How to overcome feeling overwhelmed – A guided tour Feeling overwhelmed? There’s no irony in reading this article if you have 1,000 other things to do. The truth is, you’ve secretly discovered one of the best coping strategies for the overwhelmed. “I’ve never worried about having too much to cope with…” – No one. Ever.We all have those days, some […]
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Improve your company’s productivity by 30% and create a functional framework for future growth Three questions CEOs often ask themselves… “Am I, as CEO, the bottleneck holding back the company’s progress?” “Where are my energies focused – on Today, Tomorrow or the Future?” “How engaged are my teams and how much energy and focus are they delivering?” And how […]
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From defining self-confidence to explaining confidence coaching… here are my latest thoughts. But first, a little quotation… “Confidence and deference are not mutually exclusive, and it’s usually a lack of deference rather than excess of confidence that gets powerful people into trouble.” – Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer Confidence has proven hard to define over the years. […]
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Strategic Direction The majority of business owners manage their strategic planning process by making annual sales and revenue forecasts towards their financial year end, for one to five years. Is this you? Have you also identified how well the functional areas in your business interact and whether they are appropriately proportioned to the whole? If you […]
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Coaching & Mentoring For the umpteenth time I had yet another one of those frustrating circular conversations with a ‘fellow executive coach’ at the recent EMCC International Coaching and Mentoring Conference in Edinburgh. It went a little like this… FELLOW COACH: “What does CoachDirectors do?” ME: “We provide executive coaches with commercial acumen to businesses. All our coaches […]
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When you wake up each morning and prepare for the day ahead, what motivates you?What internal or external forces push you forward to live and work and even play for the 16 to 18 hours each day that you are awake?Is it the want to see and spend time with your loved ones?The desire to […]
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Strained and disillusioned with your business? Don’t panic – it’s quite normal and a natural part of the journey to having a mature and truly viable business. Remember that day when you and your fellow stakeholders were inspired to launch your business. How exciting was that! Seems an age ago now, doesn’t it? The commitment you all made. […]
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Consider the last time you heard a truly inspiring speech.Some of you may be old enough to recall JFK’s moon speech and his motivational words that we do things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”Here at home, most of us can recall former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speech shortly after the […]
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9 Foolproof Ideas to Motivate Your Sales Force Nelson Mandela famously said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” A team is only as good as its leader motivates them to be. If you want to have your employees functioning at their best, then you need to put the right incentives in place and take steps to prevent them […]
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Whilst Mrs May is busy chasing unicorns with her vision of post-Brexit Britain, UK businesses have proven themselves to be rather better at growing an entirely different type of ‘unicorn’. Wherever you stand on Brexit, there’s no denying there are storm clouds ahead. The rumour mill is running overtime and whether we’re facing a transitional period […]
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Customer RetentionThere is an extraordinary variation in the success companies achieve in customer retention. Why is this and does it matter? One need only watch the current challenges faced by the big high street retailers to understand that it does matter. Customers that might buy again are way easier to source than brand new ones and […]
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“Let’s touch base offline, we’ve got some blue sky thinking to run up the flagpole before close of play.” As corporate life stands today, the above business jargon probably wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. Strange to think however that this infestation of ‘management speak’ has its roots in Russian Mysticism. According to the book Business Bullshit by […]
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The power of company culture Company culture is one of the most powerful forces on the planet, according to Daniel Coyle, author of the bestselling book ‘The Culture Code’. Its presence is tangible in successful companies, just as its absence or toxicity is equally clear. He maintains that its impact can be measured on the bottom […]
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“What a great conversation…” I’d hear that phrase often as my parents rescued me from my indifferent babysitter. I didn’t care much for the after-dinner party debrief, but I’d remember being fascinated by the art of the conversation. Oddly though, try as they might, they could never seem to remember what this great conservation had […]
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