“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.”

Dalai Lama XIV

Nurturing greatness in staff should be a goal of any manager. Great leaders spot talent and create a culture of realizing potential among their team. They aim to give their staff wings, so that they can face responsibility autonomously and fly on wards to great things. As Stephen Covey outlined in his great book on self-development: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”,  great managers do “stewardship delegation” over “gofer”. Continue reading “Giving staff wings: stewardship delegation over gofer” →

Success isn’t doing everything, it is doing what matters most.

The (good) experience of a manager can often be seen in how they organize what they have to do. In Einsenhower’s Matrix we learned how to group what you have to do by priority quadrants but now i would like to look at how to form success lists. Success lists are cut down “to do lists” so that what is left are only the strategic actions that contribute to success. Of course cutting down a long list of “things to do” into a much smaller coherent group of success actions is not easy. Continue reading “Success Lists over to do lists” →

Outcomes are determined in the micro decisions and actions, much more than they are in macro big ones.

It is important to think big and to aim high and visualize macro outcomes as these outline the goals to get to and greatness to aim for. However it is also important to know that results are reached and quality achieved by the micro actions, decisions and learning that we do each and everyday. Vision lies in the big, but success lies in completing the small building blocks. Or as I prefer to say we aim for macro goals but achieve them via the micro actions, improvements and decisions we make each day. The micro actions done well in multiple areas is the 5% edge great team of personal leaders have over good ones. Continue reading “Visualize macros but work on micros” →

Creating a culture of purpose in the work place and managing well your emotional bank accounts with your staff are two very important ways to create motivated team players. However people’s powerful sense of self-interest should never be underestimated and understanding the WIIFM – what’s in it in for me? – of your staff will be important to bringing out the very best in your team. WIIFM in the work place in its most basic form is what an individual is getting out of a situation, from: a decision, the success of a project or for getting past a challenge. WIIFM is where our minds often end up when we analyse our feelings about something we have done or something new we are about to face. Continue reading “WIIFM Factor: What’s in it for me?” →