You might have noticed in the past decade we have learnt more about the human brain than in all the time since we started walking upright. It sure helps that we can now see a living working brain in action as compared to simply guessing about how our grey matter functioned from the outside –…
Leadership Secrets from Michael Phelps Coach
Athletically, I’m probably as far from swimmer Michael Phelps as you can get. I’m not a big sports fan either. And I haven’t been swimming for a long, long time. (In case you don’t know, Phelps is the most successful Olympic athlete of all time. He has 22 medals – 18 of them gold.) While…
How to Build Organisational Strength
Now, we want to turn our attention to building organisational strength. Imagine if all of your people were doing work they loved most of the time… (And I need to emphasize ‘most of the time’. The expectation we can always be working in our strengths and doing things we love all of the time simply…
The Hollywood Effect
How do you make a movie that in less than two hours shows events that might last decades or a lifetime? The bottom line is that you have to leave things out. And if you want your movie to be interesting and exciting you have to leave out the boring bits. For instance, if we…
How to Coach Yourself to Better Presentations This Week
Given my occupation as a coach to leaders in organisations, it will come as no surprise for me to say that coaching is a valuable part of developing your career mastery. Sometimes we all need an external ear or voice to hear what’s going on in our world and share some strategic questions to…
What is the Primary Object of a Leader?
This is a big question. And a crucial one. The management and leadership heavyweights Drucker, Bennis, Kotter and others have all had their say on this crucial topic. And mostly they agree: Managers maintain, leaders change. It is not a question of change or not change, it’s a constant question of what…
The Six Keys to Pitching Your Idea
Previously, we talked about the expectation that leaders need to make a lot of ‘little’ presentations to fulfil their role. We touched on the importance of showing up as a leader and how you present yourself to others. Now, we want to look at the second presentation key to building Career Mastery: Pitching…
Lunch, Wine and Books
What could be better than lunch, wine and books? It’s almost the holy trinity. And this is what you can expect at our next event. It’s a double book launch. My colleague Geoff McDonald is launching a print version of his book Done, plus a new print book, Weekly Done. …
What to Say When You Meet Someone for the First Time
Last week we suggested that most leaders make a lot of little presentations everyday as a natural part of their daily efforts. We pointed to three key areas to do this effectively to build your Career Mastery. The first one was: Presenting Yourself. And the extreme version of this is meeting someone…
How Important Is This to Your Career Success?
Over the past year, I’ve been sharing some of my thoughts about what are the critical things for Career Mastery. It’s a topic that is always top of mind for me when I’m coaching and working with senior leaders – What do they need to be successful here and now, plus in to the future? In…