Leadership is another of those things that people find hard to define, but can recognise it when they see it. I recently googled “leadership definition” and got 151 million hits, an indication that there are many definitions out there.  A dictio… [more]

When I was an undergraduate, artificial intelligence seemed to be a discipline long on promise and short on results. (Everthing was about "10 years away", even 20 years later, it was still "10 years away".) Therefore, I was pleasantly  impressed whe… [more]

There is a lot of good literature on how to develop a high-performing team, e.g. The Wisdom of Teams by J.R. Katzenbach and Gordon K. Smith. In this article I focus on five essential steps you need to take to ensure your team is moving in the directi… [more]

As life’s pace picks up remorselessly, clients are increasingly looking for ideas on how better to manage themselves and their time. In this short article, I explore the self-managements myths I most frequently come across. Myth #1 Time can be ma… [more]

Since we influence people through our words or actions, our communication style plays a big part in our effectiveness as a leader. In this blog article I outline seven ideas that come up time and again in my work with leaders. Tip #1 There is a… [more]

Apart from the leaders who seem to think that ability is genetic or in-born, all leaders I’ve met are interested in how to develop their people. They delight in seeing their people grow and they enjoy the benefits of higher productivity and the ab… [more]

Mistake #6 Micro-management beats trust Some leaders unintentionally take a leaf from Lenin’s playbook (“trust is good, control is better”) and control every single step their people take. While this strategy has its place in an early phase … [more]

Letting people stay in their comfort zone has a bad press; more people recommend setting stretch goals for your people so that they develop. These two ideas are actually complementary, as the simple chart  Shows The inner or comfort zone repr… [more]

Meetings take up a lot of the working day. Sometimes it feels like all of it. Going through all the ways to make meetings better could fill a book in itself. In this mail I’d like to focus on one idea to shorten meetings. How often have you found y… [more]

You got to where you are because you’re excellent at what you do. Now you face the challenge that you have more to do than you can deal with, so you need to delegate tasks to other people. People who may not match your skill and enthusiasm level… [more]

This is a refresh of the article Giving Feedback that I blogged back in 2007. Giving feedback is a lot more challenging in practice than it seems. It requires attitude, timing and technique. Let's look at attitude first: What's the purpose in givi… [more]

Ginger Lapid-Bogda's The Enneagram in Business portal contains an "Ask the Coach" feature, where a coach of each Type answers the same question about coaching, to give a flavor of the different possible perspectives. Ginger asked me to be the Type 9 … [more]

Ginger Lapid-Bogda's The Enneagram in Business portal contains an "Ask the Coach" feature, where a coach of each Type answers the same question about coaching, to give a flavor of the different possible perspectives. Ginger asked me to be the Type 9 … [more]

Ginger Lapid-Bogda's The Enneagram in Business portal contains an "Ask the Coach" feature, where a coach of each Type answers the same question about coaching, to give a flavor of the different possible perspectives. Ginger asked me to be the Type 9 … [more]