Archive for September, 2010

If you are a manager or leader, an important part of your role will be to appraise performance.

At the same time, I have noticed that this is an area where managers and leaders often struggle.

So what can you do to get better at appraising performance?

1. Make sure that people have clear objectives at the start against which you can assess performance.
2. Set the meeting in context and make it clear what the meeting is and is not about.
3. Encourage the person being appraised to first give their views on how they have performed.
4. When providing your insights, highlight both positives and opportunities for improvement.
5. Give specific examples. These bring alive the feedback that you are providing.
6. Spend time talking about future aspirations.
7. Keep the focus on helping others to achieve their optimal performance.

The reality is that some simple adjustments can revolutionize your skills in appraising performance.

So what’s your best tip to getting better at appraising performance?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Time is the ultimate limiting factor. It does not matter who you are; you have 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week, 744 hours in a month.

As a result, how you manage your time is vital to the results that you get.

So what are some of the secrets?

1. Be clear on what your priorities are and what you are expected to deliver.
2. Plan how you are going to invest your time.
3. Keep a track of where you are spending your time.
4. Do what you do best.
5. Delegate and empower others.
6. Set boundaries.
7. Focus on results.
8. Keep a sense of balance so that your productivity does not dip.

The truth is, how you manage your time makes a big difference to your productivity and results. So what have you found makes a big difference to managing your time?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Meetings are common in many organisations. They are also expensive, not just in pound and dollar terms but also in terms of time.

So what are the secrets of running effective meetings?

Before the meeting

1. Produce an agenda.
2. Issue the agenda ahead of the meeting.
3. Issue supporting papers ahead of the meeting.
4. Request that papers are read before the meeting.

During the meeting

1. Have a timeline with a time limit on each agenda item.
2. Ask the presenter of a paper just to summarise the key points and what is required.
3. Have an effective Chair.
4. Summarise and play back the key points.

After the meeting

1. Produce a list of action points.
2. Make it clear who is doing what.

The truth is some simple changes can make a big difference to the results achieved. So what tips would you add? Why not leave a comment?

Duncan Brodie begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Survey after survey identifies that, more than anything else, people want feedback. More specifically, they want regular feedback.

In my experience, one of the big challenges facing managers and leaders is a shortage of time. As a result, some things get pushed down the list. Unsurprisingly, more often than not it is the people side of things that gets pushed to the bottom of the pile.

So why is this a big mistake?

1. Feedback lets people know how they are doing.
2. Feedback lets people know that, as a leader or manager, you care about others and their success.
3. Feedback provides the basis for people to get better at doing something.
4. Feedback acts as a strong motivator for people.
5. Feedback is the fuel of action and it is action that leads to results.

So how can you get better at providing feedback?

1. Make the time to do it.
2. Do it at the time.
3. Make it specific.
4. Make it useable. Vague feedback is not useable.
5. Do it regularly.

The truth is feedback is the greatest source of motivation. So what can you do more of to create feedback?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

One of the things that marks the very best managers and leaders from the mediocre ones is that the former take the initiative.

So what exactly do I mean by taking the initiative? Let’s look at an example:

Jane is a manager in a large organisation. She knows that there are many rules to comply with and organisational norms. Today she has come up against a challenge. She knows that the organisation guidance on the topic is vague. However, she takes time to clarify the outcome that she wants to get and maps out the first steps. In other words, she takes the initiative.

James is another manager in a large organisation. He specialises in playing the waiting game. He waits for the instructions, guidance or steps to come from someone else. As a result, he is seen as a plodder.

The truth is that if you want to get ahead in your career and stand out from the crowd, you need to be willing to take the initiative, to grab the bull by the horns.

So what’s your first step in taking the initiative?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Most people working in major organisations follow a pretty defined climb up the career ladder. As a result, people are often promoted to leadership and management roles based on what they have done in the past rather than future potential.

So do you really have what it takes to lead? Check out the following 10 questions to find out.

1. I am able to create a long term vision.
2. I am able to get others to buy in to my vision.
3. I can set specific objectives and milestones to achieve the vision.
4. I empower people to deliver and then get out of the way.
5. When I communicate, I listen as much as I speak.
6. I treat people well and help them to achieve.
7. I bring out the best in others.
8. I put results first, ahead of how I am seen or perceived by others.
9. I have the personal resilience to bounce back from setbacks.
10. I focus on what I do best.

I you can say “yes” to most of the above, you have the foundations for success as a leader in my view.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Top Tip 1
• Recognize that it is a big step and going to be challenging.

Top Tip 2

• Don’t make change just for the sake of it.

Top Tip 3

• Take time to do some fact finding before doing anything significant.

Top Tip 4

• Don’t pre-judge anyone before you have given them a chance.

Top Tip 5

• Remember it is a marathon and not a sprint.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

As someone who worked within the public sector for over half of my career in accounting and consulting, it is fair to say that leaders in the sector face some enormous challenges.

The traditional approach when it comes to expenditure reduction is to come up with a list of initiatives that deliver the required levels of savings.

The trouble is that these lists rarely deliver to the promised or expected levels.

Right now all of the messages are indicating that cuts in the region of 25% are going to have to be made to deal with the level of the deficit in public finances.

Given this level of challenge, there may well be a need for leaders to start asking a very different question.

Rather than asking the question what cuts can we make, perhaps the question to be answered is what level of services can we afford to provide with this level of money available.

Taking this approach will require courage from leaders, not just those employed in the public sector but also from the politicians too.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders. You can sign up here for his free audio e-course.

As a leader your goal is to deliver results. So what might be stopping you getting results?

5 Traps For New Leaders

Trap 1:
• Not stepping into the new role.

Trap 2:

• Not hiring the best deputy that you can.

Trap 3:

• Not letting go of the detail.

Trap 4:

• Not investing the time getting to know your colleagues on the leadership team.

Trap 5:

• Expecting it to be an easy transition.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here