Why Measuring Engagement is Too Late

Every major organisation today in some way measures employee engagement. We know that engagement is important, it leads to greater satisfaction for the individual, a better experience for customers and greater productivity for the business. I don’t think that anyone would debate that engagement is not critical to success. The 2013 Gallup Engagement Survey collected…

Is Success Derailing You And Your Team?

If we took a straw poll the vast majority of people would say that they are striving for success and that it’s a good thing. I mean it’s what life is all about, being successful at school, university, sport, relationships, jobs and life. After all we spend most of our lives chasing it, getting it…

Judging Others, How You Lose

For hundreds of years we’ve been told that we shouldn’t judge others. From sage philosophers, religious manuscripts, through to business leaders have been advising us that we should reconsider when the opportunity to judge arises. We have been offered wide and varied reasons from; we’re not perfect ourselves, it’s dis-respectful, do unto others, we may…

Are You Ignoring Your Best Performers?

It’s too easy to get caught in solving immediate problems and providing oil to the squeaky wheel with the fast pace of business today. I understand as a manager you need to watch the numbers, manage relationships, deal with the problem children, plus keep peers, customers and the bottom line happy. Probably the last thing…

The 3 Greatest Myths About Teams

Over the past few years, teams have become critically important to the success of business and sport. With that importance we’re seeing an increased focus on the understanding and development of teams and the individuals within them. In some ways, sport is way ahead in understanding the practices of high performance but their approach can…

Does Your Team Have A Dose Of The Blues?

Watching the first State of Origin game between the NSW Blues and Queensland Maroons got me thinking about the performance of many teams and why things don’t always go as well as they should. The Blues won the series last year (broke the curse), they were playing in Sydney so you’d think there’d be some…

How Best to Threaten Your Own Self Confidence

I tend not to be an evangelist for ‘everyone should feel happy and then great things will happen’. For me it requires more than that to be successful and get outstanding results. Self-confidence is an area which I do believe is important. Not because everyone should feel overly good about themselves (there’s a lot of…

5 Questions That Can Predict Human Behaviour

Gaining insight into how an individual is likely to behave can be very valuable to a manager. This is especially true when the individual may be new, shifting roles or starting an important project. Imagine if you could gain real insight into what they’re likely to do before they start. I’m not talking about the…

5 Major Derailers When Starting a New Role

So you’ve got the new role that you’ve been dreaming of and you want to make sure that you; hit the ground running, make a strong impression, confirm in everyone’s eyes you’re the best person for the role and start to deliver the results. Below are 5 major derailers that can impact your relationships, reputation…

The Dark Side of Optimism

For many years we have been hearing how optimistic people are more successful than pessimists. Research has shown that they live longer, are more content and are better employees. This has borne a wave of Happiness Indexes, Strengths Based Approaches and Positive Psychology, all of which are incredibly valuable approaches to assessing and developing people….