What type of Leader are you?
Apr 1st
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” Theodore Roosevelt

Leaders are followed because people trust and respect them and this tends to be achieved through the leaders behaviours rather than the skills they possess.
Being able to modify your behaviour to meet different circumstances is an important facet of successful leadership. Effective Leaders need to be able to use a variety of styles to suit both the situation they find themsleves in and the people they are leading. Understanding your natural style of leadership is the first step in this process and how you can adapt this to meet different demands. Below is a link to a simple test created by The University of Kent to establish what is your natural style of leadership and gives you pointers on how this can be received by the people you lead:
Do the test and find out if you are Napoleon, Florence Nightingale, Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela or Ghandi!
Are you an Imposter?
Mar 4th
Watching the Oscars last weekend and the various winners coming up on stage to make their acceptance speeches, I found myself thinking about Michelle Pfeiffer who I had been watching in Frankie and Johnny the previous evening.

While Michelle has been nominated for an Oscar three times, she has never actually won one, although she has won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe during her career to date. At the peak of her career she was an A list actress, a superstar in the world of acting, and it was at the height of her fame that she came out with the following quote;
“I still think people will find out that I’m really not very talented. I’m really not very good. It’s all been a big sham.”
She’s not alone in having these thoughts; here are Kate Winslet’s thoughts on her acting career;
“Sometimes I wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and I think, I can’t do this; I’m a fraud. They’re going to fire me — all these things. I’m fat; I’m ugly… “
How can 2 award winning actresses, widely regarded as among the best in their field, believe such things about themselves? These beliefs are surprisingly common and are known as the “Imposter Syndrome”.
The Imposter Syndrome describes how people suffer from the feeling that they are imposters and they do not belong where they are and they don’t deserve what they have accomplished through their own talent and hard work. Instead they tend to attribute any success they have to luck, help from others, timing or the ability to fool others into thinking they are smarter than they really are.
Unless they learn to deal with this self doubt, people suffering from the Imposter Syndrome will sell themselves short, become risk averse and will hold themselves back from achieving as much as they could.
So how can you break this thought process and accept the skills you have? Here are 6 tips on dealing with the Imposter Syndrome:
1. Separate feelings from fact. There are times you’ll feel stupid. It happens to everyone from time to time. Realize that just because you may feel stupid, it doesn’t mean you are.
2. Recognise and accept your strengths. Instead of blaming luck or others when something goes well for you, accept you have played the major part in the success you achieve. Be proud of what you have done. If you don’t believe in yourself why should others?
3. Develop a new response to failure and mistake making. Henry Ford said, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Instead of constantly beating yourself up for making mistakes learn from them, put them behind you and move on.
4. Develop a new script. Your script is that automatic mental record that starts playing in situations that trigger your Imposter feelings. When you start a new job for example, instead of thinking, “Wait till they find out I have no idea what I’m doing,” try thinking, “Everyone who starts something new feels awkward in the beginning. I may not know all the answers but I’m smart enough to find them out.”
5. Visualise success. Professional athletes spend time before an event picturing themselves succeeding and getting a sense of the feelings they will have when they reach their goals. The successful people in sports and business don’t think in terms of failure and defeat, expect success and you are far more likely to achieve it. Don’t wait until you feel confident to start pushing yourself. Courage comes from taking risks. Change your behaviour first and allow your confidence to build.
6. Keep a journal. Write down what you do. It doesn’t have to be war and peace, just a note of the tasks you have completed, the challenges you have faced, how you felt before during and after. This will build up a dossier for you and act as a reminder for you of just what you are capable of the next time you encounter self doubt.
Do you ever feel like a fake?
When do you feel like that?
How have you tried to deal with these feelings in the past?
What could you do differently in the future?
Who said what….
1) “I just never know if I’m going to pull it off, I have terrible grave concerns about my own ability.” Matt Damon
The make up of a modern day coach
Jan 26th
Does money really motivate senior managers?
Jan 20th
Facilitated a course this week for senior managers of a Blue Chip company when the subject of the factors that motivate people at work came up. A couple of delegates were of the opinion that there was nothing better than an envelope from your Boss with a short note thanking you for a good job together with a big cheque!
We discussed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Human Givens, but I think this 10 minute video does a great job of explaining where money fits into the motivation ladder.
Boooooooo!!
Oct 30th
After appearing on a phone in last week, this week seemed to be a week to listen to them!
This one was a football phone in and a football fan had called in to justify why he and his fellow fans thought it was a good idea to boo their own players. Jason Roberts, a professional footballer, was aghast at the idea.
“How can you possibly think that booing your own players is going to help them?”
“It might not help some, but there are definitely some players who want to prove you wrong when you boo them”, was the confident reply.
A player at Spurs had a different view;
“when your fans get behind you it’s the most exciting feeling possible. It’s so important that a player feels appreciated by his own fans – otherwise he has to fight against them as well as the other team and their supporters.”
Whilst at Liverpool Fernando Torres said;
“With just 45,000 fans there, that roar they give makes you think you have wings on your feet.”
I wonder if the fans at Chelsea give him the same sense of invincibility?
There doesn’t appear to be any logic in the football fans argument that booing your own players will make them player better. It also begs the question why in other environments, work and home life for example, do we spend so much time telling people what they are doing wrong rather than telling them what they are doing well?
There has been an example of this in the last week with the row between Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, with the French president expressing rage at the constant criticism and lectures from UK ministers.
Sarkozy bluntly told Cameron: “You have lost a good opportunity to shut up.” He added: “We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings.”
You wonder if there would have been a different interaction if Cameron and the Government had taken a more positive approach, whilst still having the same goals they currently have….
Recent research suggests that the vast majority of what children hear consists of them being told not to do this and not to do that. If we are not taking the time to explain what they do well, and why they do it well, how can we expect them to grow and improve?
In work environments, the more enlightened managers and leaders spend their time trying to “catch people doing something right” and then giving them suitable levels of praise and recognition. In doing this it is important to bear in mind that the praise needs to be specific and related to a specific behaviour or action, rather than praise for praise sake.
There are many Business Leaders who have been influenced by the work of Ken Blanchard and he believes if he had to choose just one thing to teach about for the rest of his life, he has no doubt that “catching people doing things right” would be his lasting message. His research has shown that positive reinforcement and redirection can help increase productivity.
Think about somebody that you have worked with and admired. How did they behave? How did they treat you? How much belief did they have in you? What impact did this have on you?
Now think about somebody who you worked for that you didn’t respect or admire and ask yourself the same questions.
Research in the States has shown that 64% of people leave their jobs not because of the company or the work conditions, instead they leave because of the Boss they work for. This demonstrates that the way we motivate at work is key.
The question is, what type of fan are you?
How’s the view from where you are?
Oct 30th
“All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.” ~ Leonardo Da Vinci
A few days ago I was listening to a radio phone in, as a friend of mine had been invited on to discuss the latest research which suggested that men are quicker to say “I love you” to a new partner than women were. Before my friend (www.glow-coaching.co.uk ) was interviewed the presenter spoke to a pyschologist who declared that those men who did say “I love you” first were likely to have done so as their goal was to have sex, and they knew that women were more likely to agree upon receiving this message.
However this would not apply to women who said it first as they had different emotional needs and would say it for different reasons. The research from the study has a number of interpretations and it has been interesting to read the different views people have on the findings of the various studies on the subject.
These views are usually formed by our own experiences and they then tend to dictate how we react to different situations. For example if you are in a relationship and your partner has declared their love for you, how did you react when they first told you?
Did you make the assumption as the psychologist suggests that they were after “something”?
If you were the first to say it, how did you expect/hope your partner to react?
When working with people on their communication skills, be they leaders, sales people, people wanting career coaching or dating advice etc, one of the key areas to discuss and consider is how the person/group you are communicating with might feel and react to the message you are giving.
Too often people will make the assumption that the people they are communicating with will have exactly the same view of the situation as them, and they will fail to consider how else they could feel about and interpret a situation. Being able to walk in another persons shoes for a while is a great asset to have in effective communication.
As an example to demonstrate this let’s assume you have a situation you are trying to resolve with a member of your team.
A simple and effective way to come up with a potential solution that will suit everyone is to put three chairs in a triangle, facing each other. Sit in the first chair and describe how you feel about the situation, what you think the issues and potential solutions are and so on.
Then move to the second chair and imagine you are the other individual. Then you need to describe how you, as the other person, thinks and feels about the situation. The challenge with this is “staying in character” and making sure you are expressing what you believe the other person will be thinking and how they are viewing the situation.
Having done this, move to the third chair. The movement between chairs is important as the physical act of changing chairs helps you take on the new thought processes. In the third chair you are playing the role of an objective observer and in this role you need to give some objective advice on what you see and what needs to be considered.
Sound crazy?
Try it, you will be surprised how effective it can be!
The starting point is to remember that everyone has a different view of the world, and it won’t be the same as yours.
If you can catch a glimpse of their view you are in a far better position to achieve a successful outcome to any communication you engage in, even winning the affections of your partner!
What can you see here?
A young woman?
An old Lady?
Or both?
“The funny thing is, people’s perceptions of what a song is about is
usually wrong a majority of the time. But they’re still going to read what they
want to into it. ~ Vince Gill
post script…..
Jimmy Savile, who passed away this week, expressed the importance of considering others point of view when asked some years ago about his show, Jim’ll fix it;
“I never to this day, had a favourite Fix it, because I never looked at it from my point of view. For most of them, that was the biggest thing that ever happened in their lives at that time, so they were all favourites”.
RIP Jimmy.






















