Imagine you’re working with a half-dozen colleagues on a cross-departmental project. Perhaps the project will take eight weeks and you will all need to get together once a week. But no one has been assigned as the leader of the project. You and your colleagues are all peers – you come from different departments, but you all have the same level of experience and seniority. How can you make a … Read more

I’ve been working with someone I’ll call Marco, a wealthy business owner and managing director who mentioned recently that he doesn’t really know how to send emails. When he meets people, he gives out the email address of his assistant. Or he directs customers and other contacts to the relevant directors within his own business.

He doesn’t know how to use Excel, PowerPoint or Word to create spreadsheets, presentations or … Read more

I coach a lot of people who want help in pursuing their next promotion, the next step up in their career. But it’s tough. There’s a lot of competition out there for not that many opportunities.

One of the best ways to distinguish yourself is by proving that you can be not only a good people manager but a truly great leader. Not that many years ago, it was assumed … Read more

One of my clients (I’ll call him Kieran) is an introvert. But a lot of his clients mistake him for an extravert. He doesn’t seem at all shy – he is chatty and sociable, makes strong eye contact and has a lot to say about both work and life.

Many of his colleagues also think of him as quite extraverted. It’s only a minority of people who know him quite … Read more

A large chunk of my work involves coaching leaders one-on-one or running workshops for small groups of leaders. Given the challenges they face, I have seen firsthand some of the more effective ways that some of the most successful leaders have transformed themselves and the performance of their teams. Here are 6 observations on what seems to work.

1. Prioritise relationships
Of course it’s the job of all managers to … Read more

Whether you’re a leader managing a team of people or an individual trying to better yourself, research increasingly tells us that our emotions matter. Here’s a piece from one of the business magazines that I write for suggesting a) why our emotions matter and b) a simple technique for practising emotional control.

… Read more