Blog
Team Resilience
I often get asked what the best way is to make team members more resilient. There is no simple answer to this, but there is a key to better equipping individuals to handle pressure and deal with adversity, one that can be explained with the help of some basic physics. If you apply enough force,…
Win or Learn
No, it’s not a typo. The opposite of succeeding doesn’t have to be losing or failing. The expression “I never lose. I either win or learn” was coined by Nelson Mandela who knew something about overcoming adversity. Mandela understood that losing is not final; it represents an opportunity to start over with the benefit of…
Important vs Urgent
In my most recent blog, I looked at stress; why our minds and bodies are poorly adapted to deal with modern-day stress, and what we can do about it. I’d like to continue this theme by asking why so many of us feel as if we spend all our time reacting to crisis after crisis?…
S.T.R.E.S.S
I blame gyms. You’re working out, maybe chatting, when suddenly you get that idea. One you really can’t wait to get home and work on. Why is it? It’s not an excuse to cut workouts short; I love the gym. It happens because exercise not only works out your body, it causes physical and psychological…
Flip Sides
Recently, I watched the Winter Olympics TV coverage – spellbound as a snowboarder went soaring and spinning above the half-pipe. The commentator announced: “her back side rotation is nowhere near as strong as her astonishing front side”. And once I’d figured out what this actually meant, I thought about other sportspeople where a notable strength…
Ten TNTs to Boost Business
My recent post about TNTs – Tiny Noticeable Things, and how they can build customer loyalty, prompted a flurry of responses from people wanting to learn more about using small incremental behaviour changes to transform businesses. Either that or they just want to avoid buying a copy of my book! Subscribers to this blog represent…
Give Yourself Some Love
Yesterday we celebrated Valentine’s Day, our once-a-year formal opportunity to demonstrate love to the significant people we share our lives with. So, in this week’s post I’d like to focus on the importance of showing some love for yourself, and before anyone jumps to the conclusion that I’m advocating narcissism or suggesting self-idolatry, let me…
Build Customer Loyalty – One TNT at a Time
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What…
Don’t Do Perfect
After last week’s diversion into imposter syndrome, this week I’m going to return to a theme of goal setting, and I am going to look at one of the main enemies of success – procrastination. I’m sure you know the feeling. The goals are set and committed to, they are fully understood and there is…
Who’s the Imposter?
One of my resolutions this year is not to back off from difficult topics. So when, following my last blog post, an email arrived asking for my views on imposter syndrome, I realised I would have to put that resolution to the test. Here goes. First, I’d like to make it very clear that in…
Who Moved My Doorstep?
In my last post I looked at goal setting and the important distinction between ‘outcome goals’ and ‘means goals’. In other words, the key difference between big overall goals which describe your intended destination, and the many smaller action-oriented goals which pave the way. A consistent theme in many of the responses to the post…
Setting goals – thinking small is the key to success
It’s that time of year when many of us look ahead and make commitments to what we want to achieve over the next twelve months. In our personal lives we’d call these resolutions and for those of us in the business world we’d probably call them objectives, or goals. The idea I want to share…
21 Keys to Great Leadership
I don’t think there are any secrets to great leadership but I do think there are a few keys… 1) If you want people to get out of bed for you, be more passionate about what they are capable of achieving than they are themselves. 2) Show your people that you care. If they think…
Grow Your People and Your Business with TNTs
The bigger they get, the more organisations have a tendency to concentrate on big things to engage and inspire their staff, big things to please customers, and big things to gel teams. The problem being, people can’t see big things! What we can see, and what create instant, lasting pictures in people’s minds, are all…