Traditional personality profiles such as Myers- Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI), FIRO B, DiSC® and Hogan instruments can be beneficial. They show you what your predisposition is to different behaviours. The downside to personality-based tools is that they are difficult to use as a benchmark. Personality, in general, stays the same unless we have a significant…
“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.” – Santosh Kalwar
Team breakthroughs require a combination of skill and expertise, constructive interpersonal behaviour and rational thinking. The size of your breakthrough depends on the quality of the decision, multiplied by the degree to which the decision is accepted by those who must implement it. Quality and Acceptance are brought about through consensus decision-making. Skill and expertise…
Can we move the whole by focusing on just one part? I wonder what Archimedes would have said?
“The thing for me is recognising that, as a business leader, you have a responsibility to lead a company for the future, leaving it in a better place in five, 10, 15, or 20 years’ time. My job is to make sure that commercials are strong, the customer experience is great, the culture of the…
Survival Simulation Series exercises require team members to work together effectively to deal with life-threatening situations. These simulations can be used as icebreakers, to establish Constructive norms within a new work group, or to introduce members to the value of synergy or to gauge their synergistic problem-solving skills. How Simulations work Synergy occurs when the interactive…
For collective problem solving to be really effective there are three things to get right: 1. Get the right people in the room. It seems obvious but often goes unchecked. Do you have the subject matter expertise in the room or, at a minimum, do you have access to them? Are the decision makers present…
There are fundamentally two approaches to dealing with resistance to change. First, we can see the power in it and utilise it in the same way as Dr. Kegan and Dr. Lahey suggest in my last post or, we can see it as harmful and try to eliminate it. In 2001 Prof. Victoria Mabin and…
Are you busy or time poor but need to make a decision? Stuck for a way through a problem? Overwhelmed by the complexity of a situation you need to deal with? You know the value of creating space in your diary to think. You also know that thinking time can be difficult to get. So,…
At KiwiRail, adopting a high performance, high engagement strategy has helped them boost engagement, increase productivity and improve health and safety.
“It’s worth remembering that we lived in tribes for millennia, long before we learned how to speak. Emotional connection is our default. We only added words and symbolic logic much later. There are a few places where all that matters is the words. Where the force of logic is sufficient to change the moment. The rest…
“If one studies true logic, one finds that the answers—and the opponent’s attitude—are in us. So we don’t have to search for the answer, because the question contains the answer in it. It is a matter of going into it in depth; that is the true meaning of logic.” – Chögyam Trungpa
“Our work is essential to our adjustment as human beings. We all need to be able to apply our full potential capability in our work in order to fully realize ourselves as individuals.” – Elliot Jaques
“The type of person you are is usually reflected in your business. To improve your business, first improve yourself.” – Idowu Koyenikan
What is culture? ‘Culture’ is a term that has become an important part of any organisation’s vocabulary and a defining characteristic when talking about the organisation to both employees and customers. However, what it really means, how it works, and the impact it has on performance are often misunderstood. At Human Synergistics International, they define “culture”…
“Change is upon us, and we can neither run nor hide. The only answer is to create new nimble businesses capable of adroitly responding to the chaotic conditions produced by constant change. It won’t be easy. Decades of deeply ingrained procedures, traditions, attitudes, and cultural biases about managing change must be jettisoned. In their place,…
“Unhappiness and dissatisfaction are not signs of mental illness, but a sign of growing intelligence.” – Ken Wilber
“That ‘change makes us uncomfortable’ is now one of the most widely promoted, widely accepted, and underconsidered half-truths around…. it is not change by itself that makes us uncomfortable; it is not even change that involves taking on something very difficult. Rather, it is change that leaves us feeling defenseless before the dangers we ‘know’…
“Leaders create an environment in which everyone has the opportunity to do work which matches his potential capability and for which an equitable differential reward is provided.” – Elliot Jaques
“In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the…
