Last year a company I know well that was growing and achieving high quality was broadsided by an external force that took away its profitability overnight. They had a senior management team of skilled, experienced and clever people. However, that team crumbled under the issue. Eventually just one was left and they've faced things head on and rescued the business.

I recently attended a conference around authenticity in business. There were a range of speakers all offering their view on authenticity in business. I’ll declare now that I find a lot of these sorts of events slightly superficial. Figuring out what makes you truly authentic is a quest. It’s a real deep journey of discovery that requires proper investment of time and challenge to help a person understand who they are. 

This article will help make you a more authentic leader. 

Communicating well to internal audiences and externally comes to the fore when one takes on management and leadership responsibility. Yet, despite the growing awareness of the impact of engaging presentations the message is not getting through. So, I thought I’d share my 4 tips to improving presentations.

The fact is that at different times in our lives we could all achieve more with effective coaching. That’s not to say you wouldn’t achieve it without a coach, but many of my clients point to the fact that coaching helps them achieve much more in a shorter space of time.

I’m often asked what I do when I’m coaching. I’ve written some earlier posts that cover definitions of coaching but some people just want a layman’s answer. One of the ways I describe what I do is ‘I create a space for reflection’.

As a coach, one of the main issues individual clients share with me is procrastination. It’s defined as ‘the action of delaying or postponing something.’ We’ve all experienced some form of procrastination from time to time. However around 1 in 5 of the population are labelled chronic procrastinators.

Businesses now find themselves increasingly operating in an era of global, information technology driven markets.  Success will depend on how efficiently and effectively organisations can apply new information to current systems and processes via its people. The issue is how to ensure you have a learning organisation; one that can respond to the ongoing challenge of change.

Managing people is a constantly evolving task for any leader, whether you work with just 2 people or 2,000. As leader, you have a responsibility to create the right conditions for your teams to flourish, to facilitate their success. I learnt some years ago 4 words that can guide a leader to transform a team of people.

As mentioned in previous posts there seems to be some confusion about what coaching is and isn’t. The International Coach Federation reported that this is still seen as a major barrier to the industry moving forward. Personally, as a qualified coach, I’m not too hung up on the ‘industry’ as it doesn’t provide me with my work. For me, I’m much more interested in helping clients understand what they need and how coaching can support them and their businesses.

The coaching world has lost a great character and driving force with the passing of Sir John Whitmore. Throughout his career he was a tireless advocate for the profession of coaching, and ensuring quality and rigor in its application. Outside of coaching his name might not be instantly recognisable but his legacy is assured as the co-creator of the GROW coaching model.

In my previous post, I introduced the notion of differences between coaching, mentoring and other related disciplines. I’ve had several comments from people asking to help clarify this further. There are plenty of books that deal with the subject in-depth and my intention here is to provide an overview to help position where coaching sits.

I meet plenty of people who describe themselves as business coaches but in reality, they are more consultants or business advisors as opposed to coaches. There are also many different techniques being promoted by different coaches. For me personally, the core aspect of coaching is based on the premise that the person being coached (coachee) has the answers.

A successful business strategy is not attained from a team sitting around a table writing, reading and then refining a plan. Successful strategy has to be turned into action for a company to achieve its maximum potential.

I have the pleasure of teaching sales to SMEs through the Business Growth Hub in Manchester. I say pleasure as I really enjoy exploring the subject and helping others to engage with ‘sales’. For me it’s an area that has been misaligned and conjures far too many negative connotations and images, especially around the salesperson.

Last week my colleague shared how great questions help develop success, this got me thinking about the impact of such reflection. When you’ve decided on your goals in business and in life you then need to work towards them. In other words, you need a successful strategy to back-up your ambitions.

The twist in this blog is that instead of asking these questions of someone else, I’m going to show you how you can ask better questions of yourself. The power of a great question to reframe a situation never ceases to amaze me. It’s incredibly powerful and yet very simple as well.

Successful businesses need to be successful at marketing. There is a famous quote: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." To start to tackle this conundrum the key question to ask first is: Who are you trying to engage with?

The late great Jim Rohn, was hailed as America's foremost business philosopher and the post title reflects on one of his most popular books Seven Strategies for Wealth and Happiness. For Jim, wealth and happiness were intertwined and not an either or scenario.

Everyday life can easily create habits in our responses that mean rather than shaping the world around us we are defined by our environment. In such a place success is harder to define, find and keep. To change such circumstance starts with our attitude and that is something we can learn from a skilled coach.

Values is a widely used term but the most successful businesses know that having values and living them is a way to build loyalty with customers. That process starts with marketing that should not make purchasing from your company difficult.

To be successful at business it is not just about whether you would buy your product or service but who will. The founder is not the customer and learning to see the potential customer's viewpoint enables success marketing.

Successful leadership is not passive, the business leader needs to be active in advancing their own skills and knowledge, proactive in developing the people around them and apply foresight to the activities of the businesses

Starting a business presents an amazing opportunity filled not only with hard work, risks and challenges but also potential freedom and satisfaction that you cannot get from being an employee. To be successful as a business owner one needs to adjust to being the decision maker even when there is no 'right' or 'wrong' choice.

I listened to a business owner speak today and he said his competitive advantage is his staff team. It is 'easy' to say you want to invest in your people to make your business to be successful; it is surprising how hard some find this to do in reality, yet nurturing leadership in your business does not have to mean management is poor.

When we see another person's success, it can appear like it just happened for them. What we do not see are the many, many steps they took on the way. Success so often comes from lots of little steps.

Success at work is not all about money, after all every business owner is human so our emotions are connected to our work; even if the context is surprising.