How do you get to win-win? By exchanging offers and requests, and indulging in give and take – maybe upfront simultaneously, or maybe over time – now us, then you. Each side is prepared to be “generous” to the other, to make “sacrifices” for the greater longer-term mutual good. Ethical, responsible vendors look beyond simply […]
A few weeks ago I was invited to run a workshop on negotiating skills for a group of senior engineers who sell capital goods for a well-known European multinational, and it took me back to the last century when I was an account manager offering large IT solutions using mainframe computers. It reminded me of […]
I was recently asked to run a team-building workshop based on the 2002 book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Let me summarise what author Patrick Lencioni laid out in his gripping fable about how Kathryn Petersen, DecisionTech’s newly installed CEO, faced the ultimate leadership crisis: uniting a team in such disarray that it threatened […]
I recently facilitated a very interesting workshop that brought together Africa region’s leaders of a long-established multinational. Thanks to Covid, this was the first time they were meeting physically, and this under their recently installed president. As we were preparing the workshop he told me he wanted to share with his team what he described […]
The Kenya Association of Manufacturers and the Kaizen Institute recently held their 17th Annual Congress, and I’m writing about it as I was one of the keynote speakers at the event. I have for long been an admirer of Kaizen, which is all about waste reduction and continuous improvement. It was first largely applied in […]
Readers of this column will have seen previous articles of mine in which I have written about Leaders Circles I have facilitated with my colleague Frank Kretzschmar. The last one was about sustainability, and the theme of our most recent one was “How we deal with power: from victim to perpetrator to victim”. We’ve all […]
In my last article, I promised I would write further about the influence of cultures on how consultants like myself must adapt so as to engage effectively with our clients. I mentioned that beyond national cultures, sub-cultures within countries are equally diverse. Anyone who has visited the United States will quickly see how different people […]
In my last article I wrote about the four elements that, according to the Adizes Institute, make a fully functional manager or, more likely, a functional management team: Producer, Administrator, Entrepreneur and Integrator (PAEI). Today I follow up with an article I was sent by Rufat Jahangirov, a senior member of the Adizes Institute team, […]
Each of us as a manager enjoys aspects of our roles where we feel more comfortable, with others we’d rather have someone else handle. But the more senior and cross-functional we become the more we need to reach adequacy all round. And yet very few of us ever expand our comfort zones to take us […]
The Institute for Responsible Leadership (where I am a co-founder) recently partnered with UNITAR (the United Nations Institute for Training and Research) with whom IRL collaborates closely) to broadcast a webinar on youth and responsible leadership. Keynote speaker Sebastian Hofbauer talked about how youth have become significant “influencers” through the use of social media – […]
