Management Blog

Alan Chambers Polar Explorer & Call of the Wild

Alan Chambers after talking to our clients Babcocks about his Polar experiences. This event was held at the stunning Llangoed Hall, Brecon, Alan looks like he's telling stories with that big chair he's sitting in not talking about challenging near death arctic experiences

Business Coaching - Top Ten Tips

1 Focus on the person being coached

The role of a coach is to enable someone else to identify and achieve their objectives, and to do so through self belief, whilst maintaining responsibility for their actions and results.

2 Guide, not tell

You are there to guide, facilitate and motivate them through change, and ensure that they remain responsible throughout. It may seem easier and quicker to ‘tell’ them what to do, and there are times when this is necessary.  However, time must be put aside to coach the person or team into discovering and committing to how they will achieve their goals.

3 Don't give the answers

The skills, attributes and attitudes required for successful coaching are different from those needed in leading and managing.  Coaching is all about getting the coachee to do the thinking, and come up with answers.

4 Practice the right skills

In order to take on the role of a coach the skills that you need to develop include:

• active listening
• good questioning techniques
• letting the people look through their lens at the world and not yours
• knowing when to challenge to encourage people to make change where necessary
• being able to stop yourself giving the answers

The last is fundamental to the success of being an effective coach, and probably the most difficult skill to practise!

5 Maintain the right attitudes

As a coach the attitudes you portray should include:

• a positive outlook
• a high energy to keep up the motivation of your coachee
• a high level of interest
• a never ending desire to enable your coachee to succeed in their language
• having only one agenda – that of the person being coached

6 Their needs, not yours

Be:

• non judgemental
• a good listener
• consistently honest with integrity
• professional, ethical and confidential at all times
• a good communicator

7 Learn the GROW model

For more information on the GROW Model click here

8 Remember both partners have to do the work ...

9 Start from where the person is, now

10 Not immediate but long term

For more information on business coaching visit the Call of the Wild website. Find more information on our leadership training course and team building training course here.

BIll Gates Versus General Motors

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on.

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,

'If General Motors (GM) had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving £25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.'

In response to Bill ' s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash.........Twice a day.

2.. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3... Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single 'This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation' warning light.

I love the next one!!!

7. The airbag system would ask 'Are you sure?' before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the 'Start' button to turn the engine off.

PS - I'd like to add that when all else fails, you could call 'customer service' in some foreign country and be instructed in some foreign language how to fix your car yourself!!!!

Team Building Event Case Study With Call of the Wild - Remington

Focus: Team event to support a new product launch

Objectives: Call of the Wild were given the challenge to create a team event that brought the launch team from Remington together in an environment that would inspire,challenge and allow them to celebrate the launch of a major new hair care product into the UK marketplace. From the outset the client stressed the need for an event location and programme that really provided the wow factor-Call of the Wild responded to the challenge by listening very carefully to the exact requirements of the Remington event team and then added value by facilitating a discussion which further explored and refined those requirements.

Delegate Number: 50

Venue: Call of the Wild found the perfect venue within an hours drive of the Remington headquarters in Staines, this 4 star country hotel with grounds provided a truly spectacular backdrop to the event and greatly added to the success of the product launch.

Visit our websitefor more information on this and other courses such as our leadership training course, team building training, corporate team building and developemnt and management training..

Effective Team Building - Work Out Who is Who in Your Work Team

Who is in your work team?

We tend to think that our team members are those in the same department or all those who report to the same boss. Actually, most of us find that we work more with people from other departments than we do with people in our own. See if this is true for you.

The Star Exercise shows just how complex everyone's job is and how many people we deal with daily. It shows how often we are internal customers ourselves and how often colleagues are internal customers of ours.

Instructions

1. Take a sheet of paper and draw a circle in the centre. Enter your name in the circle. This is the centre of the star.
2. Add circles around your circle containing the people, departments or areas who you deal with in doing your job. Most of these will be outside of your department.
3. Draw an arrow between each of these circles and your circle.
   • If you receive things (instructions, materials, information, paperwork and so on) from this person or department, draw the arrow with the tip towards your self.
   • It you give things (instructions, materials, information, paperwork and so on) to this person or department, draw the arrow with the tip towards that person.
4. Select the two or three relationships that are most important to your job. Highlight these with bolder lines

Charity Bike Ride Photo 63 - The End of the Line for the Bikes

Big Al packing away the bikes for the trip home from Lands End in the van he modified for us.

Charity Bike Ride Photo 62 - Well Done to the Boys. Arrived (16.10.10)

Final proof.

Charity Bike Ride Photo 61 - Lands End 2.20pm (16.10.10)

We made it! The end. 984.6 miles and 48959 feet of climbing. Time for a beer.

Charity Bike Ride Photo 60 - Within Touching Distance - 30 Minutes to Go to Lands End

Half an hour to go!

Leadership Theory - Reddin's 3-D Leadership Model

Bill Reddin made the breakthrough to the next level of practical leadership theories. He developed the first relatively simple method of measuring what he called “situational demands” – i.e. the things that dictate how a manager must operate to be most effective.

Reddin’s model was based on the two basic dimensions of leadership identified by the Ohio State studies. He called them Task-orientation and Relationships-orientation. However he introduced what he called a third dimension – Effectiveness. Effectiveness was what resulted when one used the right style of leadership for the particular situation.

Reddin, like Blake, identified four major leadership styles on the high effectiveness plane and four corresponding styles on the low effectiveness plane, effectiveness being where the leadership style matched the demands of the situation. So a manager who demonstrated a high level of task-orientation and low relationships orientation (equivalent to Blake’s 9,1) where it was the style that was required was called a Benevolent Autocrat while a manager who applied that style of behaviour where the situation did not call for it was labelled an Autocrat.

The real theoretical breakthrough with Reddin’s 3-D model was the idea that one could assess the situation and identify what behaviour was most appropriate. (Effective Situational Diagnosis, W. J. Reddin and R. Stuart-Kotze, MEL, London, 1972.)

Taken from our Online Development Academy

For more information on leadership programmes and a leadership training course visit Call of the Wild's website