Some of the greatest salespeople I have worked with have made terrible leaders. And the reason all comes down to their personality style. Simply put, a lot of the greatest salespeople are what we would call a ‘trailblazer’. They are incredibly motivated by results; they love achieving targets and they seem to make selling look easy.

A lot of trailblazers are inherently ‘lone wolves’. They do things on their own, they are fiercely independent, and they don’t give a fuck what people think about them.

However, this can only take them so far – because when they get to a stage in their life and their career where they look to be promoted into leadership positions, they can’t seem to succeed in the same way as they do in sales. These personality traits that got them so far in life, don’t seem to be doing the trick.

A lot of the time they can have unmotivated teams, a lack of morale, they think their team is ‘lazy, people seem to drop...

Hey! 

I want to share with you an awesome story about a client who has done amazing things over the last 6 months in working on being a more vulnerable leader. 

Now, why the heck would you want to be a vulnerable leader you ask??? 

If you read my last post on the number one thing humans crave above all else - which is connection - this is a natural flow on from that post.

The business world has gone through a MASSIVE transformation in the past 10 to 15 years (and on many levels still is evolving and has a long way to go in some areas).

I remember when I first started my career and entered the workforce as a young engineer. As the time, the leaders in the company very much ruled with an iron fist and it was “their way or the highway”. On some level it felt a bit like a dictatorship and the thoughts and opinions of the fresh and even middle tier staff didn’t really matter. You just did what you were told, learnt not to offer your opinion on ways things...

You’re inspired to make big things happen right? You’ve got a big vision for your work and your career. You’re energised and motivated to get out there and make it happen. 

You mean well and I’m sure what you’re wanting to create and achieve is amazing, So why is it so hard to motivate and inspire those around you to see what you see? Why is it so hard to get your team energised and invested in getting out there and creating amazing and meaningful things? 

To be honest, sometimes it feels a bit like pushing sh!t uphill doesn’t it? 

What it boils down to is whether you have the awareness about the core motivators of your team and whether you are using this awareness to connect with your team at a deeper and more meaningful level. 

To put it frankly, buzz motivational words and phrases like “all for one and one for all” and “let’s go the extra mile” and “just put the hard work in now and reap...

Understanding your leadership type is absolutely crucial to your success. Without it, you are flying blind and will continue to make the same mistakes. 

I have been liaising with a leader this week who has the ‘Stabiliser’ leadership style (there are only 4 that we teach). A stabiliser style leader will be someone who is a real people pleaser. On the plus side, they are incredibly loyal and stable leaders, and they are incredibly easy to get along with. People trust them easily and you can rely on them. 

However, they will hate saying no to their team and to other leaders and they will struggle to really say things with conviction and urgency. In a nutshell, they do not like conflict, and they do not like letting people down. 

The leader that I was speaking with this week had an underperforming team. They were taking their sweet ass time to get simple jobs done, and they would not respect what he was saying. Because of the team underperformance, he would...

It feels good, doesn’t it? When you get something done. When you tick something off your to-do list. That sense of accomplishment. That feeling of relief when you remove one more thing from that long list of things you need to do before you can relax... 

If you’re like most, you probably don’t take a moment to celebrate or acknowledge what you’ve just achieved - it’s onto the next thing. 

There’s no time you say! No time to take a break or a pause before you move onto the next email, text message response, phone call or business activity. 

But what about when those feel good moments of achievement become an addiction? You can’t live without them. You can’t not be achieving....ever..... 

Don’t get me wrong - I love achieving things. That’s how sh!t gets done, the world progresses and how we evolve. 

It’s when this behaviour becomes dysfunctional that we need to stop and look at our actions and...

I was in a training today teaching about the 4 main personality types, and their impact on your ability to lead a team. One of the participants asked a question – “How do I stop being so demanding of my team and pushing them way too hard – because it ends up in them losing morale and tension in the team”.

The answer to this question is so simple, yet it is one of the greatest lessons in life, and one of the hardest things we could ever do (when you don’t know how and have never been taught).

It all comes down to your relationship with yourself. Here is how. 

Every single relationship in your life, and how you treat others, is a direct reflection of how you treat yourself. This leader is only exceptionally hard on others because they are hard on themselves. And at no point in time, now, or in the future – will they ever be able to lead others with more compassion and empathy, until those things can be displayed to themselves. Hence, an easy...

We’ve all met them. We’ve all worked with them. The people who are completely oblivious to anyone else’s projects, time commitments and priorities apart from their own. 

The people who will happily hold you up and talk to you incessantly about their earth-shattering problem or issue, all the while ignoring the impatient look on your face, or the glancing at your phone or watch or your polite attempts to remove yourself from the interaction and get back to your priorities. 

The reality is that they are probably a really nice person with genuine concerns or problems. But they just don’t get it so they? 

You’re here to make sh!t happen. You have a vision for your life, a vision for your career and a vision for your team - and you know that your time is precious.

You don’t want to spend precious minutes or hours getting dragged into small-time drama and victim mentality. You have no desire to waste your energy and your attention units...

“Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make,

Both consciously and unconsciously.

If you can control the process of choosing,

You can take control of all aspects of your life.

You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself”.

• Robert F. Bennett 

One of the biggest hypes in the coaching and training world and one that does not sit very well with me is that you use coaching, training or personal development to be “happier, fuller, filled with love and light”. Whilst this can be true, to a degree, the truth is that this work is much more than that. 

The problem is that what this work truly offers is much less commercial, not very exciting and requires hard work and commitment. Hardly something you are going to be able to readily sell to a world that is looking for a ‘magic bullet’ to cure all their sadness, pain and confusion.

What inner work is REALLY all about is your ability to make moment to moment...

I was talking to a client this week who was struggling big time with his energy. He was constantly getting to the end of his work day completely exhausted - leaving nothing in the tank for him to spend time with and connect deeply with his family when he got home. 

It was becoming an issue because his children were growing up and he was worried that he was missing out on important quality time with them because he simply didn’t have the energy when he got home to be completely present - and family is one of his highest values. 

His career path, his role and the company he works for isn’t the issue that needs to be addressed here - he feels incredibly rewarded and fulfilled in the work that he does. 

This is an issue of self-awareness, self-worth and an inability to set boundaries with his team.

I’ll address self-awareness first. The reality is that no two people in this world are the same. Everyone has different needs, different wants, different...

How often do you come into a conversation and it frustrates the life out of you? Or you make decisions with another person and it isn’t what you wanted? Or the simple fact that you cannot stand the person talking to you.

Now, what if I was to tell you there was a way to overcome all of these problems? It is the missing ingredient in the boardroom. 

I want to start this with what happens in OUR boardroom, as a contrast to what happens in every business I have ever worked with. 

We have a business strategy session every Wednesday morning. And before we even begin to make decisions about the business, we start the conversation with what patterns we both have that are going to impact the decisions we make and how successful the business is. 

Our conversations go something like this: 

“I make decisions too quickly without considering all of the facts and all elements, and it can cause the business to have to pick up the pieces and change direction too...