Thursday, May 28, 2009

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

Emotional Intelligence can be described as an ability or skill to understand and manage yourself and your emotions and understand and manage others and their emotions leading to increased performance.

Emotional Intelligence has become a crucial part in how today’s leaders meet the challenges they face daily. Emotional Intelligence Leadership improves leaders’ ability to excel in increasingly difficult and complex leadership roles.

An important subfield of emotional intelligence explores how it can be applied to benefit leaders, to use their power and influence. The researchers who conduct work on emotional intelligence and leadership training have examined the effects of brain science and emotional intelligence in discovering what top performers do. These studies show that emotional intelligence has a greater impact on leadership coaching and leadership training than either IQ or technical expertise... We now know conclusively what are the habits and practices of high performers, so your organisation can better fill your leadership pipeline.

Infinity Performance Solutions offers imaginative & inspirational managerial and executive business coaching for a variety of organisations. From leadership coaching to executive coaching in a family business, Infinity Performance Solutions, provides leadership coaching and executive leadership training & development that works. Our individual business coaching services are tailored to each participant and their company and/or industry.

Tony Pearson
Director Infinity Performance Solutions
Tony can be contacted at Infinity Performance Solutions by phone, 0412 412 577 or by email,
tony@infinityperformancesolutions.com.au

Tel: 02 9863 1536
Web: http://www.infinityperformancesolutions.com.au/

Goal Setting

A critical skill for now!

All successful people set goals of one sort or another in both their personal and business lives. In a rapidly changing environment, the ability to identify objectives, determine priorities and take actions to achieve specific outcomes is vital.
Without this ability, you cannot communicate to your team members where they are headed or what is expected of them and you will not be able to balance the competing needs of tasks, team and the individuals you supervise.

Why set goals?
Having clearly defined goals helps you to focus on what is important.It also gives you a long-term vision that helps you prioritise activities and concentrate on the key 20% that produce 80% of results.
Personal goal setting and planning ultimately help you to achieve what you want to achieve, by identifying where you want to go and what steps will help you get there.
Goals also give you structure (reasons for doing certain things or not doing them). They provide clear criteria for you to make decisions. Therefore, any time spent in goal setting and planning will bring significant benefits. If you are supervising others you need to be able to identify the tasks and priorities that are of importance to both you and your team members.

Goals, values and priorities
One way to begin goal setting is to firstly think about your own values and priorities. Then identify the different roles you have in your life, such as partner, parent, child, manager, employee, friend, community member and so on. For each role you have, you can set personal goals and action plans and allocate time to ensure these goals are achieved.

Successful goal setting requires thought and consideration.

However, by putting some time into thinking about what you want to achieve in your life, both professionally and personally, and writing these hopes and aspirations down, you are much more likely to achieve them.

Tony Pearson
Director Infinity Performance Solutions
Tony can be contacted at Infinity Performance Solutions by phone, 0412 412 577 or by email, tony@infinityperformancesolutions.com.au.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Selling in a slowdown

It has been some time since we last had to experience a significant downturn in the economy (1991/2) and those that do remember would well and truly now have considerable salt in the side burns. We can however look back and recall the lessons learned in those difficult times.

While sales certainly fell across the board deals were still being done, budgets strived for and achieved and cheques were being drawn and payed. Albeit at reduces RRP’s, with less margin and over a protracted sales cycle as risk aversion became a dominant buying consideration.

Four key areas standout that successful business did well in a slowdown:
1. Review your traditional sales channel
2. Reassess the capability of your team and individuals
3. Strengthen current customer relationships
4. Look across and beyond established customer bases, market and industry spaces for new opportunities.

Be aware that reviewing and reassessing are generally precursors to change, (and we know how much people enjoy change) however this is not always the case. In many situations it will mean simple realignment, in others, yes, total redesigns. So individuals and teams will need to be prepared and supported through this period.

When it comes to reassessing your teams and individuals, this does not mean put those to keep in one basket and those to let go in another. Slowdowns have a way of standing out performers and those that aren’t, the import question to ask is can we develop the skills, knowledge or attitude in the current non performer?

Strengthening current customer relationships is critical. Successful businesses did this well in slowdowns and in fact found that they sold in a more diverse range of product to their existing customers during the slowdown period.

Finally, so the saying goes, “adversity is the mother of invention”. During a slowdown successful business found sales channels by looking outside and across previously established customer bases, market and industry spaces. This is a time for innovation and supporting the wisdom within and across your organisation.

Infinity Performance Solutions is one training and development organisation that develops and delivers training programs which improve the quality of skills, knowledge and attitudes and services for individuals and organisations. Tony Pearson, Infinity Performance Solutions Director suggests now is the prime time to invest in strengthening capabilities is organisations.

“People and organisations will need support through skill development or strategic consultation to minimise the impact of the changing economic and therefore business conditions. Now is an ideal time to ensure your building strength into your organisation to maximise current and future opportunities. In fact this is one of those rare opportunities to get ahead of the curve.”

Tony can be contacted at Infinity Performance Solutions by phone, 0412 412 577 or by email, tony@infinityperformancesolutions.com.au.

Challenge's for 2009

In the last couple of months I have been asked repeatedly what I felt the greatest challenge would be for 2009. I believe it will be dealing with the following combination of changes in our new business climate:

1. We all are going to need to produce more with less. That is our businesses are not going to have the resources to allocate that we have had in recent years. We are all going to need to find some efficiency gains.

2. We have a leadership group in many of our businesses (at various levels including, frontline, medium and executive) that have never had to manage under adverse conditions. In fact few would recall the downturns in 1991/2, 1982, 1974.

These I believe are our two greatest challenges for 2009. It is our responsibility to ensure we assist our individuals and organisation not only cope, but thrive in this new climate.

Tony Pearson
Director
Infinity Performance Solutions

Tony can be contacted at Infinity Performance Solutions by phone, 0412 412 577 or by email, tony@infinityperformancesolutions.com.au.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Leading and Managing in Tough New Times

Times are getting tough, all we need to do is read a paper, watch the news or walk past the ASX for evidence.
In fact the economic turndown has resulted in the federal government spending the surplus via two economic stimulus packages to date. Retail revenue and profit forecasts continue to be revised down. Not to mension the relaease of the 'toughest budget' in a generation.

In business we are being asked to do more with less. Further we are challenged to maintain an upbeat, positive culture. A culture, that was formed and established in times and conditions that no longer exist.

The experts have told us for many years that one of our toughest future needs would be managing a multi-generational workforce with all the different needs, drives and challenges this would provide. They told us about the Y-Generation’s move into positions of leadership and how they have never experienced adversity. Well times have now changed. Adverse times are here and we must face this challenge now.

With pressure on costs and therefore head count in business we are now being asked to do more with less. We have already seen a lift in unemployment in the past months and forecast suggests this will continue through 2009. Productivity and efficiency in business will be critical to current and future success.

A real and current critical shift is required to support all employees with appropriate management & leadership. We must shift our strategic planning to include tactics and development plans for managing in tough times.

Stress today is the number one reason for lost days in business. The current economic conditions do nothing to reduce this burden on our people and businesses.

A significant investment should be made in organisations to educate and develop stress management capabilities at both an organisational and individual level.

With any change however there are opportunities produced.

Are you ready to maximise this opportunity?

In your business have you developed and executed your strategy to ensure you receive your slice of the new pie? Do your employees know your strategic direction and more importantly do they buy in to it?
Even if they do buy in, do they have the skills, knowledge or motivation currently to deliver on your strategy?

In your business have you made the decision to take the opportunity to attract a new client base or will your strategy involve retention and maximising existing clients?

Whether looking to maximise your slice of the billions of dollars of government economic injections or just looking to maximise your market share in the economic downturn the principles remain the same.

It is critical to ensure you have a strong plan, inspired strategy well known and supported by the masses with an employee base skilled and motivated to deliver on your vision.

Today we face the added challenge of needing to achieve the same or greater volumes of activity with fewer resources. It therefore makes sense to educate and support the workforce to handle this shift to more productive work methods.

One such strategy includes reviewing your current customer base. Are you stuck ‘strategically’ attempting to fight a highly competitive battle against your market competitors for the same finite market share?

OR, are you looking across customer bases and market spaces to create opportunities that make the competition irrelevant? A space where you can simultaneously pursue a differentiation and low cost strategy while increasing market share, revenue and profit?

Changing paradigms in our working and personal lives have the potential for great stress and adversity if we take a do nothing approach.

Steps should be taken now to reduce or counter the barriers to successfully adapting to the new conditions. This includes training and development to strengthen business capability through developing individual’s personal capabilities.
Infinity Performance Solutions is one such training and development organisation that develops and delivers training programs which improve the quality of skills, knowledge and attitudes and services for individuals and organisations.

Tony Pearson, Infinity Performance Solutions Director suggests now is the prime time to invest in strengthening capabilities is organisations. “People will need support through skill development to minimise the impact of the changing economic and therefore business conditions. Whilst times have changed there are solutions available to minimise organisational and individual stress. In fact this is an opportunity to take steps to firm up your business for future needs and get ahead of the curve.”

Infinity Performance Solutions
Tony Pearson
Director / Corporate Consultant
Mobile: 0412 412 577
Tel: 02 9863 1536
Web: http://www.infinityperformancesolutions.com.au/
Email: tony@infinityperformancesolutions.com.au