Last week I delivered a workshop on Confidence. I have never run a Confidence workshop in my life and I must admit that I found myself questioning my credentials before realising that doing so was to slip back into the received ‘wisdom’ that Confidence is inextricably intertwined with Competence. That to be confident, you have…
One of the most pernicious diseases that an organisation can suffer from is one that undermines the relationships upon which the whole enterprise is founded. Any organisation is just a bunch of people doing stuff for another bunch of people. The organisation is people. Its value and impact lies in the relationships between its people. Assets, infrastructure,…
If you like winning arguments, you’ve come to the right place. Particularly if you like to be right at work. What follows are 3 foolproof techniques for putting the argument to bed and coming away with a lasting sense of satisfaction that you were right all along. Prove it. You’re right, they’re wrong. If it’s…
Many stressful and debilitating situations in the workplace can be transformed by a fundamental shift in the way we look at ourselves. Most of us are inculcated from birth with the notion that the way we feel is determined by our circumstances, our environment, our situation – and in particular, our relationships. So that when we…
I’ve just listened to Google’s Mo Gawdat on the subject of Happiness and liked what he said. For too many, happiness is viewed as a bit of a sideshow in the game of life. Nice if you can get some, but let’s face it: no pain no gain. You have to suffer to make it…
Every director I’ve ever worked with wants change (even though we’re all meant to hate it). You want more growth, sales, time, influence, certainty; better decision-making, conversations, relationships, sleep, people; less stress, conflict, failure – you get the picture… And you look hard for it – very hard indeed. You re-engineer your business, recruit new people, train them, develop new strategies,…
Years ago there was a pub on the Old Kent Road called The World Turned Upside Down. As a kid it intrigued me why something as mundane as a pub should adopt such a cryptic name. Now I have an inkling: There are certain realms where common sense or the received wisdom just doesn’t seem to…
Human Beings have an uncanny knack of creating problems that don’t exist. You do it and I certainly do it. But using some simple reasoning to shift the point of view can help you get out of your own way and make business life rather simpler and easier: Take care what you think about. The mind…
There’s a lot being written about EQ (or EI) these days – a sign of society’s evolving awareness of emotion and feeling and a moving away from an over-emphasis on rational intelligence. That’s good. But a lot of what I read strikes me as being both misleading and limiting, the result of rationality attempting to…
This is a question posed in response to my previous article entitled EGO – the biggest barrier to success. The question itself is of great interest and arguably more valuable than the answer. But I will confine myself to a few concise thoughts that may be helpful: Firstly here are some observations to set the scene:…
I’ve just read a LI article which got me rather exercised – I think I even started shouting ‘No, no, no…’ at my screen. Here is part of the offending text: I tried hard to make the conversation about her colleagues’ noses, not her armpits, and I tried not to be prescriptive about the solution….
Do you think of sleep as a waste of time? Is having lunch away from your desk an irritation? Do you consider the periods of rest between activity as lost opportunities to be more productive and to achieve more? If you do (and I certainly did) I’m going to suggest that the very opposite is…