A Great Coaching Model

Prem Rao has posted a great piece on a simple coaching model for managers.  However, I think that feedback is often a much more effective and efficient way to help people learn than coaching and this should always be tried before coaching is used.
I encourage all the managers I work with to coach [...]

Getting the Message Across

McKinsey’s have just published a great interview (free registration required) with a guy called Chip Heath.  Chip has spent much time, effort and money researching what makes ideas ’stick’ in a business.  So his interest is in sticky ideas.  His research suggests that sticky ideas share six basic traits.

Simplicity. Messages are most memorable if they [...]

Performance Review Time is Here Again!

Many of the managers I know hate this time of year. Because it is not just Christmas that is coming into season.
It is also that time of the year when thoughts turn to performance reviews and annual appraisals. For most managers and staff this is a painful and seemingly pointless and unfair process [...]

Halifax Launch for PMN

The Progressive Managers’ Network will be coming to Halifax in March – based at the fabulous and newly re-developed Elsie Whiteley Innovation Centre. The story of Elsie Whiteley is a brilliant rags to riches tale of a local girl who made it BIG TIME in the rag trade.
PMN will be hosted at the Elsie [...]

The Power of Praise

Research evidence shows that employees consider personal, immediate recognition by their managers to be one of the most powerful workplace motivators.
However, close to 60% percent of employees report that their manager rarely, if ever, offers praise.
The techniques that have the greatest motivational impact (affirming feedback and praise) are practiced less than more expensive [...]

Great Feedback Post at Slacker Manager

If you have done the feedback workshop with me then I think you might find this post useful.  It makes the powerfulpoint that feedback can’t be positive or negative.  However it can be affirming (designed to encourage behaviours to be repeated in the future) or adjusting designed to discourage behaviours from being repeated in the [...]

Congratulations to the Stop Hate UK Team

I am currently training as a volunteer for STOP HATE UK who had their official launch in Leeds this afternoon. STOP HATE UK raises awareness and understanding of discrimination and hate crime, encourages its reporting, and supports the individuals and communities it affects.
It was really inspiring to listen to victims of hate [...]

Making it Easy to Say Thanks

Sometimes saying thanks can be just too much work. You know you should drop someone a thank you card – but it is just too much effort to get to the shops and somehow it never gets done. So you just fire off an impersonal e-mail.
Instead, make it really easy to say ‘Thanks’ [...]

‘Our People Are Our Greatest Asset’ – The Big Lie!

It is rare to work in an organisation these days that does not claim that ‘Our people are our greatest asset’.
This is the BIG lie! If it were true then we could simply recruit our way to success.
The truth is that some people are assets while others are liabilities and many managers find it [...]

From Good to Great Manager – Part 4 – The Power of Delegation

Good bosses delegate.
Great bosses set up sensible monitoring routines so that they know how that delegation is going.
Good bosses engage employees in helping them with major projects.
Great bosses give their team members the major projects and are available to support them as required. They give the team members room to operate – without cutting [...]