Leadership Articles

Business » Leadership | By Merudh Patel @ Sunday, 31st August 2008 @ 5:51 PM

When you're building a business through cash gifting it's vitally important that you work with the best cash gifting mentor on the market. A mentor's job is to help you build and develop your business, and it is vitally important that before they help you develop your marketing system and business model they have a thriving one of their own! The number one problem that most individuals getting started in the cash gifting business run into is that their mentor is no more ex... more...

Business » Leadership | By Bart Icles @ Saturday, 30th August 2008 @ 8:41 PM

Leaders within organizations who wish to excel in their fields of business can definitely benefit from leadership training. When it comes to leadership training, there are many different skills that must be learned and applied to make things really stick together. Some of these skills that need to be taught and applied are time management, management assessment, management skill assessment, executive assessment, management consulting, and other related skills. There are many people who ... more...

Business » Leadership | By john mce @ Friday, 15th August 2008 @ 2:09 AM

Team building comes in many shapes and sizes and sometimes gets dismissed as cliche but the fact remains it delivers real benefits in terms of staff motivation, performance and retention. Big business realised this in the 90's and we saw an upsurge in businesses adopting this into their HR strategy and similarly businesses offering team building and team development activities and courses also became prevalent. Despite the popularity of team building among larger companies many smal... more...

Business » Leadership | By Jacqueline Moore @ Wednesday, 13th August 2008 @ 8:46 PM

As a business leader, one of the most important leadership skills you'll ever demonstrate is knowing how to communicate. When you think about it, most business leadership consists of communication of one sort or another. You hold meetings with staff or board members or suppliers, you interview potential managers, you meet customers and shareholders, you chat in the corridor or on the phone. All of these formal and informal moments offer you the chance to influence, to enthuse and to ... more...

Business » Leadership | By Jacqueline Moore @ Monday, 11th August 2008 @ 3:06 PM

When money is tight, what do you do? Stop spending cash? And what does your company do? The same, I bet. You stop taking risks. You stop doing new things. You hope your problems will clear up soon. There's something else you can do besides freeze like a deer in the headlights. Something constructive. And it could turn your business round faster than you imagine. You could take an unusual lesson from the banks. Today's financial chaos is no joke. The global credit crunch a... more...

Business » Leadership | By Patricia Stevens @ Saturday, 9th August 2008 @ 3:14 PM

Opentaps open source ERP decision is necessary for all business leaders. This system is integrated JAVA application, which can help you conduct all main functions in your enterprise - bookkeeping, e-commerce, storehouse, amount available, selling centre and many others. It is a perfect decision for you and your personnel. Though in the last conducted researches, the growth of popularity of the open ERP-systems is not marked (their experts only start studying the given theme), abundantly ... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Thursday, 7th August 2008 @ 2:33 AM

My son plays the clarinet. I don't know if you've seen one up close, but it's a beautiful instrument: a glossy black wooden tube, encrusted with silver stops and levers. But it takes time to learn how to play. (It takes time to learn how to put it together!) Everything to do with this beautiful instrument takes time. One thing I found particularly amazing, when my son started learning how to play the clarinet, was the instructions he was given on how to practise. And... more...

Business » Leadership | By Lee Salz @ Tuesday, 29th July 2008 @ 3:02 PM

When I speak to business executives, one of the challenges I often hear is that their sales team is not doing the things they feel are most critical to the success of the company. I then ask to see their compensation plan. After a thorough read, I share my impression of the message of the compensation plan and ask if this is their intention. That's when things get scary! They look at me blankly and say, "No, our intention is for our sales people to ___" For them, the disconnect has ... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Saturday, 26th July 2008 @ 1:49 AM

Now I'm sure you've read Stephen Covey's excellent book 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'. But if you haven't, you should. It's an inspiring summary of the seven simple but motivational things you need to do to be an inspirational leader. And it can help you to build an inspirational leadership style. I mention Covey's book because my recent research tackles the other end of the scale. I've been looking at 'The Seven Failing... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Friday, 25th July 2008 @ 11:33 PM

It's daunting for business leaders who aspire to improve their leadership to be told to follow the example of Gandhi or Martin Luther King. These people are certainly inspirational, but they're a tough act to follow in the real world. I've therefore been looking at what we can learn from leaders who get it wrong. In researching 'The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders', I've discovered there are thousands of managers who continue to demotivate their co... more...

Business » Leadership | By Lee Salz @ Friday, 25th July 2008 @ 4:38 PM

The other day my nine-year old daughter and two sons (seven and five years old respectively) were playing with neighborhood friends. Out of the blue, my two sons came running home upset because the girls in the group told them they didn't want to play with them. I was puzzled. Wasn't my daughter also in the group? How could she allow these girls to tell her younger brothers that they couldn't also play in the group? Why didn't she defend her brothers? I sat down with m... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Friday, 25th July 2008 @ 1:16 PM

The question I am most often asked by managers is: 'Why won't they do what I want?' This is usually followed by: 'And why don't they work harder?' As leaders and managers, we often assume that, if our employees really wanted to perform better, their performance would just increase. We assume that people's ability to boost their own performance is totally within their own control. This is just not true. Decades of research into motivation and perfo... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Friday, 25th July 2008 @ 1:10 PM

Most people could perform at a much higher level than they do if their boss created a suitable environment for them to flourish in. In many instances, it's the boss who is holding the team back by trying to control it too closely. So ask yourself, do you set unnecessary boundaries for your teams? If you have no idea, maybe you should ask them. "How am I holding you back?" you could ask. One useful technique to adopt is a KISS strategy: use it in this discussion and yo... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Friday, 25th July 2008 @ 8:24 AM

Put people first. It's the great cliche, isn't it? When a business school professor like me asks you 'what's the most productive leadership style?', you know the answer don't you? Put people first. But if everyone knows the answer, why aren't more people doing it? Why aren't executives focused on motivating and inspiring their people? The reality is that people put profits first. They focus on the short-term financial gain without realizing t... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Friday, 25th July 2008 @ 8:02 AM

We learn most from our mistakes. It's true. But problems occur for us when we forget this. Or when we deliberately deny that we made a mistake. And - if we're honest - most of us do this, from time to time. So in this article I want to share with you the IMPORTANCE of learning from your mistakes. AND how best to learn from your mistakes. These ideas were first captured for me in a little known book by Calhoun Wick and Lu Leon way back in 1993, but their thinking on how to... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Friday, 25th July 2008 @ 1:31 AM

Business executives don't have to win votes to get appointed. But to be a successful leader, in the corporate world or the political world, you need to know who you are and what you stand for. Even if you're not the next president of the USA, I urge you to spare five minutes to read these questions. It's a challenge, I warn you. The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Governance developed 15 questions for presidential candidates. It migh... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Thursday, 24th July 2008 @ 6:15 AM

Do you want to change your leadership style? Perhaps you've discovered something in particular that you want to do, or do differently. And this, of course, is the problem. You want to change something you do, but the folks in the office just aren't expecting you to change anything. They don't WANT you to change anything. Also, some people around you may be suspicious or cynical. Not all of them, maybe, but enough to make it tricky to change. So no matter how e... more...

Business » Leadership | By Steven Sonsino @ Thursday, 24th July 2008 @ 5:28 AM

Imagine a bed of oysters, carpeting the bottom of the clear blue ocean, waiting for some adventurous diver to scythe through the dappled waters and bring to the surface the secret pearls trapped inside. OK it's a bit fanciful, I admit, but in this article I'll be highlighting a pearl of wisdom from the ivory towers of the academic world. Now before you get too hung up on the concept of pearls of wisdom from ivory towers, ask the question: is academic research of any value... more...

Business » Leadership | By Cash Miller @ Monday, 21st July 2008 @ 4:44 AM

Being the person in charge can often be very exhilarating for someone experiencing such a feeling for the first time. Whether you are in charge of a project with a team of company employees that are reporting to you or a single employee that you might be responsible for. Either way we all get a rush from the power suddenly handed to us. But those feelings come while working for someone else. Now imagine the rush you will get when you are the ultimate authority over everyone employed by your comp... more...

Business » Leadership | By Ron Subs @ Saturday, 19th July 2008 @ 8:59 AM

Running a company is somewhat like coaching a team. You want all your employees to thrive as they work together to accomplish goals. You can bring team spirit to their game by giving them company custom T-shirts. Then you can use the shirts to foster good will within the company. The first thing you will do when choosing the custom T-shirts is to select the shirt itself. Color is very important. Certain colors just look bad on clothing, no matter who is wearing them. It is also a ... more...