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Designed to assist group managers and leaders develop individual and collective capacity for an organisation’s Primary Purpose (or Primary Task). Helps you identify and focus on achieving three critical development themes for each of three aspects of broad responsibilities. Includes an action-planning template, our Plan and Manage the Plan and Problem-Solving graphics, and references to useful resources (discussion papers, conceptual frameworks and notes) within our website.
Download free (PDF file, 182 kilobytes)
Let's face it, some conversations with staff can be really challenging. Although we realise we should address the issues, we often procrastinate or hope they will go away before a discussion becomes an absolute necessity. When a team member's off-target performance, for example or a staff member's lengthy sick leave must be addressed before business results suffer. You'll be pleased to hear that help is at hand! Read more, download free.
Risky, damaging and expensive crises often arise in the workplace through unwisely improvisational approaches to letting people know what is required and how their behaviours affect others or impact on organisational performance.
In the desire to encourage independence and growth, managers, especially senior managers are often caught in a bind of their own making. Read more, download free.
What you find challenging about your leaders, managers or colleagues may be a direct result of and reveal more about the organisational structure, systems, processes and culture than anything else. If so, this may help you appreciate that sometimes, we are all in this together, experiencing different facets of the same problem: we are getting the behaviours our organisations designed and perpetuate.
Addressing the challenges from this perspective can lead to useful insights and considerate, constructive actions. Read more, download free.
Most of us have barely scratched the surface of our own capacity for everyday effectiveness, partly because we expect, want or wait for others to change first. We make their unwelcome behaviours the focus of our unfocused and ineffective change efforts rather than realising our own potential for greater effectiveness or more direct influence.
Important, far-reaching change is often more possible than it seems. Read more, download free.
A useful Job or Position Description document serves as the primary reference for employees and their managers to set objectives for work and to focus, monitor and assess the effectiveness of efforts. It is the basis of direction-setting and work planning. Ideally, it would meet at least 11 other criteria.
Many of the Position Descriptions we have had access to fail to meet them, in many cases to the point where they contribute significantly to the problems and challenges our clients consult us about.
If the basic reference-point for your work is vague, ambivalent, inaccurate, misleading or confusing, there can be no guarantee that any plans or activity are truly appropriate; and you put yourself at significant risk if such an arrangement continues. Rather like interpersonal communication, a clearly prescriptive Position Description may not be needed when there is a lot of goodwill about or until relationships become particularly challenging. At this point remedial action may be difficult or impossible.
How useful is your Position Description? Compare it with our specifications of the ideal.
Read more, download free.
Many well-intentioned managers who aspire to guide and develop others haven't learned how to manage and develop themselves. They try to build organisations and teams or provide service qualities that differ from their own attributes. It doesn't work.
Two years ago Laurie took the helm of a new, mid-sized organisation dedicated to radical innovation in its field. At start-up, the high-profile enterprise attracted some of the most talented people in the business. Managers and staff were totally dedicated and delighted to be "walking" what was usually only talked about. A successful audit 12 months on, validated the risks they'd taken and the distance travelled. Clients were ecstatic about the close connections they saw between philosophy and delivery. The industry was abuzz. But 10 months ago, cracks began appearing in the culture.
Read more, download free.
Every year academics, authors, consultants and popular gurus produce new approaches to developing organisations and people. Given the extent of research into these topics and the plethora of publications, it's surprising how many organisations, relationships and individuals within them, function pretty much as they did 5, 10 or 35 years ago: they survive rather than thrive.
Where should you look this year, for inspiration and support? Which of the popular gurus and thought-leaders are currently relevant? Which approach is right? Who has found the truth . . . really? Read more, download free.
An effective problem-solving process is fundamental for dealing effectively with criticism, hostility, negative feedback and conflict. It's essential too, for giving performance feedback and discussing sensitive issues.
How constructive is your problem-solving technique? How well does your team or group deal with day-to-day problems?
Test yourself »
Every day, thousands of organisational frogs move on to The Big Swamp in the Sky because it's alarmingly easy to kill them.
When placed in water already too warm, a frog will leave immediately but if placed in cold water it accommodates gradually increasing heat (smiling all the while) until it dies, because the rising discomfort is almost imperceptible.
It's a good analogy for many workplace crises and challenges: you may not know you're in difficulty until it's too late. The realisation that something is very wrong came, people often claim, as a total surprise. Well, yes and no . . .
These are the kind of admissions my clients will make after we've done a bit of digging into the causes of current challenges.
The very good news . . ? No matter how many frogs you've already dispatched and whatever number you're currently warming, there are very simple things you can do to reduce or eliminate the phenomenon. Provided you know where you're heading and have a clear picture of where you are right now, you can start immediately to make the difference that makes the difference. Read more, download free.
Tapping, facilitating and directing the flow from the reservoir of talent represented within any group of people, is what leadership and people-management is for. The purpose is to bring out the best and best-directed efforts in everyone. Unfortunately, conventional practices for drawing on this reservoir do not always help, and frequently obstruct the flow. The result is a thin trickle of energy for which it is usual to blame individuals or various aspects of "the system".
The wastage may be unnoticed or regarded as inevitable and unchangeable. In times of rapid change or under high pressure, it can be extreme. Improvement efforts often degenerate into arguments about conflicting solutions.
Incremental improvements can be made immediately, once the problem and some of its causes are understood. Immediate benefits can be realised from incremental change. Where you can start.
Read more, download free.
Stretch yourself thin, stress yourself out, work longer hours (than is sensible), take on more responsibility (than is sensible), and make your job harder (than is sensible). The attitudinal basis of this overwork-as-an-end-in-itself game can be understood and changed, for a more healthy approach to managing ourselves and others.
Constructive feedback is one of the main contributors to organisation, team and personal effectiveness. Faulty feedback is one the biggest contributors to their learning disabilities. If I don't know how I'm really doing because you don't or can't tell me or if I can't hear what you say because of the way you say it, I can't improve.
Managers often shoot themselves in the foot on this score: the gains they want are impossible in the working environment they create. Making a mistake in front of some managers is like cutting yourself in front of Dracula: the working environment becomes too poisonous for innovation, enthusiasm and efficiencies.
Constructive workplace feedback depends on managers' ability to develop trust and effective communication, skills that are often lacking or insufficiently present. Read more, download free
An ongoing UK research programme has determined the major reasons people have for leaving their jobs. Interviews were held with people in different professional groups about their last job moves. The principal findings: poor quality line management is the most significant general cause of employee turnover and poor supervision the most important single factor.
A particularly significant finding was this: in most of these cases the resignations occurred without the organisation being aware of the real reasons. People who leave because they have received poor supervision tend not to tell their employers that this is why they are leaving. They cite other less contentious reasons such as pay rates, time for a change or personal reasons.
One conclusion that might be drawn is the absolute unreliability of what you are told by your staff about the quality of your people-skills and supervision practices. Read more, download free.
Senior managers and leaders sometimes wonder aloud with us if they've done enough to move to another challenge in some other organisation. Their sense of responsibility to their colleagues (or anxiety about their reputation) is such that they want reference- points for establishing, "Is this group in sufficiently sound health to now 'tick-along' without me?"
Whether or not a group, team or organisation is likely to "tick-along" successfully with or without a particular leader, depends on the presence of some fairly simple, common-sense things which are very often insufficiently attended to.
When they are sufficiently present, the group is resilient, fully-functioning, adaptable and ready-for-anything, even a new leader. In other words, in good health.
We've prepared a short list of generic Characteristics of Group and Team Wellbeing. Check it out. Contact us if you need help to establish your group's strengths and deal with whatever gaps exist between these ideals and reality. Read more, download free.
In the currently popular TV reality programmes about toddler taming have you noticed how often problems are remedied by parents learning how to set and hold boundaries? Well hello . . !?
There are similarities within many workplaces, including some of which we have direct knowledge. Risky and very expensive crises have arisen from unwisely improvisational or hands-off approaches to directing performance.
When under-performance finally became too serious not to intervene, managers' remedial initiatives created stress and conflict; team members cried foul and made accusations of controlling, intimidating or bullying behaviour. That's when we were called in.
Managers, especially senior managers, are often caught in a bind. Read more. Download free .
Take our quiz, to test your skills.
It's easy to become mesmerized by the 10 Urgent and Important Things To Do Today that relentlessly present themselves for attention immediately we've dealt with the previous Top 10. We think we must first get them under control before we can afford the luxury of strategic thinking and well-considered planning. It's common practice, though obviously not a sensible one.
Caught in this trap, we may register This is a nightmare but I'm not a quitter! or I don't think I can do this for much longer, or I'm not sure I'm cut out for this. But we usually continue anyway, ignoring or suppressing our instincts, wisdom and real needs.
It makes as much sense as running low on fuel while accelerating past gas stations because we have to get somewhere.
The wrong path to your goals will never lead you there. However how hard you work to do things right, they're always going to be the wrong things. Given how easy it is to establish you're on the wrong path, it's surprising how often people behave as though they don't understand this simple truth. They miss or suppress the warning signals. Read the full article . . .
Select and contact a Mentor to discuss your interest in this option.
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