Key Talent Partners

What Keeps CEO's Up At Night?

2011-02-16T05:46:00.002+00:00

Consulting firm Accenture surveyed 425 senior executives at the world's largest companies in all major industries and geographies. It’s clear from the results that the war for talent is in high gear.

Top Issues for Senior Executives
1. Attracting and retaining skilled staff - 35%
2. Changing organizational culture and employee attitudes - 33%
3. Acquiring new customers - 32%
4. Developing new processes and products to stay ahead of the competition - 29%
5. Increasing customer loyalty and retention - 29%
6. Managing risk - 29%
7. Improving workforce performance - 28%
8. Increasing shareholder value - 27%
9. Using IT to reduce costs and create value - 27%
10. Being flexible and adaptable to rapidly changing market conditions - 26%
BOTTOMLINE: Regardless of size of company, senior leaders are concentrating on top issues that include people performance management

Essential Behaviours for Managers

2010-05-20T23:44:00.006+01:00

1. Review your own performance and accept that you are always in a position to learn from your experiences. Self awareness and reflection are the best ways of accelerating your performance.

2. Ask your team for feedback and find out what they want from you. Encourage them to give you information by asking them specifically for ‘feed forward’ about a specific issue or area that you are looking to improve.

3. Develop high self esteem and self confidence. As an effective manager you will need to be able to recognise your good points and your successes. Know what you strengths are and ensure that you are using them at least 75% of the working day.

4. Ask questions and listen. Develop the technique of asking open and probing questions to get to the root of the issue. Today’s successful leaders use a coaching style which is collaborative and inclusive. This may mean that you need to accept that other people may have different ideas about how something can be achieved.

5. Give people your full attention when they are speaking and you will earn their respect as well as learning useful information. Respect is one of the key values in any relationship. Respect can easily be lost if listening is not demonstrated by giving your full and undivided attention when in conversation with another person.

6. Acknowledge the efforts of other people. Individuals learn best in environments of high expectation and positive feedback. Not by being told what they have done wrong. Positive psychology is now recognised as one of the best management tools.

7. Build close and dependable relationships founded on mutual respect. Successful managers know that departmental and cross team relationships are essential to achieving the goals of the business.

8. Monitor performance and check that everything is on target. Encourage people to monitor and evaluate their own performance. ‘What can be measured can be improved.’

9. Resist the temptation to complain and blame. If something isn’t ‘right,’ see what you can do to fix it. Take the initiative to make things better. Don’t just leave it for someone else to ‘fix.’

10. Deal effectively with criticism. Ask for clarification and specifics and identify what needs to happen to put the problem right. Differences of opinions are healthy providing that you appreciate that others may have a different point of view to yourself. Successful managers don’t judge others. They question and look to understand why this person may have that idea/ assumption etc… ‘Seek first to understand before you can be understood.’ Steven Covey7 Habits of Successful Mangers.

How do you bounce back?

2010-05-20T22:43:00.012+01:00

Having spent 6 hours with Lesley my PA, sorting out a new host for my newsletter and CRM system, I was really excited when we actually pressed the button to send it out to my database last week. So imagine my horror when it arrives in my in-box saying that it's come from my PA's email address ;o(

Who on my list will know who it's from? Will they bother to open it and read it? What damage will it do to my credibility? etc... You get the picture?

There's nothing much you can do once you've pressed the button and for whatever reason the company hosting the newsletter decides to change the email address that it's due to come from. How you react to that news is entirely up to you. You can shout and scream and kick the desk or you can bounce back. How flexible are you when 'bad' things happen in your life? How resilient are you?

Having run an Introduction to NLP workshop today, I was asked the question, "but what if they are just bad people, aren't you justified to get frustrated?"

My answer is a question: (or questions; take your pick)
* How does it serve you to get annoyed?
* How will that change what's happened?
* Who is your annoyance affecting?
* How is that serving you?
* How long do you stay affected by what's happened?
* How does that affect your health?

If you did decide that you would like to let go and bounce back from whatever has happened, there's two things that you could do immediately that would help.

* Breathe
* Hear yourself say positive empowering thoughts. Asking "what can I learn from this situation" I find incredibly helpful.

These two actions will change how you feel and therefore how you behave.

Try it out today and let me know how it works for you. You only have one life. Start enjoying it.

8 Tips to Top You Up!

2010-05-07T19:41:00.006+01:00

1. PASSION. Know what you want and be PASSIONATE about it. Love what you do and the money will follow. Focus on enjoying what you do not in how much you will receive. When we are passionate about what we are doing we are in ‘The Flow.’ This is the place that takes very little effort or energy and gives us so much pleasure.

2. PRACTICE. Follow through with what you are doing and WORK at it consistently. Success comes from picking one or two things and getting so good at them that you are the expert. Keep practicing and work at improving one little things every day. As Gary Player said many years ago, “the harder I practice the more successful I become.” 3 keys to success- Practice, Practice, Practice...

3. FOCUS on what you are doing and don’t get distracted. Successful people in life are exceptionally good at one thing and they keep practicing and focused on that one thing. If, as has happened to some highly successful people in the past, they take their eye off the ball, they invariably start to lose their ‘successful position.’

4. PERSISTENCE is the biggest difference between success and failure. Successful people don’t take achieving as ‘failure. They take it as information that something needs to change and they do something differently. (no failure only feedback) People who fail have given up hope and stop working towards their goals. They also usually see their lack of success as someone else’s problem! They will blame, complain, criticise and whinge as to why they didn’t succeed. What needed is to be persistent and push through all the resistance, criticism and pressure from others. We also need to be aware that it might be our own self limiting beliefs that hold us back; like when we are too shy, or don’t believe in ourselves, we sabotage our own efforts.

5. IDEAS. I always used to think that there were creative people who’d come up with brilliant ideas and initiative and then there were those who were more practical and liked to take action rather than dream up ideas. Recently thou I’ve discovered that people who like to ‘do’ can also come up with great IDEAS and vice versa. What’s needed is an environment that will give permission to people to generate ideas and thoughts. What’s needed is listen, be curious, ask questions, collaborate and build on one another’s ideas without judging or disparaging any suggestions. Invite a culture of sharing.

6. SERVE. Give people either a product or a service that they need and/or want. You have to SERVE the needs of your customers. There’s no point in coming up with the best widget, if nobody wants widgets that size, colour and/or shape! Find out what people want and then give it to them how they want it. Better still anticipate what they are going to need/want and be the fist on the market with the solution for your customers. (definition of excellent customer service – anticipating your customers needs and providing the solution/ product /service)

7. PUSH YOURSELF –physically, mentally emotionally. Don’t get complacent and think that your success will stay where it is. The world is evolving every second and the people in it are changing more and more quickly due to the new technology that the world has to offer in the 12st Century. Sitting back and all comfortable will ensure

8. IMPROVE. Ask yourself what the top 10 percent would do. Then do it. Having done these 7 things you may find that you are getting some success, but it’s easy to slip up and become complacent. That’s why it’s important to keep improving and move with the times. All great sports men and women have coaches. They are constantly looking for more ways to improve on what is already great. How can you look for ways to IMPROVE on what you’re already good at? Hire a coach, go to seminars and read a book! Ensure that you are continuously improving yourself every week.

Well done for reading this far! You are definitely in the top 10%. Now contact me on 01344 774999 to find out about our taster sessions (or Click here for more details).

Psychometrics - do they help or hinder?

2009-09-07T22:54:00.015+01:00

As someone who likes 'models', I see the benefit in all sorts of psychometric questionnaires- Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) being one of them. This one has been around for 50 years with over 4 million questionnaires completed annually in over 30 different languages.

Applications and Benefits:

The MBTI® instrument is very versatile and widely used for many purposes including:

Individual development – identifying leadership style, developing managerial potential, time and stress management, and executive coaching
Team building and team development – improving communication, enhancing team problem solving, valuing diversity and resolving conflict
Organisational change – understanding and dealing with responses to rapid change, understanding team and corporate culture
Improving communication – developing selling and influencing skills
Education– identifying learning styles and motivations, improving teaching and training methods.

FIRO-B is another that's been around since the 50's. It was first used for sub-marinars in the American navy to look at behaviour of people in closed confined spaces. Great for teams in todays busy, hectic life.

FIRO-B® is ideally suited to:

team building and team development – identifying likely sources of compatibility or tension;
identifying leadership style;
aiding effective decision making;
improving communication, openness and trust;
resolving conflicts Individual development –
increasing self awareness and inter-personal effectiveness as part of the coaching process, career development or personal growth.
selection and placement – in combination with other assessment techniques, it can help to structure interviews and assess likely team roles or inter-personal behaviour.

Check out the details of some other tools on the website:

http://keytalent-partners.com/index.php/Leadership-Development/Key-Talent-Partners-Tools-Models.htm

Executive One to One Coaching

2009-09-03T15:11:00.006+01:00

Executive one to one Coaching:

The Key Talent Partners Coaching Program has been expanded and retooled, with new levels of expertise on building leadership capability for high potential, high performing executive talent.

Our coaches are skilled in recommending proven strategies for building competencies essential in today’s workplace. Delivering effective ways to inspire, motivate and engage your team and in providing insights in the way you behave and communicate with others to get the best out of them.

The one-on-one element of a coaching relationship can build, like no other, an intensely beneficial and forward-focused learning environment. Coaching expert Marshall Goldsmith calls it “feed-forward” instead of “feedback.” This coaching approach encourages you to focus on how you can develop yourself and others going forward.

This coaching method is dynamic and energising. It focuses on ideas to help achieve your goals. It reinforces the possibility for change and growth.

Executive coaching does not replace business consulting, mentoring or even psychological counselling and it’s important that you want to make a change in some way.

Coaching is a formal engagement where the coach and the executive work in a series of sessions to achieve very clear objectives, resulting in improved leadership and business effectiveness. Through a series of meetings, phone calls and emails, your coach will provide advice, business counsel, and actionable strategies that serve as the basis for a coaching relationship resulting in real change.

Consider how an executive coach could improve your leadership effectiveness.

For information about how to enlist an executive coach that’s the right fit for you, please contact Helen@Keytalent-Partners.com or Eleanor@KeyTalent-Partners.com or call: +44 (0)1344 774 999 today.

Welcome to the new Key Talent Partners Blog

2009-09-03T14:53:00.007+01:00

Executive Coaching, Leadership and Team Development from Key Talent Partners

Are you responsible for the development of your key people?
Perhaps you are a senior executive looking to improve your performance?
Or you want to develop a group of people into a highly effective team?

If so, Key Talent Partners can successfully address your needs. We offer professional executive coaching and leadership development programmes for business leaders and their teams. Established for eight years we have coached and trained both individuals and teams, in large corporate and medium sized businesses, enabling them to acheive greater effectiveness.

Unlock your potential.... do more, get more, be more, less stress!

Key Talent Partners specialises in working with senior managers and business leaders to:

improve their communication and leadership skills
bring about sustainable change
inspire their workforce
unlock their potential so they can perform at their very best
feel comfortable with taking the next level job
sort out relationships - less politics and unproductive hours
return from maternity leave / long term absence with confidence

We are completely focused on your needs and aim to deliver at least five to six times the return on your investment. (ROI)

See our new Keys for Releasing Your Full Potential Brochure and contact us now for more information: eleanor@keytalent-partners.com