The Ernst & Young Australian Productivity PulseTMi began checking Australian Workers ‘sentiments’ about individual and organisational productivity 18 months ago. The latest findings report that 85% of workers could be more productive, and 21% said that just a few things would need to change. These things were: poor staff management, lack of motivation & reward and…

Look carefully at the center circles on both the left and right. Which circle is bigger?

Are you sure they aren’t both the same size?  This relative size illusion is called the Ebbinghaus illusion.  It was discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist, in the early…

Put the 'Why?' before the 'How?'

In an increasingly complex and competive world, success belongs to those organisations with a clearly articulated and shared purpose.

If we think of our organisation as a dress shop what would be its purpose? Are we here to sell clothes? Are we running a supply chain? Or are we delivering a return to shareholders? All these things are essential but they…

Do Engagement Surveys in your organisation meet with yawns and complacence? Do you create space in your leadership planning schedules to work through your survey results with a view to making impactful changes? Or is your annual Engagement Survey just ticking an HR To-Do box?

Whilst an excellent starting point, an Engagement…

I recently read about the upcoming release of Sheryl Sandberg’s new book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead”. As the COO of Facebook, she talks about Mark Zuckerberg (her boss) and the advice he gave re her desire to be liked by everyone and his belief that it would hold her back in her…

The recent discovery of a leadership gene has reignited debate around the historically popular concept of a magic leadership trait. Research from the University College London indicates that there is a gene associated with directing and coordinating people. Does this mean that some have an innate advantage to gaining upper-level positions over others?  While leaders across the nation offer self-congratulatory pats on the back for beating natural selection, let’s step back and reassess what…

 Do you sometimes just feel stuck, frustrated or weary of the effort of trying to change either yourself or others? .  One of the traits of a great leader is open-mindedness.  What follows is a simple technique to help you to practice your open-mindedness muscle.

I don’t think any of us could be totally open-minded because we continually have to make decisions and in order to make decisions we usually have to come to some sort of conclusion even if that means not making a decision at…

There is no hiding place in small and medium sized businesses. Everyone plays a critical role and needs to pull their weight, yet I regularly hear Directors and Business Owners complain about a lack of accountability. So who is responsible for holding people to account?

 Being courageous

As a manager of others, be that Managing Director, team leader or professional expert you can’t just dump accountability on people. They need to accept it and take it on board. If…

Bullying in the Workplace

As an employer from an OH&S perspective, it is a requirement that they must provide a safe and healthy workplace for your workers and contractors. This includes:

• Providing and maintaining a safe work environment along with safe plant & equipment. Safe systems of work are also required;
• Making sure workers have adequate…

Recently I returned from volunteering my skills in Singapore at the Singapore F1 Grand Prix (SGP). Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motor sport. Just like in Australia, motor sport in Singapore is supported by hundreds of volunteers. Track marshals, flag and recovery specialists, medical, fire specialists ensure safe and fair racing for all.

This was my 5^th Singaporean Grand Prix having been one of a select group of Australians in 2008 who trained the Singaporeans to run…

Good call:

“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ get the credit…. This is what creates trust, what…

I have recently returned from speaking at the International Recruitment Conference in Fiji where the theme was “Recruitment at the Speed of Tomorrow”.  It was an inspiring…

Exploding the Leadership Myth for Managers

On the 17th April in Townsville I was the closing keynote speaker for the Local Government Managers Australia, Queensland. My topic was on “Exploding the Leadership Myth”. Here are some key points for all managers and leaders of all types of…

Managers have subordinates, leaders have followers.

That short statement took me many years to learn. When I was young, and thrust into a management role way before I was ready, I thought leadership meant, “getting people to do things”. And maybe, in the end, that is what it is. But it’s not by telling, or coercing or bribing. It’s way subtler than that. And if you are looking to carve out a career in managing a business or indeed any enterprise, developing your leadership…

This Christmas I bought my husband a book called “100 Things What’s on Your List” by Sebastian Terry.  I was attracted to the cover initially because I saw the Camp Quality symbol and both of us have volunteered with Camp Quality in the…

What I’ve learnt over the years is that there is no one secret ingredient to retaining staff. In my early days of running a business, I had high staff turnover and it used to drive me crazy the amount of money, effort, time and emotional energy I would invest in new recruits only to lose them within a 12-month…

A common problem I see in many organisations is that somewhere in their senior management team they have a person with strong technical competence, but who lacks the essential people skills and leadership expertise. The story goes that they are leading the way with their knowledge and experience, meeting…

60% of companies don’t have succession plans in place and yet this article suggests “…

Last week I received a call from prospective client who was struggling with a high staff turnover. He pleaded with me to help him stem the outflow. He is a small manufacturer that sells his products largely through distributors. I arranged to visit his offices in the Eastern suburbs the next day.

As I pulled into his carpark it wasn’t hard to spot his Porsche parked next to the front door. Upon entering the building it looked as though the premises hadn’t been renovated since…