By Tom Stevens  (c)2007  The comments and questions from many of my workshop participants and coaching clients often reveal that their basic concept of leadership is about being in charge – i.e. obtaining a position of power, having the most information, and giving orders. The classic boss. From this viewpoint, effective leadership requires having the [...]

What leadership is not: It is not Management. Management is working with and through people and groups to accomplish organizational goals. Leadership is influencing human behaviour, regardless of the goal. A leader is first of all a person who serves people. In order to lead, people need to know that you care about them. You [...]

Having been involved in training and development for a good number of years, I’ve seen my fair share of people who have exceled at what they do.  I have also seen many who haven’t! It pains me to see someone who is not very good at the job they have.  It also pains me to [...]

Good leaders learn from the best. Why? Because you can see further on the shoulders of giants. In the business world, the best thinkers are often labelled “gurus”. But who are the best? What exactly makes someone a guru? How and why do you apply the best ideas of leading thinkers to your situation? This [...]

 “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter F. Drucker At a recent networking meeting, I had the opportunity to hear Pernille Spiers-Lopez speak. Danish born, Pernille immigrated to the United States about 26 years ago as a young woman. After a few jobs that didn’t pan out for her, [...]

There is no term that communicates quite so much irrevocable dismissal by managers in the business world than labeling an action or activity, “touchy-feely.” It is the most prevalent way of discarding information about people. The term suggests all those really icky “hygiene” demands of employees, dealing with the stuff of relationships in the workplace [...]

  It is a sad fact that many employees are still being subjected to the age old training ritual of “sheep dipping”. This is a process by which employees are “refreshed”, “cleansed” and “re-invigorated” by ensuring they attend set training courses or, perhaps, are placed on the ubiquitous “refresher” course. This refresher course is, of [...]

I regularly look at what local training companies are offering in the way of coaching and sales courses and I noticed recently that a local provider was now providing a “Management Development Programme” spanning eight half days and covering eight management subjects from “team leadership” through “coaching others” to “delegation” amongst other topics. The eight [...]

In 2005 I responded to an article in Personnel Today talking about e-learning. The article was questioning whether e-learning was too expensive for small to medium sized companies. My view at the time was very much yes. But back then I was in a corporate role managing a learning and development function for sizeable organisation. Now I run a small business……………………….so have things changed? Is e-learning now affordable to us small-fry? Or is my 4yr old view still the case? Once you’ve read the article, let us know your thoughts, make your comments, cast an opinion.

The concept of the Inner Game was developed by Tim Gallwey as a way of helping people to achieve excellence in various sports, e.g. tennis, golf and skiing, and also in music. More recently he has extended his ideas into business and management training, and they are clearly also highly relevant in all learning situations. The concept is quite simple. If we consider tennis, for example, people trying to develop their skills in tennis can spend considerable time concentrating on their ‘Outer Game’, e.g. how to stand, how to hold the racket, how to serve, etc. All this effort can cause considerable anxiety and tension for the player, and as a result performance suffers. By contrast, Gallwey proposes that the secret of success lies in one’s Inner Game, i.e. one’s whole mental approach, and that by progressively refining this, one’s game will be transformed. His approach therefore rests on the close interconnectedness of the way we think and the way we act.