trust and co-operation, the secret is that you have to give trust before you can gain it.

Many of the executives I have coached have struggled with the issue of trust as they have got where they are today by being controlling and see delegation as loss of control. Logically these people know that they must delegate but become frustrated that when they try to delegate they don’t get the results they were hoping for. Continue Reading »

In 1990 Peter Senge published a book that has become a classic, a book that most people in leadership and management roles in business, most who consult or coach within organizations, and those who seek to stay on the cutting edge of business have read.  I’m speaking, of course, about the book The Fifth Discipline. The theme and central focus of this book is on learning to think and work systemically.

Senge was convinced that the key to business success rested in five disciplines, which when synergized by leaders and managers, will launch an organization or business into a creative mode and take it to a whole new level of effectiveness.  Like the five critical component technologies that came together in 1935 for the McDonnell Douglas DC-3 and which ushered in the era of commercial air travel— Senge argued that the five components he discovered would create great companies.

Continue Reading »

Quick pop quiz: In the last 48 hours have you experienced significant levels of frustration, fatigue, muscle tension, irritability, anger, cynicism, negativity or a feeling of being out of control?

All of these are signs of STRESS.

Success in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing environment requires the ability to effectively manage our own stress in the face of an increasing number of stressors. Continue Reading »

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 »

Life and work are not always a bowl of cherries, particularly at during the current financial crisis.

Some years ago I wrote an article on  self-leadership strategies to manage yourself during tough times and thought is appropriate to post it to this blog.

Let me know by your comments if you find it useful.

1. Differentiate between self-esteem, self-confidence

Self-esteem is not a thing! It is a process. Self-esteem is not fixed it is dynamic. Self-esteem is a judgment on your esteeming or valuing. How do you value yourself as a human being? Continue Reading »

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 »

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 »