Leadership Skills

Differentiating your organisation in tougher more competitive market places is becoming increasingly difficult. If you believe* the latest research from experts such as "Marcus Buckingham" and "Zengman and Folger" then effective leadership may well be the key differentiator. However you spin it, every bit of analysis on real** reasons why people leave to join other companies that I have ever done always cites the persons manager as the most common.

If you are running an organisation or a team of people then your leadership skills can help or hinder an organisation by the business culture you create. The real issue is that the minute you open yourself up to 360, or any type of development most will cite the same areas for you to work on that you knew were your weaknesses already, lets face it no-one is good at everything!

I call this the "Beckham" Syndrome, imagine the conversation...."OK David you are back in the England team and that was a very good free kick that set up the goal against Brazil, but we have been watching you for a while in practice and we notice that you are not that good at catching a ball or general goalkeeping skills in general so that's what we are going to work on practicing for a few weeks....hey David please come back here....!"

david_beckham_freekicks.jpg

My approach through training or one to one coaching is to firstly work with individuals to ascertain their key strengths and then work on getting even better at the things they are really good at. OK so I am not going to ignore any obvious weaknesses, especially the career limiting ones but it won't be the only focus.

Types of programme that I run are:-

Ascertaining and playing to your core strengths -Working with Management teams to improve their leadership skills, in areas such as Coaching, Influencing, Communication, Conflict, Team Development and Sales Management.

Development Centres/Competency Frameworks – Working with companies to recognise their latent talent within and to assist in the succession planning and recruitment vital to organisations when key individuals leave or get promoted..

*A recent poll of Financial Directors didn't rate people in the top 20 elements of a successful company

**Often leavers will cite all manner of reasons why they have left, follow up these reasons a few months later and approx 70% will cite their manager, try it yourself and prove me wrong!