Performance

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Performance Tagged Articles

Idiot! Why do you think that way...what's wrong with you?!
I was in a discussion last night about common sense and the popular statement was made: "People should have more of it". I would argue that there is no such thing.

Don't you just love a little mischief?
Your brain is a complex prediction machine and is always constructing possible futures you might encounter to keep your body out of harms way. In the last 100 years, the day to day danger to your body has almost been eliminated.

Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal - Step 7 Initial Meeting
Now that you have an overview of the Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal system the question is "How do I get started?" This article will guide you through that process.

4 Common Denominators of High Performing Teams
There are four common denominators of high performing teams. When these elements are present, teams are almost guaranteed to be efficient and rewarding for the members. The elements are: Common goals, Trust, Good Leadership, and a Good Charter. If your team has these four elements, chances are you are enjoying the benefits of working on a high performance team.

Will a tiger eat you today?
The modern world doesn't have the threats of the old world. You are certainly not concerned with walking out of your cave to get eaten by another animal; modern threats are primarily marketplace threats. How do you handle modern day threats?

...and a healthy, happy and prosperous new year!
We – unlike our parents and Grandparents – will not be rewarded or honored for our hard work; but will be valued only by our knowledge and ability to design more effective and efficient strategies, tactics, and practices for ourselves, our employers or our businesses

Isolation is fatal
We assert that prosperity is a natural tribal phenomenon, while isolation is simply fatal in more ways than one. Disastrous to your health, mood and appetite. Cataclysmic to your prosperity. In fact, if you intend to be really wealthy, you are going to require more help than you can imagine.

Perfect Is A Place You Can Only Visit, Not A Place To Live
When is "good enough" actually good enough? The key is optimizing the variables, not trying to maximize each one.

LEADERSHIP IS INSIDE-OUTSIDE
A potential leader requires solid knowledge that comes only from inside and he should have competency to complete the things internally. The whole earth is following the principle of ‘Inside-Outside’. Competency is also created inside and bringing it outside up to 100 per cent is leadership. Leadership is always performance, never position and always regardless of power.

Performance Appraisals
All organizations should have formal performance appraisals. The following is a guide for a good appraisal system.

Performance Measurements (KPI's)
Every company must have Key Performance Indicators that they use the manage their company.

Developing a Passion for Performance
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins characterized two common denominators of Level 5 leaders. One was humility and the second was a passion for performance. This article deals with the passion aspect of leadership and gives some tips for how to generate more of it.

Removing Ineffective Leaders
One area where leaders struggle is removing ineffective underlings. This is a highly unpleasant aspect of the job, but it is vital to the health of the organiztion. This article shares some tips on how to accomplish the removal and reposition of leaders.

High Goals, Outstanding Performance and Success

Successful people are outstanding performers. Outstanding performers are goal oriented. They set high goals, and do whatever it takes to achieve them. Then they set higher goals and do what they must to achieve them. They do this day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. If you want to become an outstanding performer, you need to constantly challenge yourself by setting high goals. Aim high, and you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish.

Career Success and Problem Solving

Outstanding performance is very important to career and life success. It's at the heart of the five success elements. No one can be successful without being a highly competent, outstanding performer. The incompetents and poor performers get identified and asked to leave or are placed in marginal positions pretty quickly. You have to identify the problems and obstacles to becoming an outstanding performer that you face before you can take action and deal with them. Don't call your problems "opportunities" or your obstacles "challenges". Call them what they are, and then get on with fixing your problems and overcoming your obstacles.

Commit to Developing Success Competencies

We all need to commit to taking personal responsibility for not only our health, but for our career and life success. Successful people do the thing they need to do to ensure that they succeed. One way that you can demonstrate your commitment to your success is by becoming competent in four key skills: creating positive personal impact, performing in an outstanding manner, becoming a dynamic communicator and developing your interpersonal competence. If you commit to becoming competent in these four areas, you’ll be on your way to a lifetime of success.

Accountability Boosters: Managing Accountability in Others

Maybe one of your top performer’s self-image is threatened when his idea does not produce the intended results and he gets defensive. Or you’ve heard someone complain that because she can’t control all the elements of a project she should not be held responsible if things don’t go right. Or it suddenly becomes clear that the ability to disappear into the group is allowing someone to avoid taking accountability for his lack of individual contribution. The following Accountability Boosters will help you accomplish two important objectives-1) minimize the need for people to make excuses and 2) increase their level of accountability when things go wrong.

Four Levels of Coachability
Have you noticed that there is not a single top-level professional athlete that does not have a coach? It's obvious, isn't it? In order to become a champion - to excel - it is necessary to be coachable. But, did you know that there are four distinct levels of coachability? If you are a leader, you will want to know this.

Stop Trying to Be Normal
Stop trying to be normal. It undermines your success and keeps you in a state of mediocrity. It's an interesting phenomenon. This idea of being "normal" starts to take hold in high school...

Inspiration Stagnation
When people fail, it’s generally not because they don’t know what to do. It is that they don’t do what they know. People who are suffering from the deficiency of not knowing what to do can find an easy and immediate remedy as close as the Internet or their local library. Knowing what to do is relatively simple. Doing what we know separates winners from losers.

BOOK REVIEW: Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire And What To Do Instead (By Tom Coens & Mary Jenkins, Berrett-Koehler, 2000, ISBN #1-57675-076-0)

Abolishing Performance Appraisals boldly presents the skepticism shared by a growing number of managers, human resource professionals, consultants and researchers: appraisals don’t do what they are purported to do and they cause a lot of other damage in the meantime. As the authors make a strong case for getting rid of formal appraisals altogether, they also address obvious concerns around rewards, compensation, and documentation to support legal action. This is a provocative and convincing read. Prepare to have your paradigms poked.

BOOK REVIEW: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (By Carol S. Dweck, Random House, 2006 ISBN #1-4000-6275-6)

The author presents the "fixed" and "growth" mindsets, the "internal monologues" that accompany each of them, and how they can either limit or boost a leader's potential effectiveness. She chronicles the tales of several noted growth mindset leaders: Jack Welch (GE), Lou Gerstner (IBM) and Ann Mulcahy (Xerox). The book offers a useful lens through which to appraise your managers–and, of course, yourself–and focus their development.

Ouch! It Hurts To Think This Much! Communicating Performance Targets
Why are so many managers unclear about what performance results they expect from their employees? The prime reason: it requires concentrated mental effort and time, upfront. Make that investment. It will be worth it.

Raise Your Gaze: Staying Energized in the Daily Grind
Presents two remedies when you get bogged down at work. One is to visualize your work completed and how good it will feel. The second is to remind yourself of the bigger picture, of how what you are working on will positively affect others.

The 21st Century Model For Achievement!

When it comes to achievement, I think a lot of people miss the fact that it's an uphill process. You have to climb the mountain first before you reach the peak. It's a journey that almost always involves obstacles. And, it involves doing what it takes to overcome the obstacles. So what's all the confusion? Why are there so many people proclaiming it's just not meant to be? Perhaps they don't understand exactly what uphill means? It's a metaphor for the obstacles and challenges that stand between you and a successful outcome. Listen closely and you'll often hear people who believe such roadblocks are not supposed to happen. I am amazed that in the 21st century there are still people who don't comprehend the fundamental process of achievement. More amazing is how many employers do not know how to hire employees who are ineffective at it.

Achieving Peak Performance
Athletes are trained to reach peak performance through a regime of coaching and mentoring. If they fail to reach world-class performance levels, they fail to achieve significant rewards. There are ways of applying the same concepts of coaching to business staff and even to teams of staff. Make sure your key staff achieve their maximum potential by reaching their peak performance.

Count more than the money
Counting the money you make tells you how well you did last week or last month - not how well you are going to do in the future. For that you need a more balanced view.

Overall Effectiveness
The big guys use OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) to measure how well they use the expensive equipment they own. Can small businesses and entrepreneurs use the same measure?

Coaching Managers to Deal with Conflict
Coaching as a strategy for organizational managers to deal with conflict.

Hard Skills Alone Are Not Enough!
This article examines the role that coaching can play in helping technical managers to be successful leaders in their organizations.

How to be a Better Workplace Coach
Are you a workplace coach who aspires to be a better coach? Ask yourself some powerful questions as shared in this article.

Increasing Sales Teams' Productivity
Sales people may appear to be busy but they may not be bringing in the desired results. Here are some tips to help them.

Motivating Your Workers for Peak Perfomance
I was asked by a manager: How do I define my role? They were having trouble inspiring creativity, and wanted their staff to be innovative without their help.

Want High Performance? Look In a Mirror!
The days of do what I say, not what I do, are dead. You and I better be walking our talk! This article was first published in Food & Drink Magazine in 2009.

The Caveman Effect
If you wish to understand the dynamics behind superior team performance, you need to understand the psychology that drives human reaction.

The Power of Vision!

Vision of what can be creates functional pull against the gravity of lowest common denominator, "just doing my job." This is quantum physics married to newtonian physics. Everyday we don't engage our teams with vision, sense of purpose, tangible using values, we lose opportunity and get pulled back to the common place... read more here in the "power of vision", first published in Food & Drink Magazine, 2009.

The Impact of Culture by Choice, Not Chance!
You have a business culture. It simply exists. The question is, are you happy with the results your culture's achieving? If the answer's no, you have an opportunity! You can CREATE Culture actively and choicefully. Read more to find out how. This article was first published in 2009 in Food & Drink Magazine.

Be a Positive Outlier and Change Your World

When you think of it, George Washington was an outlier and so were characters such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Galileo, Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc and Nelson Mandela. Are you a positive outlier? When an outlier is removed from a set of data, its influence is gone. In your sphere of life or work, can your absence be noticeable? Would people wish you were still available to affect their work or life in a positive way? You don't need talent to be an outlier. You need vision of the future you want, decisions to get you started on a path toward your vision and actions that bring you results.

Collaboration – The New Competition
Over the coming years, we will see collaboration become the new competition. Markets around the world are crying out for collaboration as innovation and differentiation become scarce in a sea of commoditised products and services. Sales people who see themselves as collaborators, both internally (colleagues, departments) and externally (customers, competitors), will prosper more than ever.

Talent Is Worthless, Performance is Priceless!
Everyone wants to be a winner. No one works to come in last. Read about a simple strategy to move average performers to superior performers.

Average Performance Isn't Good Enough

Many astute leaders took the opportunity presented by the recession to weed the garden and upgrade their work force. Most businesses that survived this latest recession are much stronger as a result of it. Unfortunately some failed and did not make it. We must now be cautiously optimistic as we close out 2010 and enter into 2011. That includes revisiting our hiring practices to make sure we learned from past mistakes. We need to make sure we don't recreate the same culture or level of complacency that we had to address in dealing with the recession.

Excuses and Explanations

None of us are perfect; therefore, we all must deal with people in our personal and professional lives, realizing that they are not perfect. The challenge arises when we try to determine how best to deal with one another's imperfections. All we can expect from ourselves and others is that we give our best effort. When our best efforts fall short, as they will do from time to time, we must first acknowledge the deficiency and the fact that it has hurt someone else. Next, we must do all in our power to remedy the situation. And, finally, we must take steps so that it won't happen again.

Getting to your North Pole
How to set yourself a challenging goal and identify the strategies to achieve it.

Improve Your Training Sessions with the Five Rights of Training
All trainers need to take stock occasionally of how they are going. Are your training sessions as effective as they could be? Use these Five Rights of training to help you review where your training programs could be missing the mark.

Effective Managers Understand Psychology
Novice managers often struggle to get the best out of their people because they labor under a one-dimensional view of what motivates their employees. In this article, Leslie Allan illustrates how a little psychology can return huge dividends.

Training Employees: Stop Wasting Your Money
You send your people on expensive training courses. Yet your business performance does not seem to improve. Your problem may lie in how you look at training. This article considers two popular views of how training works. Hold the outdated view and you will continue to lose money on training. Act on the enlightened view and your business and people will prosper. Which view do you hold?

Workplace Change in Six Steps
Managing change in today’s organizations is not easy. Those companies that get it right win a significant strategic advantage over their struggling competitors. Leslie Allan shows how you can apply a practical change management process that will help you gain success on your next change initiative.

Maximizing Retail Growth

In these hard times, every customer matters. Retailers must ensure that all customer who contact them have an extraordinary experience which, ideally, leads to better percentage of customers actually purchasing goods and services and larger average sales per customer. Traditional means of increasing store performance, typically training, have not been successful at developing store personnel sufficiently to provide this winning customer experience.

Maximizing New Hire Value
What would it mean to your organization to bring your new hires up to full productivity in half the time? When new hire development programs function effectively, the new hires perform meaningful work sooner, and their managers’, peers’ and trainers’ time involvement is reduced, increasing everyone’s productivity.

5 Steps to Creating a Successful Workplace

A successful workplace that fosters productivity and the growth of its employees is accomplished by implementing five fundamental elements: goal setting, rewards, balance, accountability and feedback. While each element can be implemented on its own, administering all elements as a complete program or initiative in the workplace will work towards producing the desired results that are sought after by managers and executives.

10 Tips for Improving Staff Morale

It's often been said that employees leave managers, not companies. Research conducted by the Corporate Leadership Council (2003) provides support for this assertion. This study found that managers have a significant influence on a worker's level of commitment to their job. The study revealed that more than 70% of an employee's commitment is directly related to the interaction they have with their manager. If the manager/employee interactions are negative, low morale will often result.

Obtaining Peak Performance

First Generation Leaders and Second Generation Leaders have a strong need to be in control. They see their role as that of making and implementing decisions. These men and women show conditional respect – in other words, obtain the results I need in the way that specify, and I will respect you – and they tend to have a low level of belief in the ability of people to manage themselves and to obtain desired results unless they are closely supervised. The result is that, far too often, managers interfere and actually hinder peak performance because of this need to control.

MIND TRAP: When we don’t question assumptions
Steve Major discusses the second of five mind traps that can kill smart decisions - when we don't question assumptions. All of us have various beliefs as to what works in a business. We have various ideologies. You could say that we have entrenched thinking. But to make a smart decision we need to be aware of the fundamental assumptions that are in play in the alternatives we are looking at.

Why do you need Key Performance Indicators?
If you want the right results, make sure you’re using the right measuring sticks

How to get rid of the employee that doesn’t fit

He was tall, dark and handsome and a great lover. From the outside, he appeared to be the ideal date and partner. But after 3 months of living together, Jenny realised that her ideal mate was less than ideal. Whilst he could turn on a charming personality, he liked drinking with the boys each night while she preferred walks in the country. She liked a tidy house and he preferred to live in a mess. Like Jenny, have you ever hired someone who appeared to have all their technical skills for the job, but when put in the work environment turned out to be a complete nightmare? Maybe their CV read perfectly but they did not live up to their billing? If so, read on.

Managing and motivating a team
Keeping team members happy and productive is not rocket science. A few simple, time-tested approaches will produce outstanding results.

A plate of juicy, sliced lemons!
What we think affects how we feel which affects our behaviour which creates our reality? How are you thinking, feeling, behaving?

Top 10 Tips for Managing Down
Your words and actions have a direct impact on how others perceive you here are ten tips to help you become the type of manager that everyone wants to work with...

Find the Right Game

We've all been taught that there are two kinds of people in the world-there are the winners, and there are the losers. But, like any other belief that we all hold dear, it's not quite that simple. The reality is that everyone potentially is a winner. They are simply competing in the wrong game. The skill level and passion needed to become a champion will not transfer from game to game. When the sports history of the 20th Century was written, there was much debate among sports writers as to who was the century's greatest athlete. Virtually all agreed that if he was not the best, Michael Jordan was certainly among the top two or three athletes of the last 100 years.

Some Get It, Some Don't

Have you ever noticed that in the most mundane daily activities, there are some people who get it and some people who don't? When you are trying to merge onto the freeway during rush hour, you will notice that most people simply move up into the acceleration lane and politely and efficiently merge into the flow of traffic. They get it. On the other hand, there are those few lost souls who want to stop at the junction of the entrance ramp of the freeway and wait until traffic is completely clear. They don't get it.

The Sleeping Giant
Recently during a speaking engagement in Hawaii, I had the privilege of touring Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial. It is a moving experience that I would recommend to anyone who has the opportunity to take advantage of it. From time to time, it is good to be reminded that freedom comes at a very high price.

Stop Assuming And Start Asking
The mistake that is most common throughout the sales industry is that, sale consultants think they know what their clients want rather than ask. By asking the right questions you will not only uncover your clients buying strategy but most importantly find out if you can deliver on what they are looking for.

You Are Not Your Performance

We live in a totally results-driven society. You are only deemed to be as good as your most recent victory. This has set up a consistent state of low self-esteem for many people. Recently, I enjoyed the NCAA National Championship Basketball Tournament. For months, every team in the country has a goal of making it to the tournament. Then, at the end of the season, 64 teams are selected from various parts of the country. As the tournament progresses, teams are eliminated one-by-one until, at the end of the season, the team remaining is named the national champion.

Doing One Thing Well
Our society rewards people handsomely who can only do one thing, but can do it well. It's not imperative that the thing they do well be of large significance. News reports are full of the fame, success, and notoriety of Mark McGuire and Tiger Woods. In a global perspective, playing golf or baseball is not terribly important. What matters in this case is how well they do it.

Hire On Attitude Not Skill
It seems as though every year that passes by; the process of hiring quality sales people is becoming more and more expensive. Recruitment fees are increasing by the year, and the resources required to train new recruits can sometimes cost thousands of dollars. This is why hiring the right sales person is absolutely critical to the success of any business.

How To Discover What Truly Drives Salespeople
Finding and keeping quality salespeople is not the easiest task for any company. Before you hire any new staff you need to first discover what motivates sales people to succeed within your organisation so that you can ensure their intentions are aligned to your company.

The Sales Phobia That Kills Bottom Line
When it comes to closing a sale the most important ingredient is being comfortable in taking the order. Too many sales people get nervous or are fearful that the customer will say no. What’s the point of being in sales if you’re not comfortable in taking the order?

The Single Most Important Trait Within Salespeople
It’s surprising that there are so many sales people these days selling products without first building rapport. They are missing the first and most important step required when selling a product or service which is costing organisations heavily, with the loss of revenue and decrease in repeat business.

Work is Best if You "Practice Safe Stress"

Sorry, I can't just make a quick list here. I am going to give you some tips and tolls to practice "SAFE STRESS". However, it cannot be done in a few sound bites. It will take some searching inside yourself to find your specific issues that keep you from personal fulfillment and even financial freedom. This is a time to do some spring cleaning of your old patterned behavior and beliefs that keep you, (you're not alone, they keep all of us) from reaching peak performance and be able to stay there.

Ageism...Between Truth and Consequences

At its lowest common denominator, being employed is about problem solving. You are hired to solve a problem whether it is answering the telephone or programming a computer. Your ability to consistently, effectively, and efficiently solve that problem can often determine your long-term career or industry success. So, if the problem you were hired to solve evolves, it will probably behoove you to evolve with it.

Five Reasons Agency Compensation Should Not Be Relationship Based
Don't get me wrong, measuring and managing a high quality relationship is important between agencies and marketers. But at the ANA Marketing Financial Management Conference last week in Phoenix, Arizona, there was a presentation by Sarah Armstrong on Value Based Agency Compensation.

The Toxic Manager

Most managers are not comfortable with a simple truism that the current condition of any organization is direct reflection of leadership. In other words, managers are accountable for the current success or failure of the team. This epiphany is a rude awakening for some and a sad reality for others. The challenge faced by most aspiring leaders is the brutal accountability that accompanies autonomy. In other words, team performance is directly related to "who" is on the team and "how" they are managed. The wrong people certainly influence performance and this quantification of talent is the primary measure of success and failure.

Presentation Performance Anxiety? Use it!
If you suffer from nerves before you present, you are not alone. Most professional performers experience nerves before they take the stage. Keep in mind that your audience sees what you allow them to see--and discover techniques that help.

Mediocrity at Work

Mediocrity can be seen as the decision to produce an inferior to middling performance. Take a moment to reflect on your Company and notice what efforts are made regarding pride in performance and attitude to work in general. If you are noticing that your team seem happy to accept that: • Okay is good enough, or that • Some effort is better than none - or even that; • We’re okay as long as we break even You could be part of a growing number of companies and corporations who are experiencing the ‘Mediocre Phenomenon’.

7 Steps to Make Leadership Simple
Important characteristics that make for an effective leader

How Does That Work?
How would you respond to this question: \"Are you one of the top 10% of performers in your company?\" This question posed in a Business Week survey found that overall 90% of surveyed executives, middle managers, and employees from both large and small companies thought they were, indeed, in the top 10% of performers.

Building Confidence at Work

Should building confidence at work be your concern? Why should you invest in making people feel better about themselves? Surely it is up to the individual to deal with this in his or her own way? Unfortunately, you cannot afford to ignore this any longer, as what we are now discovering is that an individual’s lack of confidence and belief in themselves impacts on everyone around them, and ultimately the organisation as a whole. Lowered motivation, decreased productivity and fewer profit margins develop in direct proportion to lack of initiative taken by a Company in addressing this. Simply put lack of confidence is blocking motivation, attitude and ultimately performance in some workplaces here in NZ.

What Is Wrong with Performance Appraisals?
How effective are organizations at driving superior performance from their employees? If we are to believe human resources professionals, the answer is that our performance management systems are failing to make the grade. This is the sobering conclusion from Sibson Consulting\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s worldwide survey.

Performance Appraisals and Compensation: A Deadly Mix
The annual jostling for pay rises based on employee performance is often described as ineffective by HR professionals, largely dreaded by managers and treated with suspicion by employees. So why do organizations still engage in this annual exercise?

Employee Performance Management: Time to Reinvent the Wheel
Performance-management systems are broken at the majority of companies in every corner in the world. By teasing apart results of a recent worldwide survey of HR professionals, we've seen how evaluations are viewed as a joke by employees, a waste of time by many managers and a non-actionable talking point by some senior executives.

How Top Management Views Performance Appraisal Systems
How important is your leadership team's support of the performance management system in your organization? A recent study into the views of HR professionals towards their appraisal system sheds interesting light on the value of top level endorsement.

Great Stories Change Cultures

It’s always fascinating talking to clients and listening to engrossing, sometimes astonishing, stories about their organisations and their Brands – what surprises me is how few of the really good ones are used as company assets to strengthen their cultures and inspire their workplaces to positive change. Many change initiatives fail is because they rely too much on the classic ‘data gathering, analysis, report writing, and presentations’ instead of more creative approaches that use great stories to grab feelings and to motivate real performance improvement.

Trust Measurement: How to Measure Smarter

Trust is an attribute, a value and a character trait that is very much on every leader's mind. We are seeing more and more programs which focus on building and maintaining trust. Leaders want to be sure that they are getting value for money and therefore look at measures which can report the ROI. Sometimes, though, this focus on immediate or even medium term ROI misses the deeper meaning behind these kinds of efforts. When you are changing attitudes and behaviours, you are working at a deep level of change. You have to look at different performance metrics which don't focus on quantitative results but can look at the deeper layers of change. Dr. Dean Spitzer is my performance guru and has written a useful guide on Transformational Performance Measurement

wide wide world of archiving - life beyond compliance
wide wide world of archiving - life beyond compliance

5.0 How is the performance of businesses affected?: Gender Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness in Africa, 2007
The analysis of constraints developed in the previous section indicates that, although there are cases in which women are more likely to identify certain obstacles as “major” or “very severe,” men’s and women’s perceptions tend to be in agreement more often than we might have expected.

2.1 Growth performance IV: Economic Report on Africa 2007
High growers vs. least performers: growth at the top and stagnation at the bottom

2.1 Growth performance II: Economic Report on Africa 2007
Subregional growth performance varies substantially

Unleashing Performance: NLP and Neuro-Semantics for Accelerated Achievement
What stops us from performing at the leve we want to? What keeps us repeating the same mistakes again and again, unable to move forward? The answer isn't out there.... It's in here.

Your Personal Philosophy: Belief Systems and The Acquisition of Knowledge
Our lives are a function of our persona philosophy - our hidden belief systems that we use to navigate the world. Behind every problem and all superior performance is a personal philosophy.

The Truth About Who Can Really Motivate A Person According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach

One of my executive coaching clients was talking with me about how complacent and apathetic his employees had become and how lackluster the company’s performance has been this year, compared to the potential that really exists within the staff. This led us into a discussion about whether a leader should be held accountable to, and for that matter, should the leader be expected to “motivate” others. And our discussion led us to agree that it is not the leader’s job to motivate the staff. What? Did that surprise you when you read that? I can imagine that a majority of readers of this article will be surprised. Now, what role does that leave for a leader in business regarding motivation? An effective leader must commit to some primary actions regarding motivation. Here are five (5) actions a leader must commit to do.

The Truth About Who Can Really Motivate A Person According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach

Rewards and Recognitions to Motivate Employees
Knee deep in the challenge of leadership today, business owners and managers, can parlay the changing role of work to create and sustain an environment that helps motivate and keep employees. There’s no one right answer, there is no magic wand and don’t try to mind read how to motivate someone.

Sales Development isn't rocket science, it's neuroscience!
Customers buy when they are understood. So the successful salesperson shows customers that he or she understands them by giving them what they expect and more. Neuroscience ‘Brain Mapping’ helps people to identify the customer’s need and establish rapport with then more effectively.

Incentive Compensation Plans that Work

A carefully designed, well executed incentive compensation program will enable a company to attract, motivate and reward top-notch employees. It will also sustain a creative, performance-driven work environment, as well as support behaviors that align with the organization's business objectives, marketing goals and overall strategies. The article reviews the characteristics of a successful incentive compensation program including the requirement that the plan be integrated into overall business objectives, business processes, and financial/accounting practices. Areas discussed include setting up a compensation program, aligning it with multiple strategies, determining quantifiable results, and linking it to a clear payout formula and timeline.

Potential And Performance

When looking at potential and performance it seems that commonly, there is, a difference between what people can and do achieve. Although there are potentially many reasons for this, while this gap exists, the impact on teamwork, motivation, profit margins and the culture of a company is significant and needs to be addressed. When considering potential, the following questions highlight whether it is underperformance due to unrealised potential, rather than lack of ability, that you are seeing.

Three things you must do before putting pedal to the metal and accelerating your sales

Having a well-oiled sales team and a great product ready to launch can fill your head with a lot of tempting plans. Just like finding a shiny roadster waiting in your garage on a sunny day and that wide open road beckoning, the urge can be irresistable to turn the key, hit the accerlator and see just how fast that thing can go. Don’t start your engine quite yet. There’s an important checklist you need to pay attention to first.

Make Performance Reviews Really Count
Some bosses are afraid to reprimand, others are uncomfortable giving positive reinforcement. Both tasks are necessary and if performed in an unsatisfactory way can hurt your relationship with your employees.

Mice and Men

Recently, there was a university study done using white mice as the subjects for a psychological experiment. The mice were put into a cage with a red light and a green light on opposite sides of the space. The experiment was designed in such a way that when a bell rang, a mouse could rush to the red light or the green light to receive a treat. The treat was only presented for a few seconds, so that if the mouse guessed wrong and went to the green light when the treat was being presented at the red light, the mouse didn't have enough time to rush across the cage and get the treat.

How Jeremy Lin Deals with the Pressure of Expectations And You Can Too
In a matter of weeks, Jeremy Lin went from sleeping on his brother’s couch to being in the glare of the global spotlight, faced with the expectations of his coach, team, hundreds of thousands of fans and fellow Asian Americans. That's pretty much the recipe for pressure. Read on to learn how he handles the pressure, and you can too.

Leaders: Hold Yourself Accountable

A favorite phrase of most leaders these days is that we need to hold our people accountable. It is important to make sure all people are living up to their commitments and responsibilities. One observation is that not too many leaders have the same zeal when it comes to holding themselves accountable for the performance of the entire enterprise. The culture of the organization is what usually determines level of performance, and the culture is created by the top leaders more than anyone else.

Servant Leadership: A Way To Authentic Power and Prosperity

Do you believe you can effortlessly ride the path to prosperity - living in a state of wealth, balance and ease? Over the past few months, I've been actively working on my signature keynote and book, A New Path To Prosperity, which is the first book to explore the psychological and social conditioning that causes destructive leadership behaviors (including CEO greed), while offering 7 concrete practices for transcending strife, and becoming a powerful leader that drives positive change.

The Art of Leadership: Rewarding Excellence

Great leaders know that they cannot expect their employees to do their best work, day after day, year after year, without some sort of meaningful acknowledgement. They understand that to get the most from their people, they’ve got to recognize their accomplishments in ways that have an impact, that serve to reinforce hard work and encourage continued creativity and innovation. Here are a few effective ways to reward employee excellence.

Ten Strategic Actions To Improve Sales Staff Productivity

How effective is your sales staff? Are they a high performance team, a mediocre performance team or a woefully “underachieving” and blatantly poor performance team? If you have mediocre, underachieving or poor sales people, what are you doing to change that? If your sales staff is not effective, not performing to its potential and is in need of improved performance, Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach offers ten (10) strategic actions to take to change that.

Preparation, Performance, and Prevention
I spend a considerable amount of my time giving speeches, writing books, screenplays, or these weekly columns, and working on movies and TV shows. Each of these activities requires a certain amount of preparation followed by a performance or production of the final product. Preparation is like many things in our world. It is valuable in the proper dose but detrimental if you overdose.

How to Get Consistent Results From Your Employees
If your team can’t get meet the established objectives, your days as a leader are numbered. Your job, as a leader, is to get a group of diverse professionals to work together to achieve a common goal – regardless of the obstacles you face. What you can expect to see in return for implementing the following steps is a team of employees who produce consistent, positive results.

How To Run A Staff Appraisal
Running staff reviews are tough! Here are some top tips on how to run them more effectively.

Getting Intuition Into Your Innovation Act
Expert Innovation Trainer Arupa Tesolin shows you the best ways to connect intuition to innovation in your business.

Getting Business Smart in 2007
"History does repeat itself" ... even in your business UNLESS you consciously break the pattern. Read If you are tired of slow growth, marginal results and mediocrity, find out the single most important step you can take to prevent repeating your business history in 2007. This one step will jumpstart you to achieving accelerated growth in the new year.

Getting Business Smart in 2007
"History does repeat itself" ... even in your business UNLESS you consciously break the pattern. Read If you are tired of slow growth, marginal results and mediocrity, find out the single most important step you can take to prevent repeating your business history in 2007. This one step will jumpstart you to achieving accelerated growth in the new year.

CEO Coaching...Why it's worth the investment
This article describes the many benefits that CEO Coaches afford their clients...

CEO Coaching...Why it's worth the investment
This article describes the many benefits that CEO Coaches afford their clients...

Ten Survival Strategy Tips For Hostile or Sensitive Interviews From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach

Have you ever been interviewed by the media in a hostile or sensitive situation? Did you feel prepared to handle that interview? Do you ever notice or even pay attention to how many times people are embarrassed or made to look foolish or ignorant during tough interviews? Do you realize the positive impacts that can result from a superb performance in those hostile interviews? Well, if you have noticed and do realize the potential benefits of strong interview performance, what have you done about it? If you want to increase your preparedness when being interviewed on very sensitive subjects, then you might be open to some advice to help you in your future experiences. Your strategic thinking business coach offers the following ten (10) survival strategy tips on handling sensitive and hostile interviews.

Ten Tips on How To Gain Outstanding Performance From Your Team Through Coaching and Mentoring

Are you witnessing outstanding performances by your employees? If not, are you providing some feedback to your employees as to their level of performance and your satisfaction with their performance? Are you doing any coaching or mentoring with your employees? Let's presume that many of you are not providing feedback, coaching and/or mentoring of any kind or are doing so at a level that is not producing positive results. You need to institute some form of an ongoing program to monitor, mentor and coach your staff on a regular basis if you want to have outstanding performance. The age-old argument that there is not enough time to mentor and coach and give feedback is dysfunctional and not acceptable. Here are 10 tips from your strategic thinking business coach to help you use coaching & mentoring to gain outstanding performance.

Appealing As Part Of Performance Managment
Even with a well designed and implemented performance management process, there may be situations when an employee has a serious difference of opinion with the manager about his or her performance assessment.

Reviewing The Perfomance Management Effectiveness
How can we make sure that the performance management process we have designed has yielded the outcomes that we planned? Obviously, we cannot sit back and relax assuming it had before we check some parameters and standards.

Monitoring The Performance Management Process
For a performance management process to be effective, progress must be continuously monitored. Monitoring means developing a system that enables the organization to follow up on the progress of its projects and how its employees are behaving on the doing their jobs. A good monitoring system should be driven by the following directions:

A Checklist For Performance Managment Planning
The planning phase of performance management is vital in setting the goals and direction of that critical process. It might help to develop a checklist of the things an appraisor would need to have in place before, during, and after the appraisal starts. The following checklist may be used as a guide:

Smart Planning For Performance Managment
If you have just designed a new performance management process for your organization or if you've made changes to an existing process, you will need to hold information sessions with all staff about the new system before implementing it. This will increase employee buy-in into the process and avoid resentment and confusion.

Smart Planning For Performance Managment
If you have just designed a new performance management process for your organization or if you've made changes to an existing process, you will need to hold information sessions with all staff about the new system before implementing it. This will increase employee buy-in into the process and avoid resentment and confusion.

Designing A Performance Management System
The design of a performance management system requires you to think about the features that would make performance management effective in your workplace. The goal is to design a performance management process that provides an accurate picture of each employee's accomplishments.

Organizational Readiness To Performance Management
Organizational Readiness to performance management is crucial in ensuring an efficient and effective evaluation of the individual, departmental, and organizational performance. Therefore, it is important that, before you develop a performance management process, other human resources management practices should be in place to support the process .

Managing Employees Performance

Measuring employee performance has come a long way from the annual performance appraisal to an on-going performance management process. In the past, managers and employees met once a year for the annual performance appraisal (review) to look back at the work done during the previous year and to evaluate what was accomplished. Human resources managers, managers/ supervisors and employees have come to realize that only looking back does little to improve performance. In recent years, there has been a shift away from performance appraisals to a more comprehensive approach called performance management.

Measuring the Quality of Your Hires
Most employment managers measure success in the wrong way. Looking at the cost of a hire, the number or even the speed of the hire is at best misleading and at worst an inaccurate measure of hiring success. The primary (or perhaps sole) measure of hiring success should be the quality/performance of the hire.

Being Accountable for Accountability.

Everywhere I go in my consulting practice, performance "accountability" is among the top two or three concerns of senior executives. Accountability has various definitions, but the word is usually used to denote personal responsibility for getting desired results. It's an admirable idea, and all good managers and leaders want their people to be "accountable." Of course accountability doesn't apply only to rank and file employees. Managers and leaders should be accountable for holding others accountable. After all, isn't getting good results with and through other people the very reason we have managers and leaders?

Being Accountable for Accountability.

Interviewing using behavioural questioning techniques
Interviewing is the most time consuming aspect of recruitment. Yet, worryingly, it also can be one the least effective ways to judge suitability and performance. This article gives insights on how to benefit from interviewing best practice through the use of behavioural questioning techniques

Interviewing using behavioural questioning techniques
Interviewing is the most time consuming aspect of recruitment. Yet, worryingly, it also can be one the least effective ways to judge suitability and performance. This article gives insights on how to benefit from interviewing best practice through the use of behavioural questioning techniques

Do You Know and Plan For The 3Rs for Your Business
Everyone is familiar with the 3-R’s from school – reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. This was our first introduction to an effective performance model. As proficiency increased in each R, performance was further enhanced. Effective performance models by their very design are a continuum that automatically raises performance to the next level.

Performance Coaching
Performance and performance development have to be measured in the consequences or the value to be expected alone. Value means, however, more than performance. Value is rather the result of the operational activity, added value for it so.

Empowering Sales Beliefs
The sales results you create are based on your performance. Performance has many components for example, our activities and abilities that are typically where many organisations focus on. Yet beneath the surface, our beliefs about ourselves, our customers, our job, can either help or hinder our performance.

Master Your Game: Performance Management
Having a performance plan and honing your coaching dialogue skills will help you with your performance management role. As a leader, managing the performance development of your team is critical to attaining the success you seek. A good performance development system, executed expertly, will assist your team to grow and develop to meet the goals and objectives that you will evaluate them against.

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