Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that change is difficult or requires some special skills which you might not have.  In reality, we are dealing with change every day.  The weather, how we are feeling, new food in a different restaurant, visiting new places are just a few examples.  The next time you are faced with a major change, ask yourself the following questions:

What are you resisting?
Why are you resisting?
What are you afraid of?
What is the cost to me of not changing?
What benefits are there?
What would I need to do to make the change?
What is the first step I could take?

So what gets in the way of you making change?

In the week 6 of The Apprentice, the teams were given 10 items to sell.  They were required to do research, identify the gems and then sell.  As ever there were a few red herrings.

This week Sir Alan chose two of the more vocal and potentially more confident candiadates to lead the teams.  Philip led one team and Ben the other.

It seemed like Philip had learned from the past when he started off by trying to clear the air with Lorraine who there had been conflict in the past.  While this was a very positive step, sadly it did not last and throughout the task he did not listen effectively.  One thing that he failed to consider was the contribution that Lorraine was trying to make about a rug (which turned out to be one of the most valuable items) and as a result the team ended up making a net loss of £34.

Ben, as leader of Empire was totally confident in himself and was determined to lead from the front, taking 7 out of the 10 items for his sub-team and allocating 3 to the other sub-team.  The results were even worse than Philip’s team, a net loss of £169.

While it is easy to sit and watch and make observations when you were not the person doing the task, there were some real big learning points for leaders:

1. If you are going to be selling something, you need to make the time to do some proper research into what the items are worth.
2. The leader needs to take the time to determine the different roles that need to be performed and then assign these so that all of the key things are covered.
3. You need to have some plan of attack.  It seemed that neither of the teams had thought much about where they might find some buyers for the items they were selling.  This could have saved them time.
4. You always need to be willing to listen.  In reality, it would have taken very little time for Lorraine to determine whether the carpet was valuable or not.  Philip could have made the decision to let her have a set period of time to do the research.
5. The job of the leader is not to be macho superman or wonderwoman.  It is to lead the team.  Ben, by deciding that 7 of the items would be taken by his sub-team was trying to be superman rather than leading.
6. You need to be able to acknowledge what you don’t know.  Philip was speaking like he knew with certainty that the rug was worth nothing when he clearly did not know.   

The tasks are clearly becoming more challenging week by week and I am sure more insight about the leadership capabilities or otherwise is going to emerge in the coming weeks.

You can watch The Apprentice at 9pm every Wednesday on BBC One or check out the website by clicking here

Over the last few months, I have been noticing more a more people who want things to happen in their business, career and life and at the same time seem reluctant to take responsibility for making it happen.

People often look for circumstances to justify why things are not happening.  It might be:

“There are too many other people in this area in the same business sector as me so I will never make a decent living”

“Organisations are flattening structures all of the time so it is almost impossible to get a senior role”

“I have no time to exercise on a regular basis even though I know it is important for my health and well being”

“I hate my job but I just need to get on with it to pay the bills”

“I need to keep my mouth shut on this issue to keep the peace”

It is all too easy to say to ourselves that this is the way it is.  The truth is that to achieve anything in our life, we need to take responsibility for making it happen or to choose and accept what we have. 

So how can you start to take responsibility and start to move forward on those things that are important to you?

1. Decide to take charge

Whenever you are struggling consciously choose to take 100% responsibility for the results you achieve.

2. Identify what you need to do

We often fall into the trap of saying “I don’t know.”  If this happens to you, take responsibility for finding out.

Imagine for example you want to get your first senior manager role.  Research the skills, knowledge, experience and personal attributes that are needed, assess against what you have and find ways of closing the gap.

Alternatively you might be struggling to get clients.  Sit down and look at how you are promoting yourself.  Assess what appears to be working and what is not.  Look for areas that you have not explored.  For example, one of the new strategies I adopted for my business in the last few months was article marketing.

3. Ignore self doubt

You can be pretty sure that when you decide to take charge, your gremlin or fears will start to take over.  All of your self doubts, anxieties and limiting beliefs will make an appearance.  Thank your gremlin for his/her concern and ignore it.

4. Get into action

If you want to build your responsibility taking muscle, start taking action.  You will be amazed how quickly things start to happen and how motivated you become to do more.

Many businesses have developed a clear business strategy, yet there are others who have not.  Some resist pulling together a business strategy because they think they don’t know how or because they fear that it will restrict them.  The good news is that a business strategy can be as simple and flexible as you like, provided you answer the following 10 key questions.

1. Where are you now?

The starting point for any strategy is an assessment of where you are right now in terms of your business.  Sometimes called a Position Audit, this question allows you to put a marker in the ground against which you can measure forward progress.

2. What’s your vision?

Once you know where you are at the moment, you need to start to define where you are heading.  Your vision is nothing more than a description of what you would like your business to look like 1, 5 or 10 years from now. 

3. Who are your customers or clients?

A common message in any marketing guidance that you come across is the importance of identifying a niche that you serve.  If you know who your ideal clients and customers are, it becomes much easier to market to them.  There is a lot of truth in the statement that it is impossible to market to a client called everyone.

4. What problems or challenges do you address?

Businesses exist to meet a need.  That need is usually a challenge or series of challenges.  For example it might be making best use of time, implementing major change, recruiting and retaining the best people or improving team performance.  The clearer you can be on the challenges or problems you address, the more likely your strategy will be a success.

5. What products or services do you offer?

When you know who your customers or clients are and the challenges that you address, you need to develop products and/or services to address those challenges.  The key here is to think creatively on how you can make what you offer appeal to potential customers and clients.

6. Who are your competitors?

I commonly hear people saying that there are too many other businesses doing the same as them.  The reality is that every business, no matter what they do has competitors.  It is essential that you know who your competitors are.  Remember that competitors are those that are likely to be fishing in the same pond as you for clients.  The good thing about this is that not everyone in the market will be fishing in the same pond, so make sure you are identifying the real competitors.

7. What makes you stand out from the competition?

Every business has a number of things that make it stand out from the crowd.  It might be the years of experience, your own unique way of looking at things, the distinct way in which you package your offerings or unique personal qualities.  Make time to pull out 3 things that makes you stand out from the competition.

8. How will you market your products or services?

There are numerous options open to you when it comes to marketing.  Using the web, writing, speaking, trade shows and networking are just a few of the options.  A useful tip that I got was to have at least 3 channels to market.  Remember too that you might have different channels for different products or services.

9. What will stop you from achieving your vision?

Think about the external and internal factors that will get in the way of you achieving your vision.  This could be anything from your own limiting beliefs to the impact of a recession on your business.

10.  What are your key goals?

The question to answer here is what outcomes will you have achieved and by when.  This might be specified in terms of value of sales, number of clients or customers, client satisfaction or employee satisfaction.  Remember to be as specific as you can be about what you want and by when you want to have achieved it.

It is easy to believe that developing a business strategy is something that is complex and complicated but in truth by answering these 10 questions you can pull together an effective business strategy in just a few hours.

We all like to achieve and in truth achievement does not happen by chance.  The good news is that by doing certain things and adopting certain behaviours, you can achieve more.  I refer to these as the keys to higher achievement.  Keys as you know unlock doors and they can unlock your potential.  I have identified 6 keys that get you on the road to higher achievement.

1. Decide what you want

People are often vague when asked this question.  Try it out with folks.  I am sure that you will hear responses like more clients, a better job, more money, more time and more fun.

You need to get this vagueness out of the way and get specific.

How many clients do you want?

What job do you want?

How much more money do you want?

2. Create a vision

Creating a vision is not a set of meaningless words, which big companies often have.   You need to create a vision that inspires you.  What do you want to achieve in various aspects of your business, career and life?

3. Take big leaps

One characteristic of high achievers is that they are willing to take risks.   Without taking some risk or taking a chance, nothing is going to change.  When taking big leaps, ask your self what could happen if it is a success?

4. Believe high achievement is possible

If you do not believe that high achievement is possible, you will never achieve it.  You will lock the door and no keys will open it.

5. Set goals

Goals give you milestones to measure progress.  They are in effect the compass that allows you to check whether you are on or off course.  Once you have that information you can start to make adjustments to keep or get you back on course.

6. Keep going

Whatever you are trying to achieve, there will be setbacks.  Will you keep going or will you give up at the first sign of challenge?

Bottom Line:  High achievement requires you to raise your game and move beyond your limitations.  Which of the above keys could you start working on today on the road to higher achievement?

Work life balance is often seen as an area of challenge by managers and leaders.  As we progress with our careers, move up the hierarchy it is all too easy to become so focused on our work and lose sight of other important things like family, exercise, sports and hobbies.  Work life balance for me is about having a mix of things in our life.  By nature it will be fluid rather than something that is fixed once and forgotten about.  At a very simple level, achieving work life balance comes down to the 3Cs – clarity, choice and control.  So let’s explore each of these in more detail.

Clarity

If we are honest most of the time we just bob along from day to day without giving much thought to what we want. Getting clarity on what we want is the first step in getting results in terms of work life balance.  List out the common areas of your life such as money, career, health, family, fun, relationships and contribution to the community.  Armed with this information, write out what you would like that area of your life to be like.  In doing this, be as specific as possible about the outcomes you want.  For example, earning an annual salary of $100,000, working a maximum of 45 hours, spending 3 hours a week exercising are all specific outcomes.  So the first step in improving work life balance is getting clarity on what you want.

Choice

We always have choices.  Even choosing to do nothing is a choice.  Yet when it comes to work, we can often fall into the trap of being passive when it comes to choices.  Getting work life balance requires you to make choices around how you spend your time, the meetings that you attend, how you deal with telephone calls, how you handle e-mails, what you keep doing and what you delegate are all choices.  To start improving your work life balance determine what you do best, where you have the greatest impact and then make choices based on this criteria.

Control

Are you taking control or are you a puppet on string?  Those that excel in work life balance take control of their schedule rather than let others dictate it.  We have all probably worked with people who are always late for meetings or worse still cancel at the last minute because they have over committed themselves.  Taking control is not about being difficult but setting out boundaries that you work to and look others to work within.  It makes it easier all round.

Bottom line – work life balance is a fluid state rather than something that you fix and forget about.  Addressing the 3Cs, clarity, choice and control can make a huge difference to improving work life balance.  So what’s your next step in improving your work life balance?

Last night was week 5 of The Apprentice in the UK.  The task to create a brand identity for a new breakfast cereal.

Ignite were led by Marketing Consultant Kimberly with Empire being led by License Development Manager Kate.

Your immediate thought would be the team that won would be the team led by the expert Marketing Consultant.  Yet again we saw that being the expert is not always a guarantee of success.

So what did we learn from this week:

1. It is easier to be an expert than lead and manage a team
2. If you are leading a team you need to be willing to take decisions
3. When time is short, there is no room for procrastination
4. If you are the leader and are not convinced about an idea, you need to be willing to speak up and say so
5. If you let people who throw tantrums if they don’t get their way continue to behave in this way, you are giving a message, sub-consciously that it is okay
6. You need to sort out time utilsation and priorities and create a plan, otherwise you end up not having enough time to spend on things that really matter- the cereal box in the case of the losing team
7. How you say things makes a difference.  Kate, the project manager of the winning team made great use of supportive language

At the end of the day, the finished product from the winning team was streets ahead of the losing team and is often the case being an expert does not always result in effective leadership.

You can watch The Apprentice at 9pm on BBC1 or on the BBCiplayer

As a manager or leader, part of your role is to give feedback to your team.  Feedback is incredibly important to individuals and teams.  They want to know what they are doing well and where they need to develop.  Sadly, managers and leaders are often poor at giving feedback or worse still, don’t give it at all.  So what are my 10 top tips for giving feedback?

Tip 1: Catch people doing things right

It is so easy to fall into the trap of only giving feedback when things have gone wrong.  In reality people get more right than they do wrong in the work place.  Make a point of noticing when people do things right like hitting sales targets, dealing with an angry customer or hitting deadlines.

Tip 2: Look for the signals that the employee wants feedback

People are sometimes a little hesitant to ask directly for feedback.  They may ask in a much more subtle way by asking:

• How they are doing in the job

• Whether they are living up to expectations

Be alert to these signals.

Tip 3:  Feedback as early as possible

You don’t have to wait for an appraisal or meeting to feedback.  Whether the feedback is positive or negative, give it at the earliest opportunity.

Tip 4: Focus on behaviours

It is important to focus on the behaviours that are helping or getting in the way of achievement when giving feedback.  For example:

• I notice you were behaving aggressively in your dealing with x

• I saw you take decisive action when it was clear we might slip on the timetable

In the first scenario you are referring to aggression as the behaviour in your feedback.  In the second scenario the behaviour you are drawing attention to is decisiveness.

Tip 5: Avoid feedback that cannot be acted upon

The purpose of giving the feedback is to facilitate action.  Make sure is can be acted upon.  For example, there is no point is telling someone who has a stammer or stutter to get their message across quicker.

Tip 6: Check the feedback is understood

The quickest and often most effective way of doing this is to ask the other person to tell you to play back to them what they understand they heard.  This lets you deal with ambiguity there and then.

Tip 7: Give the opportunity to the other party to discuss how the feedback might be improved

If you ask people how you could improve the way you give feedback and allow them to respond authentically, truthfully and openly, you will learn and improve.

Tip 8: Use non threatening language

When giving negative feedback, choose your words carefully.  While you have to make clear the consequences if improvement is not achieved you don’t need to do it in a threatening way.

Tip 9:  Be a role model

One of the most effective ways of demonstrating that you are open to feedback is to actively seek it.  Many organisations have formal 360 degree feedback processes.  One organisation I worked for did not have a formal 360 degree process so I simply sent out an e-mail to a mixture of subordinates, peers and superiors asking them:

• What I did well

• What I did not do so well

• Where I needed to develop

If you are worried that people will be reluctant to respond, ask them to send their responses to your boss and ask your boss to feedback key themes anonymously.

Tip 10: Set up a date for follow up

The final thing to do after giving feedback is to set up a follow up appointment.  This lets the other party know that you are committed to supporting them and to making the necessary change.

Giving feedback will always be a challenge but you can greatly enhance your performance by following these simple but effective tips.

When it comes to expenditure, the biggest single item for the vast majority of businesses is salaries and related costs.  In view of this, one would think that looking after that investment would be a high priority.  Many see it this way but many others don’t.  So why does people management matter?

Cost

It is not uncommon for 60% of the total expenditure of a company to be on staff.  If there were any other investments of this scale on anything else in the business, don’t you think it would be getting a high level of attention?

Talent shortage

Much has been written about talent management over the last few years about the war for talent.  For example, in response to The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) eighth learning and development survey, 47% of respondents identified that there was a shortage of high quality talent in UK organisations.  In some professions these numbers are even higher.  Against this backdrop of talent shortage, people management takes on increased importance.

Without People There Is No Business

While there are some business (such as internet based businesses) that may be less people dependent, the vast majority still are highly dependent on people to:

• Attract clients or customers
• Make sales
• Provide the product or service
• Physically ship the product
• Manage customer relationships
• Keep on top of the finances
• Look after legal aspects
• Set policies
• Innovation
• Sourcing supplies and services

Without people in the above and many other areas of the business, the organisation would simply not function.

Retention

As well as the challenge to attract staff, retention is also a huge issue for many businesses.  The employment landscape continues to change.  Industries are consolidating which means that even big employers cannot give long term guarantees.  There is much greater mobility in the workforce.  Many more people are able to go and work overseas and keep in regular touch with people back home through the use of technology.  All of the above add to the retention challenges that businesses face.

Expectations

Our parents might have been happy just to have a job but those entering the workforce have much greater expectations.  They are looking for and expecting:

• Opportunities for progression
• Challenging and enjoyable work
• Work that has some meaning for them
• A good work environment
• A balance between their work and their life

At the end of the day, if you are an employer who wants to get results and is dependent on people to deliver them, people management needs to be given a high priority.

As a manager you need to deliver results and support the team you manage. So what are my top 5 tips to being a better manager:

1. Be clear on what is expected from you
2. Use our time effectively
3. Know your team and what motivates them to deliver
4. Know your own strengths and weaknesses so that you spend your time doing what you do best
5. Keep learning and developing yourself