Managing Yourself (and Others)
Plan, organise, monitor and improve your own performance needs a certain level of reflection and self-assessment.
5 Minutes on…
Managing Yourself (and Others)
If you only have 5 minutes, don’t look any further, look at these soundbites. They are short sharp summaries (typically 2 pages) providing a subject overview/introduction. They may not answer all your questions but you will find them helpful, provocative, stimulating and informative.
Manage your email, don’t let it manage you
How to stop email (and social media) controlling your day Email is a lot like Schrödinger’s cat. Both are dead and alive at the same time. Mathias Röckel There are over 4,371 billion email users. This figure is predicted to reach 4,730 billion by 2026 which is...
Mentoring, not coaching
"The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves." Steven Spielberg Ever find yourself wishing for a shoulder, a sounding board, a source of advice, someone who’ll...
A self assessment reflection of your career
Sometimes you need to take a step back and reflect on your career to date. Whatever stage of work life you have reached, if there every was a time to think about what is important, in this period of possible post pandemic restart, it is now. Many career review systems...
Influencing (or influencer?) skills
Do you influence or are you an influencer?
In 1936 Dale Carnegie wrote the quintessential self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Maybe he knew that in the soon to be airport bookshop managers, old and new, would be frantically looking for the solution to the art of the deal or how to be the one minute manager before they got on the airplane. Carnegie’s book is considered one of the most influential books of all time.
Carnegie may have been prescient in meeting the needs of the modern manager. But he could not have predicted the rise of the on-line influencer; who sets out to influence, win friends and get paid for doing so. Maybe it is time for a new book: How to influence people and win friends.
Influencing others hardly started with the on-line incarnation. In the 18th Century, the royal stamp of approval by George III of the pottery of Josiah Wedgwood enabled Wedgwood to use the King’s approval to increase brand awareness to promote and sell his products. To this day ‘by appointment to the Queen’ carries huge kudos on a whole range of UK products. Wonder what rate the royal household gets of each 1000 followers?
Writing skills
Writing skills … message received and understood? Don’t let the medium be the message! Writing is one way to get your message across. But how to make sure that the message your readers / your audience receive is the same as the one you sent? To ensure your writing is...
Networking
It’s not a dirty word. The business of backscratching? Or the art of developing relationships – the ultimate relationship marketing?
If you are in business at times you do need a thick skin, it’s not personal, but networking is a skill. There are many organisations where you can build the confidence to network in an informal non-threatening arena with your peers. Historically women have been and felt at a disadvantage when networking at work. It isn’t a waste of time, it is part of work, but you may need to ease into it.
Group non-managerial supervision, a personal perspective
In several professions, we do not ‘look after’ our most valuable, and dare I say expensive, human resource. Senior leaders under tremendous pressure are left to cope on their own. Some can. Some can but at a great expense to themselves and maybe colleagues they interreact with. Some leave the profession. Is a sink or swim attitude wise or effective for an organisation? So, what can we do? Find a person to support the senior leader. In schools, I heard people say speak to the Chair of Governors; in charities the Chair of the Trustees; across many industrial sectors leaders are recommended to speak to whoever is their line manager; the next person in the chain. Chair of the Board of Directors. Really!
This is crazy in my mind. Would you tell the person above you in the system that you are having difficulty? They will be placing an advertisement for your job as the door is closing when you leave their room. Okay, not always but…
Having worked and had knowledge of other occupations I discovered the concept of supervision or clinical supervision. This I promote in my professional world as Non-Managerial Individual or Group Supervision. In this arrangement you are being supported by someone or group of colleagues who have no managerial responsibility for you except as a fellow professional (and as a human).
This piece has been contributed by Jonathan Block
Handling conflict
There are many reasons why conflict occurs at work and what boils over into an actual stand up argument may just be a symptom not the cause. Whilst individual differences can be a profound source of friction and discontent – much must be down to poor leadership and management. Approaches to understanding and managing conflict have many dependencies; personal, social, organisational, cultural and national. But there are some universal aspects that underpin these individual differences.
Can you tell the difference between mentoring, coaching and supervision? Does it matter?
There are fundamental differences between mentoring and coaching in their purest terms. Often the two get confused. Let’s explain the differences and how they can be applied separately and combined to support others, colleagues, students and sometimes, our friends.
Presentation skills
Though part and parcel of everyday life for students and managers at all levels, few are those undaunted by the prospect of giving presentations.
To put paid to the angst, try applying the tips set out in this short briefing.
Learning modules
If you have an hour or more to invest, you will find the Learning Modules very useful. They are a deeper dive into the 5 minutes on topics.
The content is drawn from leading writers on management and other good source material. Most of them are about 15 -25 pages in length.
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