One of the key roles of first-line leadership is to assist team members with their growth and development. Jim Rohn noted: “A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better”. This involves the mind-set, skills and…
Training, formal or informal, is an important ingredient for growth and development. Not all training is of a high quality, but training serves to stimulate your heart and mind – it gets you to think more broadly, exposes you to other possibilities and helps you evaluate your own progress. Most companies provide adequate training opportunities,…
“Wheel-spinning” literally refers to a situation where a vehicle has lost traction, e.g. on ice, in snow or mud. Here the wheels may spin without the vehicle going anywhere – continued pressure on the accelerator may result in the vehicle digging itself in deeper, thus exacerbating the problem. A new strategy needs to be found…
“What is planted in people is more important than what is poured into them” (Alinda Nortje, Founder and CEO of Free To Grow) Forward-thinking companies typically host many interventions for their employees (workshops, dialogue groups, seminars, e-learning platforms, coaching, etc.) to accelerate learning and grow the knowledge base of the business. Whilst these attempts are…
“A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better” (Jim Rohn) Disinterested managers, disempowered environments and a lack of opportunity to apply new learnings are some of the most common mitigating factors that prevent training from…
Many companies can be commended for the amount of training and development opportunities that they offer their employees. Many of these short (or longer) courses have great value and staff members seem to find them helpful. Employees who attend these courses, however, often complain about the lack of opportunity to implement the principles and suggested…
Getting bogged down by circumstances is probably not an uncommon experience for many – the stresses of life (one’s work and personal contexts) seem to close in on one and one gets “stuck”, immobilised and down-hearted. In spite of these negative emotions and at the same time, one is expected to be fully present at…
Acclaimed athletes and international sports teams have many of them – coaches for different aspects of the game or discipline. This group of professional advisors often includes physiotherapists and masseurs, sports psychologists, nutritionists, fitness specialists and even doctors, quite apart from analysts, agents and the like. All the personnel exist for one thing alone –…
In organisations, supervisors occupy the proverbial “ham in the sandwich” position, getting pressure from above to implement objectives and deliver on targets and pressure from below over issues like available and effective resources and organisational wellness and culture concerns. Many are not adequately trained to handle all these demands and find it challenging to lead…
In a Harvard Business Review study (July 2012), the article “Why top young managers are in a nonstop job hunt” (Monika Hamori, Jie Cao and Burak Koyuncu) described research based on the analysis of international databases of over 1 200 young high achievers and concluded that many of the best and brightest are not receiving the…
In my travels to a variety of organisations, both locally and abroad, I have been amazed at how much training actually takes root amongst management and staff in spite of mitigating circumstances – almost as if people in general actually do want to grow and develop themselves to take on new tasks and become more…
