Flexible working practices and mental health. Since 2014 employees in the UK have had the right to request flexible working, once they have been working for their organisation for twenty-six weeks. Flexible working is defined as any working pattern that fits an employee’s needs more closely than traditional working hours, Read more…
It’s easy to assume that successful leaders and famous innovators owe their success to consistently making the right choices and avoiding failure. However, in reality many famous success stories have had a firm grounding in failure; Henry Ford’s first two companies failed before he finally built his automobile empire and Read more…
Whilst it’s true that IQ is your ‘entry ticket’ into the world of work and that EQ is about how you work once you’ve got in, you still need to continue to develop your IQ – it’s vital to innovation and other forms of competitive advantage.
With all the attention that EQ has been drawing, it’s easy to forget that intelligence, general and specific, is likely to be the thing that enables you to get through the door of your organisation, at least initially. It’s your entry ticket, so to speak and we think it’s time to focus on IQ once more. This month, we will be writing about a number of aspects of IQ and inviting you to get curious about yours! Can you increase it? Can you use your intelligence differently? What does it mean to be ‘clever’?
It’s been quite instructive to note how often people either don’t know or have not articulated to themselves what they truly want in any given situation. We don’t promise that we can always get what our clients want (and sometime it might not be good for anyone if we could!) but we do think it is worth getting clarity on what you want and why. At least from that position you can think rationally about the outcomes you want to achieve, whether these make sense overall and the steps to get there. If we know what we want, then we can be clear and specific in going after it.
We think that the opposite is true! NOT learning in the workplace is much more scary! It is in our nature to evolve and change as human beings and so it is natural to strive to continually develop our talents and skills and be challenged and stimulated. Research shows that Read more…
Have you ever noticed that a group composed of highly intelligent or talented individuals doesn’t always produce the high results you might expect of such a team?
Think about it: Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger individually gave us such immortal cinematic icons as Rocky, Conan the Barbarian, Rambo and John McClane, and some massive films such as Armageddon, The Terminator, The Sixth Sense, Predator, Cliffhanger and True Lies. Yet, collectively they gave us The Expendables. “The what?” we hear you asking. Exactly!
There’s no doubt about it: for so many of us, procrastination wreaks havoc in our lives. It’s one of the biggest motivating factors behind the enquiries that we receive about our time management training here at Cerulean, and when you look at the damage that it can wreak, it’s no wonder. No one wants to procrastinate, and yet, it inevitably happens time and time again. How can you finally break the spell?
So in other words, don’t just talk about your ideas, turn them into tangible and real action! There
are plenty of people who talk the talk, but the differentiating factor of an effective
leader is someone who doesn’t just talk about it, but acts and gets things done. Be
decisive!
The simple truth is that the best bosses are not those that make their staff feel that they have to work for them – they motivate by making their staff truly want to work for them. Sadly, all too many bosses over-manage their staff, their overt bossiness alienating their team and therefore damaging their productivity.