May 7
Here’s the issue: Traditional people management involves communicating expectations — spelling out, in no uncertain terms, the results required and tasks to be undertaken to achieve them. It homes in on regular reviews, managing non-performance and rewarding results through incentives. The difficulty with this approach of management by results is that it only motivates high […]
READ MOREMay 7
Leadership training fails. And you probably already know this. Let me explain… Most of us have been to many training courses. For some of them your evaluation may have been, “Great lunch and good content.” Yet, four or five months later how much of what you learnt do you still apply? Some, but most likely, […]
READ MOREMay 7
For someone who helps businesses with leadership development and leadership skills, to suggest that coaching doesn’t deliver for organisations borders on blasphemy. After all, evidence shows that teams receiving more than three hours’ coaching per person per month exceed their goals by 7%. Conversely, without on-the-job reinforcement, employees lose 87% of the skills and knowledge […]
READ MOREMay 7
The productivity and performance of your organisation rests in the hands of your youngest, least-experienced or least-skilled managers. The impact that their leadership competencies have on delivering your organisation’s strategy, far outweighs that of you and your senior managers. How can this be? Well, up to 70% of an employee’s performance is driven by their […]
READ MOREMay 7
Christmas reminds me of the observation of a highly experienced management consultant from the UK. His name has long escaped me, but his rule of thumb on the optimum span of control remains. Span of control, or span of management, refers to the number of direct reports a people leader manages. With a larger span […]
READ MOREMay 7
How do you measure leadership skills? Or more specifically, how do you measure the leadership skills of frontline and middle managers? And why bother? Why measure leadership skills? There’s an old saying that goes, “What gets measured gets done.” Actually this isn’t entirely true. You have a speedometer in your car which measures how fast […]
READ MOREMay 7
Leadership and management training is provided within many organisations. Leadership skills, on the other hand, are less widely applied. Teaching managers new skills is one thing. Getting them to apply what they have learned is another matter entirely. With some studies suggesting that less than 20% of training is ever used on the job, it […]
READ MOREMay 7
Recently, I tuned in to an episode of Undercover Boss. This is a TV show where bosses work, in disguise, alongside their employees. My expertise is in leadership development, particularly frontline leadership, and while watching Undercover Boss, it occurred to me that businesses could learn a lot about frontline leadership from the show. In this […]
READ MOREMay 7
Many senior managers and executives are concerned that the leadership competencies of their frontline managers are not what they need. I have noticed a consistent and growing concern amongst senior managers: many first-line managers and middle managers are ineffective people leaders and lack the necessary leadership skills and mind-set to get the best from their […]
READ MOREMay 7
The easy way to understand the difference between conventional feedback and feed-forward is to think in terms of the past and the future. Conventional feedback is past focused. It provides information about past activity and performance. Feed-forward on the other hand is future focussed. It provides information about what a person could do differently in […]
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