Before my mum passed away, she used to phone me every evening at 6pm to have a quick chat. This started back in the days when it was cheaper to phone after this time and because my mum had done this for so many years, it became a habit. Unfortunately, 6pm wasn’t the most convenient…
When negotiating or entering discussions in the workplace, it’s easy to talk about what energises and excites you rather than trying to frame the discussion from another’s point of view. If the answer you get most is ‘no’, talking about what is most important to the other person may improve your chances of a positive…
Recently, I’ve been working with a senior leader who was slowly losing patience with a team member. My client noticed the team member was struggling to complete his work, which led to a dip in performance. The leader had a fortnightly meeting with the team member to go through the allocated tasks, and couldn’t understand…
With the high pressures of modern leadership, it’s easy to believe there’s no time to reflect on your practice, even though great leaders know it helps them improve. During my career, I’ve spent quite a bit of time reflecting on my practice, and helped my clients do the same. Since I started running my own…
How do you feel when you hear negative feedback about your behaviour? Especially when the complaint comes from the person you feel is at fault? As a leader, you are expected to role model certain behaviours. But this isn’t easy when team members speak over you or appear to challenge your authority in front of…
Something I’ve noticed when working with leaders in coaching or facilitated sessions is our natural tendency to focus outside ourselves. We spend all our time concentrating on the things that are visible to others – our behaviour, language or body language – but not really noticing what’s going on inside. Recently, a client described a…
Have you ever tried to introduce a new way of working, only to experience a strong resistance from your team? During the last few leadership development programmes I’ve facilitated, this problem has shown up as a common theme. All fired up with their new learning, the leaders enthusiastically dove into their new questioning style with…
Recently, I was working with a group of senior leaders who all expressed their frustration about the lack of engagement with staff. This was particularly noticeable during meetings, where the conversations were all one way and despite asking open questions to engage staff, they felt they just weren’t getting anywhere. In my experience, when staff…
