My eldest daughter is in her last year of high school and we have been talking about what she wants to do with her future. It is an interesting discussion with her having the entire world at her feet and endless possibilities and opportunities.

It made me start thinking about how once we enter the workforce, we often forget to continue to think forward and create dreams and desires for what we want to do when we “grow up.” I have recently spoken to many people that are at the crossroads in their business or their career (or with their team) and are starting to ask themselves these questions. I think it’s really important to continually revisit.

Here are a few ideas to help you think a bit deeper:

1. Are You Making a Difference? One question I start with when I work with leaders is ‘Are they making a difference?’ This is a very big question as it looks at what their performance in the business is as well as to their colleagues. If you are not feeling like you are contributing, you need to find out what will give you this back. For some people they enjoy the difference they make to other staff, whilst others need to be putting a dent in their market or the world!
2. Are You Being Stretched? Too often we get stuck in a rut or a pattern that just goes through the motions. Many of us know that we need to be stretched and challenged to the next level, but sometimes it is easier to keep doing what we always have (using the excuse of we are too busy to do other things). Identify what could challenge you to the next level. Sign up for that course, put your hand up for that project or explore the new direction for the business that has been in the back of your head.
3. Don’t Be Afraid to Act. Fear is a very powerful deterrent. I have coached many leaders and business owners that know they should have changed things or gone in new directions but they were too afraid to act (too often they realise that if they would have acted sooner they would have probably achieved what they wanted faster!) Do not let fear, which is often disguised by a multitude of options, get in the way. The biggest regret that most people have is that they did not act sooner (or did not get the advice or sounding board to help them take action).

The good news is that we still have time to do the things we want to before we grow up! I am currently starting a new Leadership Mentoring Program for leaders that provides a 90-day timeframe to help them lead more effectively.  

If you’re interested in having a discussion with me about working with you as your Leadership Mentor, send me an email to [email protected]. If you know of someone that would benefit, forward this message to them.

With all the volatility and uncertainty in today’s business world, I am noticing a worrying trend. Leaders are hesitating. Rather than assessing the current environment and developing a strategy to move forward, many are freezing. It is almost as if because things are so chaotic and moving so fast that many leaders are not doing what they should. . .lead.

We all know that the world is very complex and new technology is constantly moving forward to change the way we operate. This however means that we need to keep moving and keep adapting as these changes come to reality.

Here are a few ideas to help you as a leader:

1. Be Clear on Your Vision Forward. Leaders need to have a vision forward. It needs to be a goal and a direction, as well as the culture that will be created or maintained. If there is uncertainty around the way forward, staff get confused and unmotivated. Top talent will buy into a forward vision and they will jump ship if the leadership does not have a clear vision forward.
2. Make Decisions. I remember working with a leader who was a perfectionist. Because of this she did not want to make a decision because she was afraid of it being wrong. Once she realised that one of the most important roles of leadership is to make decisions and live with the outcome she became a much better leader. So what decisions have you been putting off that you should make?
3. Adapt to Change. Nobody has a crystal ball that will predict the future. We will make the best decision at the time and things will change and we will need to adapt. Great leaders adapt to change. More importantly, they are constantly looking for what changes or modifications need to be made so they can quickly integrate them.

Much of this is common sense, however, unfortunately when times are stressful and challenging, we often forget the universal tenants of leadership and go a little ‘off-path’. I am currently starting a new Leadership Mentoring Program for leaders that provides a 90 day timeframe to help them lead more effectively and navigate through challenging times.

If you would like to have a discussion about me working with you as your Leadership Mentor, send me an email to [email protected]. 

I was speaking with a successful CEO about their journey from an early manager to leading a national company with offices in capital cities and thousands of staff. As he was reflecting back to when he first became a manager I noticed that it put a massive smile on his face as he spoke about a few of his mentors that assisted him to develop and evolve into the amazing leader that he’d become.

It got me thinking about how often we forget to have mentors to assist us and guide us when we are in roles of leadership, regardless if it is a large multinational, a regional business or the owner of a small business. We all need mentors that help to encourage and challenge our mindset and approach to enable us to grow to the next level.

So how do you know if you need a mentor? Here are a few key areas that incredible mentors do to help leaders step up:

1. They Help You Clarify Your Future Goals and a Pathway Forward. One of the biggest reasons leaders work with me is that they have an idea of what they want to achieve, they just have a difficult time identifying what this actually looks like and how they can get there. With the stress and uncertainty across a range of industries and businesses, it is even more important that leaders have a vision of where they want to go and how to get there.  
2. Provide Support & Guidance. I remember working with a CEO who mentioned that it can be very lonely at the top. Often you need someone who is a sounding board to bounce ideas and potential scenarios with. This can have a powerful impact on your confidence and ability to get things done when you know you have someone in your corner backing you up and providing you with strategies to make things happen.
3. Assist You in Holding Yourself Accountable. One of the most powerful advantages that a great mentor provides is a process to help you hold yourself accountable. A mentor is not a “life coach” (who are often full of hype but have never achieved great success) but someone who has achieved some great things and can share their wisdom with you. Because of this relationship, they tend to hold you accountable to achieve the things you want, often because they can see the potential that you may sometimes forget.

I believe that leaders are stronger when they have a mentor. They can provide the wisdom, insights, and advice to help us achieve our goals quicker and with a lot fewer headaches!  

If you would like to have a discussion about me working with you as your Leadership Mentor, send me an email to [email protected].  

I was recently asked to work with a very interesting group, they were automotive mechanics across Australia that had won their state competition and were in Sydney to compete for the Australian title. As they were very skilled in diagnosing and fixing vehicles, the National Manager wanted me to work with them on how to stay positive whilst competing, with the winners going overseas to compete in the International Competition next month.

To help, I put together a High-Performance Mindset session that looked at what they could do to help set them up for success during the completion, as well as back at work. During the session, we had a great discussion around the voices that jump up in our heads whilst we are performing a task and how this can sometimes take us off track.

We all have an internal voice that will send us messages throughout the day. Sometimes these voices are positive, and other times they are negative. The challenge for many of us is to ensure that we focus on the positive voices and not listen to the negative ones. So how can you do that? Here are 3 techniques you can use to help keep the voices positive:

1. Acknowledge any voices of doubt—then move on. Whenever you get a voice of doubt try not to just ignore it. This usually means it will keep coming up. A better strategy can be to acknowledge it but don’t dwell on it. Recognise that it has come up and then move onto something else.
2. Get active and release any negative energy. If I look at where some of my negative thoughts or voices of doubts come from they are like little niggling ideas that swirl around in my head. One strategy to use is to physically move to release some of this negative energy. Go for a walk, a run a swim or something that gets you physically active. When we exercise through movement endorphins kick in that make us feel better.
3. Remember self-fulfilling prophecy—what you focus on is what you create. Self Fulfilling Prophecy is when someone puts all their attention onto negative things. They get up feeling negative and continue to focus on the negative throughout the day. I believe that this attracts more negativity and unfortunately drags others into your negative spiral! Focus on what you can be appreciative of or what is going well. Look for these positive things and put the attention there.

So the next time you have some voices of doubt or negativity creep into your mind, remember these simple techniques. The more positive you are, the more your positive energy can spread to others and this can spread to make a positive impact to those around you!

If you would like to get a copy of my book Leadership Hacks: Clever shortcuts to boost your impact and results, please click here.

So I have a question for you. What are you not delegating? We all know that we should be delegating tasks to our staff, unfortunately we often hang onto tasks for too long.

So why don’t we delegate? What is it that keeps us hanging onto tasks that we should be assigning to others? When I was researching my latest book, Leadership Hacks, I found that there were 3 common reasons why leaders don’t delegate:

1. I Can Do It Faster Myself. While doing a single task once, this may be true, the challenge is that when we do not delegate to one of our staff, we deprive them of the opportunity to learn this task. More importantly when you don’t delegate and do this task yourself this means that you have less time to do the important tasks of your role.
2. I Don’t Trust My People. The other reason why we don’t delegate is sometimes we don’t trust our staff’s abilities. If our people do not have the skills to complete something to the standard that we want, this also keeps us from delegating to them. Very few leaders want to risk their reputation on their staff’s inability to get things done.
3. I Don’t Know How To. The final reason why many leaders do not delegate is that they just don’t know how to. They may have tried to delegate in the past, but it did not work. This often leads to blaming their staff, rather than them realising that they don’t have the skills or a process to effectively delegate.

So what should you be delegating? What tasks are you going to provide to your people? Remember to work with your people to train them in the skills that they need. If you would like to learn how to delegate please feel free to download my free white paper on Delegation Hacks.

If you would like to get a copy of my book Leadership Hacks: Clever shortcuts to boost your impact and results that goes into detail on Delegation, please go to amazon.com or any bookstore.

I was asked to observe a leadership team meeting to watch the dynamics and provide some insights as to why a number of people on the team did not actively get involved in the meetings.  As I watched from the back of the room I noticed that the CEO had a very unique approach in the way that he led the meeting.  

Once his direct report shared their weekly update, he would quickly tell them what they should do.  Rather than asking his people for their perspective, he fell into the old school pattern of a traditional leader that just sprays their people with information.  The impact on the meeting was very apparent. Because of this approach the message he was sending to his staff (very senior leaders I may add), was that they did not have the capability to address issues or challenges within their department.

It makes me think about how often we tell when we should be asking.  If you think back to the leaders that you may have had over your career the inspiring ones are the ones that often had an ability to engage you in conversation.  Often they would start by asking you a question that would get you to think a bit deeper, sometimes even stretching the way you think. But they did it in a way that inspired you.  

When leaders just tell their people what to do it often devalues their knowledge, skills, and experience.  Sometimes being told what to do also feels like a bit of interrogation, further disengaging people.

So remember the next time you are talking with your people think about how to start the conversation.  Start with an ‘Ask’ or a question to get them involved and draw out their ideas and then further enhance their response with your expertise to let them know you are there to support them.  If we had more leaders operating this way, I believe that team meetings would improve and the productivity and outcome of the meeting would definitely lift.  

My over 35 soccer team played in the Grand Final. We were playing a team that had won almost every game and we had previously lost to them – twice. With most of us playing on this team for the past 5-8 years we all knew that we had the ability to lift our performance and win. The week before the match the number of messages on WhatsApp skyrocketed. There were plenty of excited comments, strategy recommendations, and a few jokes. Even before we stepped onto the soccer field I could feel the support from the team.

It made me think of a recent conversation I had with a Leader that was having issues with their staff at work. “They just don’t work together as a team, they seem to do their own thing” was his comment. This is a common challenge that many organisations make. A Leader labels their department a “team” but does not do anything to create a positive team culture.

When I asked what activities the Leader was doing to encourage a sense of support and camaraderie, he responded that they did not have time to do anything because their workloads were too busy. And this is the problem.

There are 8 key characteristics to every high performing team (my Masters Thesis was on why most teams fail expanding on Larson & LaFasto’s Team Excellence Model). To create a successful team, a Leader needs to create shared experiences that enable the following to occur:

Clear Elevating Goal: One of the most important characteristics is a clear, elevating goal that 1) challenges the individuals and the team and 2) has a sense of urgency due to the performance objective to be accomplished.

Results Driven Structure: Clear channels of communication, monitoring and providing feedback to individual performance, fact-based judgments and clear roles and accountability for actions comprise a results-driven structure.  

Competent Team Members: The best-equipped people to accomplish a task are seen as being competent. These team members have the technical skills to achieve the desired goals as well as the ability to work effectively with others in their interpersonal interactions.

Unified Commitment: ‘Team Spirit’ is often the sense of enthusiasm or pride that is felt by team members that are committed to achieving a common goal. This includes complete involvement and a balance between individual differences and group unity.

Collaborative Climate: Creating a climate that inspires productivity and commitment to agreed-upon goals is necessary for an effective team to exist. This ‘trusting’ environment is described as having: 1) honesty, 2) openness, 3) consistency 4) respect.

Standards of Excellence: A standard consists of expectations to achieve a required level of performance. Standards represent the minimum level of performance needed for a team to accomplish a goal. This also includes the continuous improvement principle of adapting and change standards over time.

External Support & Recognition: This exists primarily if the team is given the resources needed to achieve their goal. Although it is not necessarily the determining factor of being successful, research has shown the lack of external support and recognition was a common reason why teams failed. This also acknowledges the need for the reward and incentive structure to be viewed as appropriate and fair by the team members.

Principled Leadership: It is readily understood that effective teams have effective leaders. For this to happen within teams, the following 3 things occur: 1) the team members know what to expect from the team, 2) it is understood what the team leader should expect from team members and 3) leadership principles that establish a supportive decision-making process that encourages team members to contribute.

When a leader is aware of these 8 key team characteristics they can build a true team culture that creates incredible results.  

And for those of you that wanted to know…..we ran our hearts out at the Soccer Grand Final and worked together, ending with a win of 1-0. Yes, I am a Grand Final Champion on a great TEAM!  

My daughter is in her last year of high school.  Last week as I was about to step out the door to go to a client meeting and she asked, “Can you make Father’s Day breakfast at school?  It will be my last one.” Of course, she said it with a smile that let me know she really wanted me to be there.

Like many schools, the students help to prepare breakfast for Father’s Day (or Mother’s Day).  The challenge was that I had already booked a series of meetings interstate leaving on Wednesday and returning on Friday night.  The thoughts raced through my mind, what should I do? On one hand, I had made commitments to work and on the other, it would be the last time my daughter and I would be able to share this experience.  

So I changed my plans.  I rearranged the meetings and switched my flight to get back late Thursday evening.  It did cost me a little more and I had to work a bit harder to reorganise, but it was definitely worth it.

As I stood next to my older daughter and my younger daughter I noticed them smiling proudly as their friends and their fathers walked by (of course my younger daughter was stepping away and joking around with her friends, but she would keep coming back to me).  We ate the bacon and egg rolls together and talked about the last school assignments and about the tours we have planned at a few Universities this weekend. And the hug that I gave both of them at the end was just a little bit longer, letting them know that I loved them.

Now I am not perfect and I have missed my share of Father’s Days breakfasts at school, but this was one I am glad that I made the extra effort to spend time together in this little ritual that will provide memories for them in years to come. In fact, I think we need to make time to share more experiences with the ones that we love. We need more family rituals that create a common touchpoint or experience that let them know that we care.  After all, in the years to come what will you be thankful you did? Attend another meeting or having taken the time to be with your kids?

Our soccer team made it into the Semi-finals, which is so exciting.  I have played with the same group of players for the past 8 years and this is the goal that we have had from the beginning to become Grand Champions.

I had a busy week out of Sydney and after arriving home around 9.30pm,  I was excited to spend some time with the family. Then it happened. As we were talking, my wife let me know that my daughter had her year 12 HSC Chinese Exam and also it was the Open day for Macquarie University the next day.  The challenge became who would be able to drive her throughout the day the 90 minutes each way between these two events.  

My wife is a dancer and choreographer who had a massive rehearsal that involved over 100 people that she was madly working on getting ready before opening night.  This meant she really couldn’t be there. So I had to re-examine my priorities. I really wanted to play in the soccer semi-final, but I knew that this was an important moment in my eldest daughters life and she needed someone there to support her.  

After trying to look at multiple creative options the writing was on the wall.  I said that I would miss my semi-final match. When I shifted my priorities something inside changed.  At first, I was a bit upset, but then I started to look forward to spending this one on one time with her as she starts thinking about where she is going to study for the next 3-4 years of her life.

Sometimes I think we get so busy that we forget what is important and we mix up our order of what is important in the ‘big picture’.  This can be at work or it can be at home. Oh, and by the way, my team won the semi-final and I am now playing in the Grand Final tomorrow morning!  Funny how things seem to work out the way they’re supposed to.

If you are looking for strategies to help you focus and get more things done so you have time for the important things, pick up a copy of my latest book. Leadership Hacks:  Clever shortcuts to boost your impact and results.