Relationships are at the heart of great leadership At the beginning of the year, the Regional Director had asked me to stay behind at a meeting where I had been voicing my opinion about why a major learning project hadn’t delivered. He proceeded to give me and a colleague the task of getting the project back on track in the next 12 months. I was delighted, I had worked well […]
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The challenge about Negativity in the team As a result of an internal transfer, a client recently took over a new team. But he quickly realised that some of its members had a negative and unhelpful attitude. This negativity manifested itself in a small clique complaining about customer expectations, some of their working conditions and the amount of work that they had to do (for which they believed that they […]
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The World In Your Lap – Leadership, Social Media And Authenticity I’ve read a number of articles recently about whether it is a good idea for CEOs to embrace various social media platforms. One of the latest to add to the debate is Richard Branson. In his article “Why aren’t more business leaders online?, he quotes IBM’s 2012 Global CEO Study which reports only 16% of CEOs use social media, and even […]
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Re-engaging Managers can be done, and is vital for the health of your organisation. Hello and welcome to this month’s dilemma which is all about disengaged managers: The challenge This month, an employer asked for advice on how to motivate a group of middle managers. These managers had provided feedback indicating that they were demotivated due to a lack of control as they felt that the senior management team had […]
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Switching careers into HR can be a positive move. The challenge A reader wrote to me recently asking for advice about to switch his career from business administration to HR. Just recently having been made redundant, he wondered if now was a good time to make the move into an entirely new field. HR appealed to him, firstly, because he loved working with people and, secondly, because he liked the […]
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Any Performance Management System must be credible to employees and leaders The challenge A reader contacted me to talk about the impact of introducing a performance management system into her company a year ago. The process is not linked directly to reward at this point in time, although there are plans to do so in future. As a result, it’s important that all concerned have confidence in the credible, consistency […]
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Working remotely makes it more difficult to tackle problems, especially when it’s an attitude problem The challenge An HR client recently asked me for advice about how to tackle a situation that may become more commonplace as managing staff remotely increasingly becomes the norm. A manager raised concerns about a team member who worked some 75 miles away in a satellite office. Until recently, the office had been manned by […]
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What can you do when your Boss is in favour of a Long Hours Working Day? Recently appointed in a relatively new company as its first HR manager, my client has a dilemma. She described with some dismay her fear that the managing director was starting to instil a long hours ’ culture in the organisation. No explicit statement existed in this regard, but some behavioural trends, which seemed to […]
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Creating a Family Friendly Working Environment Can Benefit Your Business If you are struggling to get the best people to come and work for you, have a high rate of unexplained absence or believe that your employees aren’t giving their best, not least due to stress because their work and domestic lives conflict, it may be worth reviewing how family-friendly your workplace culture is. In order to attract and retain […]
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Developing a Happier Workforce may mean leaders have to face Inconvenient Truths One of the reasons I am passionate about leadership is because I believe our leaders now and in the future have the skill, position, influence and potential to help prevent and cure suffering at work. Suffering you might ask? Isn’t that a strong word? Well yes it is, and no, I am not even talking about the endemic […]
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