Archive for January, 2009
Are you a leader or a manager?
Posted by Chris Edwards in Leadership Development on January 25, 2009
The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization.
Fred Fiedler & Martin Chemers
As we move deeper into a world recession, it will be the individuals and businesses that demonstrate consistent leadership that survive. If you aren’t concerned about strategies for survival in these challenging economic times – the same applies, leaders will come out on top.
So what is a leader, and what is a manager?
A manager manages an existing system or process; it may be a team of people or a production line, the commonality being that the activity has been done before and there will likely be known steps and systems and procedures to follow.
A manager is not there to make changes, at least not big changes; managers are there to manage. The manager’s role is to get the task done as efficiently and as profitably as he or she can.
Unlike the manager, leaders make change; they challenge the status quo. Leaders don’t simply do things the way they have been done before; they have a broader vision. Because of this, a leader has the ability to conceive of new ways to do things or even new things to do.
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Henry Kissinger
We cannot all be leaders, just as we cannot all be managers. But what we all need in difficult times is leadership.
Ask yourself this question:
Do I manage or do I lead?
If you are the owner of the business, you should be the leader in your organization. Even if you are a sole trader, having a leadership mentality is the key that will help take you and your business from ordinary to extraordinary.
Leadership is not something most people are born with. You don’t have to be charismatic to be a great leader. What sets leaders apart is combination of traits, all of which can be learnt and practiced.
To find out more, see out page on leadership coaching or contact us to find out precisely how we can help you become the leader you want to be.
If your are in a small or micro business our mentoring groups offer the most cost effective solutions to help you grow your business.
New services for 2009
Posted by Chris Edwards in Life7 News on January 10, 2009
We have a lot of exciting changes in store for 2009.
We started by re-writing our mission statement; which is:
To improve the lives and attitudes of all whom we contact by empowering business owners and managers around the world with best practice staff and customer retention strategies.
Two of the first things existing clients will notice is that we have a new web site and our tag line on the logo has changed to ‘Performance Coaching’. This reflects the change in our mission statement and changes to the coaching services that have come from this clearer focus.
We will no longer provide personal coaching on advertising and promotional strategy, but will instead introduce a new mentoring groups that will serve this purpose for small to medium sized businesses in the Canberra region.*
This will enable us to focus our personal coaching services on staff retention and leadership.
We will also be introducing customer retention coaching on a trial basis, as we believe that many of the techniques we use to improve staff retention could be adapted to improve client retention and therefore profitability and marketing effectiveness.
The big project for us will be our research into leadership project that will commence in February.
We will also introduce a new training workshop on how to recruit the right people for your team and how to assemble and empower an outstanding team.
It is going to be busy year and we wish everyone the very best for 2009.
*Note that existing advertising coaching agreements will not be affected by this change.