Personal Effectiveness

Sometimes my brief includes helping someone develop as a leader – to hone their thinking, behavior and leadership skills. It may be an incumbent executive who has a vision and wants to get people on board or a rising star who has come unstuck or a brilliant performer with a seemingly annoying tendency or to…

John is a busy bloke and so am I. He wanted to talk with me so we scheduled a call for two weeks hence at three o’clock. I called exactly on time though he wasn’t there. He rang me back the day after though I was running a workshop. I tried him the day after and…

Business people tell me most of their time is spent on e mails or in meetings or travelling. I’ve been reflecting on this and have some ideas: Emails In 1997 I was given my first company laptop. Within a matter of months emails had taken over my life. They were supposed to help me, were…

As a swimming machine a dolphin is about sixty five percent efficient, Michael Phelps arguably the greatest human swimmer of all time is about eight percent. Ninety two percent of his effort is lost to friction and turbulence. This post is about management not swimming though stick with me, there is a connection. As a…

Ten years ago Luis decided he would learn to dance. Along with three friends he hired a room did some stretching exercises, played a YouTube video of professional dancers and tried to copy them. Initially his “lessons” would last an hour and follow the same format. As the years went by he extended the hire…

In the lead up to Christmas I was really excited to be starting a new Delegation4Results Programme with the leadership team of a national contractor though at the same time I was feeling quite stressed. I had had a chesty cough for about six weeks and just couldn’t seem to shift it. The day before,…

First issued 15th December 2015 (This is my most read blog post in the last 12 months, its all still relevant so I am posting it again. I’m off to Nice again for Christmas, all the best for 2017) As Christmas approaches many of the people I am working with are feeling tired. A client…

It’s good to ask people how they feel about this or that: the work we are doing together or the conversation we are having or what it’s like around here, or the film or that experience or the new process or programme, our relationship or whatever. Often people start their reply by saying “I think…

(1993) Having just finished a project with a team of seventeen staff, my boss Jim said to me “Dave we haven’t got that much on so I want you to run this small job”. He went on to say there wasn’t much in the budget for staff so you need to do it ‘one man…

Sometimes I ask people to look back over their careers to a time when they were most fired up, exhilarated, excited about their work. The most common answer I get back is “when I was dropped right in it”. Looking back over my 40 years in the construction industry that certainly is the case for…