One of the problems that almost all business managers wrestle with is that of holding people to account. When you don’t do it effectively you find yourself surrounded by people who are driving you crazy with their incompetent performance or inappropriate behaviours.
Conversations about poor performance often end with promises of improvement that come to nothing. [...]

While most things change, rapidly and unpredictably, a few manage to stay the same in spite of all efforts to the contrary. To a great extent leadership style is one of them.
On the face of it that sounds unlikely, given the extensive research that has been done into leadership best practice over the decades and [...]

How did something that started out as a straight forward training course last week develop into a conversation about reality?
I was training a group of young graduates who are on a two year development program, on completion of which they will be appointed as junior managers in their organisation.  As a group they all exhibited [...]

I have been working with a client in Lexington, Kentucky this week. It is one of the largest NGOs in the USA, serving the needs of impoverished communities in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Some of the people on my workshops were the managers of particular projects; others were from building maintenance, finance, HR and donor [...]

Coaching and mentoring gets a lot of publicity, to the point that one could believe success is not possible without a personal coach or mentor.
The word ‘mentor’ comes from Greek mythology. In Homer’s Odyssey, Mentor was a friend of Odysseus. When Odysseus went off to the Trojan Wars, he left his son Telemachus in the [...]

‘I can see how this works – but it’s difficult for me. I’m from the old school – it’s either right or it’s wrong. Somebody either performs properly – or you discipline them.’
The speaker was a man in his fifties who was trying hard to get his mind around the idea of Win Win conversations [...]

One manager I’ve seen recently uses the all too familiar tell or authoritarian style with her team. She knows it all; what is wrong, who is at fault and exactly what they must do to fix it. She even knows what others think! In a meeting from which one of her people was absent, she [...]

I was reminded again this week of the many ways organisations can be incompetent.
I had been asked to help a manager whose staff were argumentative, surly and uncooperative. ‘There’s nothing I can do with them,’ he said. ‘They just don’t want to work!’ On the surface it looked as if this manager had indeed inherited [...]

Managing employee performance is all about managing inputs and outputs. That sounds easier that it is in practice.
It all seems to go wrong from the start – with agreement on outputs.
Jobs are created so that certain outputs will be delivered. If you deliver the output required by your job, you deserve to be rewarded. [...]

I’ve spent the last week talking about KPAs and competency frameworks with three different clients. Two have been with HR people who are trying to get acceptance for their performance appraisal processes. One has been with a line manager who is confused and frazzled by the whole thing.
Some things change. A lot of things stay [...]