Uncovering effectiveness as well as emerging leadership talent

Working in a satellite city to the company’s head office or being based at a home office comes with many freedoms. You can duck and dive rush hour commutes, engineer schedules for school pickups, and get work done without interruptions. You can write articles in your gym gear too!

Natural breaks offer the opportunity to look back

Yesterday I had the pleasure of working with the Southern Regional Management Team at Lowes Menswear. What a great bunch of people that inspired me with their stories of connection and care they have for their brand and respective teams.

Where does vulnerability fit into being a Rock for my team?

Growing up in an Italian household there was one guarantee every day – a hearty dinner. Food was critical in our place. No matter who was there, how many were there, or what type of day anyone had, we always knew a good dinner was going to be served up every night. It was reassuring and a privilege you only acknowledge as being special when you are all grown up. My parents worked hard to provide that experience for themselves and our family.

Taking a stand is a daily opportunity

I love utilising sport stories in my programs. It is a transparent industry with great public access with direct correlations to our own workplaces. The story lines are easy to follow and usually an intensified version of what we are going through. Cameron Schwab, the former AFL Club CEO, and founder of Design CEO speaks of business being very similar to sport. Cameron states in his blog (what business can learn from football) that professional football clubs need to plot themselves into one of two phases:

Seeing something out of place is all we need to be a leader

This week I had a confrontational conversation with a group of students regarding their end of year exhibition – the one opportunity they have to display two years of work in the hope of making a mark on industry leaders. I felt their standard of prep-work to date was well below standard. It was a robust conversation and it cut deep. A part of the conversation turned to holding each other to standard. That they were a team, and if others were to slack off, it would negatively affect them and could even halt the exhibition from going ahead.

The future of Mentoring is genderless

For some bizarre reason, most of my workplaces have been female dominated. From my time in the Natural Therapies Industry, to cosmetics, to salon, to education, I have always found myself in the company of women. Even when playing Grade Cricket in Adelaide our B-Grade wicket keeper was a female State Representative – an initiative way before it’s time.

Pro's make a difference, professionals* just act like they do...

In 2002, I got my first professional contract to play cricket in the UK. As the one and only “Overseas Pro” in the team there was expectation and local notoriety (everyone wanted to see you fail). It wasn’t a game changer financially, but it was a great vehicle to travel and experience the life of playing sport as a vocation.

Making the unrealistic manageable

The most predictable thing in business is that people, teams, and organisations are going to be stretched. It can feel like this is unique to us, but it has been happening since the Industrial Revolution (and probably for a long time before that). The narrative tends to be ‘do more with less’. Often as leaders, we are the ones charged with the responsibility of passing this message onto the workers to execute the strategy.

The building blocks of memorable managers

Figuring out what separates a good boss from a bad boss is simple. Think of the best boss you ever had and think about the worst. Picture their faces, their voices, and actions. By looking at a few underlying traits it is clear what the good do, and what the bad don't.

It’s the second week of June. I haven’t slept well again. I am dreaming about the conversations I must have, playing out scenario’s in my mind, practicing in my mind what I am going to say to my team. It’s not even dawn and I am exhausted.

The end of financial year goals are out of reach. Adjustment upon adjustment has been made, with all sorts of creative justifications and political side-steps. As one of my colleagues put it at the time, “the brand is tanking”.

Anxiety, distraction, and dysfunction thrive in The Now

Everyone gets excited about tennis when the Australian Open comes to town. The same thing happens in the English summer when Wimbledon comes around. Watching the tennis is full of memorable moments and great performances. But, one thing is guaranteed – the commentators talking about ‘tightness’ when a player is serving for the match. Being able to ‘close-out’ a point or game to win is considered one of the hardest thing to do in the professional game, especially when the stakes increase deeper into the tournament.

Recently, I was at a party where I met some smart and lovely people. At one point, I was talking with a Sales Manager (let’s call him Nick). We were talking about what he does differently compared to the guys he works with, and those in his team (this is a diplomatic way of saying that Nick was having a moan). I responded by remarking that the other’s may have been technically proficient but lacked Nick’s people skills. Nick responded by saying that none of them were ‘technically’ any good at all, as they were just ‘sales people’, and the Techy stuff was done by the Tech Dudes.

Spending over 10 years in the salon industry taught me a lot. Number one – no matter what the state of the economy, people need their hair cut (and will spend serious cash to keep up appearances). Number two – men on a building site would be shocked and stunned by what women talk about in the staff room of a salon environment (trust me, I have experienced both). Number three – high earning hairdressers all have brilliant interpersonal (soft) skills.

The way to Practical Strategising

What is your strategy? You need to have a Point of Difference. When was your last Business Review? Running a small business means that you will likely be bombarded with these types of questions inferring what you need to do to run a successful business. They are fundamentally good topics to engage with, but unhelpful questions in themselves. Conversations that start like this can cause anxiety, especially if the business owner does not know the answer, or even worse, if they know the answer but cannot articulate it very well.

How quickly is the retail landscape changing? It seems that everyone is telling us that change has never been quicker. I am not sure how true this, but the one indisputable fact is that change is upon us. This change comes in the form of international business crossing boarders both on-line, and now in our shopping strips and malls. So with this cycle of powerful retailers hitting our Aussie shores, what is the number one defence that local retails can initiate?

This may be a familiar situation for you. The week starts with a vigour and a mindset of positivity and a list of actions you are going to achieve. Then within less than ten minutes of walking into work, you are ambushed with all sorts of unforeseen problems that you need to attend to.

It’s one that can make us squirm more than Stephen King’s last horror story. You know, that chat you need to have with one of your direct reports where you have to point out a big fat negative in their work. Why is it so hard? I’ll tell you why….

Yesterday, I had a training session with a client of mine. He was struggling with communicating his marketing and sales objectives to his team. Mainly because they are all different, and on their own agendas. Sound familiar…?

It struck me that this topic is very common, so I thought I would share a few key points I use to turn this scenario into an advantage.

THE DILEMMA WE PUT OURSELVES IN WHEN WE PERCEIVE THREAT INSTEAD OF POSSIBILITY

It was an important meeting. A meeting that would be the beginning of beautiful and important things. We would hatch fun and creative plans together. We would make an impact on the community. We would grow our businesses. The limits were endless.

We all know what Einstein said about the definition of insanity. And, retail businesses it is very common for people to remain at the same size or same level of profitability year-in-year-out. Every year brings with it similar ebbs and flows, as well as similar results.