If you want to make your company more innovative, focus on developing better leaders says a new study by the Hay Group.
The study looked at the 20 highest rated companies for leadership development and found that one common ingredient in these businesses were that they all place a premium on their leaders emphasizing:
They also value getting a range of ideas from all levels of the organization, Read the rest of this entry »
As a leader it is important to constantly keep learning and improving as the role is ever evolving.
One way to keep improving is to look for opportunities to practice your skills and to learn from other leaders.
Here are our recommendations for your leadership 5 a day. Read the rest of this entry »
What impact does leadership development have on managers and their organisations?
How can we maximise on it?
These questions are at the heart of a recent Chartered Management Institute (CMI) study, exploring the business benefits of management and leadership development.
Some key findings that came out of the research were: Read the rest of this entry »
A recent report out by the CIPD stated that almost half (49%) of middle managers say that they’re under excessive pressure either everyday or once or twice a week. Their employee outlook survey of 2,000 employees also revealed that middle managers are particularly unhappy with their work-life balance.
Here are just some of the headlines that came out of the Winter 2011/12 report: (click here to read full report)
Our world is highly competitive – never more so – its technology is constantly evolving. Customers, internal and external, are constantly changing their expectations – and attracting and retaining the best talent is ever more competitive.
This puts an enormous pressure on front line managers and leaders Not only do they have to translate the organisation’s vision of growth into reality, develop and engage their people but also contribute to their peer group as a member of the management team.
The Chartered management Institute (CMI) is the only chartered body specialising in management and leadership and feels that bad management is harming UK plc. In fact CMI research has found that: Read the rest of this entry »
It’s important to appreciate that what people fear most is the unknown. Consequently, they will not be motivated if they’re feeling scared or suspicious about the current climate and what it could lead to. For this reason, keeping everyone informed is key. Let your staff know what you are doing and what plans you have in place. Discuss your plan B and communicate to your team how that plan will involve making sure everyone is aligned and knows what they’re doing and then engage them by getting their ideas and input. Forward thinking companies will also have plans C and D thought out, so inform everyone that these exist to show that you have planned how you will take more control and carry out damage limitation, should the need arise. Revisit this on a regular basis so that everyone feels reassured that you have everything under control.
It’s the management team’s duty to keep everyone focussed and encourage open communication. Additionally, organisations should be aware that younger members of staff who have joined the workforce since 2003 may not have ever worked through difficult markets and may therefore find themselves in an unfamiliar, and perhaps scary, situation. Mentoring and buddy schemes are a great way of overcoming these issues and can allow employees to share knowledge and experiences to hopefully diffuse any worries that may be present. Combine this with training and coaching to arm your staff with the skills they need to work effectively, if they don’t have the knowledge in place to succeed in their role, their motivation and confidence levels will remain low.
We asked some of our specialist trainers for their top tips too. Read the rest of this entry »
I was interested to read recently that research shows the useful transfer of learning back to the workplace could be as low as 10%. This is down to the fact that a lot of training addresses knowledge and skill but not attitude! This to me highlights two things:
1. The need to include in the training itself the role of attitude and how it enables the participant to change their behaviour and use the skills being taught
2. Making sure those in the room are bought into the training in the first place!
This otherwise leads to the trainer having to ‘sell’ to the people in the room who don’t want to be there or do not see the value, which not only wastes time but takes the attention from those who want to be there.
I recently came across a poll on the CMI website that asked participants “Does the Apprentice provide any useful learning for managers?” interestingly currently 62% agree that it does.
Our coverage over series touched upon various do’s and don’t we can learn from the contestants, from sales techniques, to presentation skills and general business acumen. What we also saw across the series was the impact that the project manager could have on their team and subsequently impact on their success in the task. It was evident which of the candidates had management experience and those who had the technical expertise for that task but don’t necessarily have the leadership experience to manage their team effectively.
We like to call these people the ‘accidental manager’ – These are team members who have been promoted or have defaulted into the management role because they are the most experienced or most successful in the team. Yet they haven’t been given the tools to lead effectively and what results is disengaged and less effective teams. Research shows that line managers have a 60% impact on their team’s performance and we saw this first hand throughout the Apprentice series.
We asked the CMI what they thought… Read the rest of this entry »
I bump into so many people who have disengaged at work, who wonder what it’s all about, where they fit in, and in fact what the point of it all is. Without seeing a purpose for their contribution they feel burnt out, undervalued and in many cases frustrated or stressed.
I use the Iceberg Model a lot in training to explain what leads to changes in behaviour. Purpose is at the bottom, because it underpins everything. It’s what gets you up in the morning and provides the drive behind your daily efforts. Without purpose the behaviour of an individual will often not fit with what is wanted. People need to see the point of doing something before they do it. Read the rest of this entry »
Speaking on organisational change the BBC’s director of people, Lucy Adams pointed out that performance management is a key issue in challenging times. She said: “We can’t afford to avoid performance issues any more. We don’t have the time or money to allow people to perform at mediocre levels. When an employee spends 10 years just being ‘okay’, that’s immoral. But we shouldn’t use redundancy as a performance management tool, we need to reward the really great people and help the people who aren’t succeeding for us to go and succeed somewhere else.”
I agree and have always hated the expression ‘performance management’ as it always implies a negative that will end in dismissal for the employee! Mediocrity creates a lot of apathy and avoidance by managers in organisations as managers are happy to accept what their best people do but only confront the terrible performers at the last minute – often with legal consequences. The middle ground, the mediocre people just survive without any conversations around performance.
I have always trained and applied these principles: Read the rest of this entry »
