Why is gender balancing so important?
What we are experiencing in the workplace at present is nothing short of a revolution – certainly it’s a historic shift. More women than ever before are entering the world of work (the workforce in the US, for the first time in history, is now comprised of more women than men), women now make up the largest talent pool of qualified candidates available for hire, and they are eager and willing to take on more responsibility at work.
And yet leadership roles for women still prove elusive.
So, why should companies take gender balancing more seriously?
Unconscious bias
Enormous discrimination against women still continues to exist in the workplace, even in first world countries like the United States. The profiles of C-Suite employees around the world show that most companies still favour promoting men over women but, even at more junior levels, there is bias against women – albeit that this bias is sometimes unconscious.
This fact was highlighted in a recent experiment in America. Here are the details:
A resume of a fictitious person was sent to a selection of 147 college professors at 6 major research universities. The professors were asked to rate this resume as part of a study. The ‘candidate’ was a recent graduate who was seeking a position as a laboratory manager. All professors received the same one-page summary which portrayed a promising candidate, but not someone outstanding. The only difference? – on half of the resumes, the mythical candidate was called John; on the other half the candidate was named Jennifer.
Read More»Gender balancing – quotas or social pressure?
Gender diversity is now one of the hottest topics around the world, with hardly any country unable to ignore the groundswell of pressure to increase the balance of genders at the highest levels in business and in the public sector. Governments are wrestling with how best to encourage this gender balancing – through incentives, public influence or through legislation (with a time limit, or with penalties, should efforts not be seen to be made).
In South Africa, we are on the verge of having the Women Empowerment and GenderEquality Bill passed into law. This legislation will require that women fill 50% of all decision-making positions in companies (which include C-Suite roles). From an administrative point of view, this shouldn’t pose too many difficulties. We have had over a decade of BBBEE programmes, so are fully conversant with targets, with preferred procurement policies and with penalties for non-compliance. Managing these new targets administratively will be fairly easy – they will simply be included into existing scorecards and will form part of reporting, which is already required on an annual basis. The true challenge will be in implementing these new guidelines. From the physical point of view of identifying, developing and including countless women into management structures, a total shift in culture is going to be required.
Are quotas the right way to go?
Read More»Leadership Development Progamme
Our 15 module leadership programme:
Our coaching and mentoring programme provides simple, practical and powerful strategies and tools to help you lead elegantly. It offers frameworks, worksheets, questions and assessments that will help leaders clarify their thinking, expand their skills, and get better responses from their colleagues. Each module focuses on a different aspect of elegant leadership.
Elegant Leadership – Skillssource Leadership Programme
Module One : Get Grounded
This module provides a one-page dashboard that clearly defines your mission, vision, goals, key initiatives, key relationships, and opportunities for continued development. With this dashboard in hand, you can focus on what really matters in chaotic times.
Module Two : Wipe Your Feet at the Door
Leaders will be challenged to eliminate disagreeable, unproductive, career-limiting behaviours by completing ‘The Survey No One Wants to Take!’
The type of questions leaders will need to have answered by a selection of co-workers are as follows:
Never/Rarely/Sometimes/Often/Always
- Abdicates responsibility by not providing support, tools, coaching or direction when needed
- Takes credit for the work of others
- Blames others for failures; does not take responsibility for mistakes
Scary? Certainly! But, if you really want to be a leader who is deeply admired and who is remembered for years to come, this is the stuff you have to know.
If you’re not sure how you’re truly perceived by your subordinates, peers and superiors, how will you ever be able to work on those areas where you’re falling short? And rest assured, we will provide you with practical steps to eliminate your blind spots and we guarantee that, if you follow the guidance, each time you conduct this survey, your results will dramatically improve.
Module Three : Take Care of Your Needs
Leaders have enough on their minds at work without having to focus on personal problems. This short module asks you to indulge your personal needs in order to find clarity, peace and strength.
Module Four: Cultivate the Right Attitude
Great leaders have great attitudes, mindsets, beliefs, and ways of being that lay the foundation for elegantleadership. Here you’ll also be taught to balance your ego, results and relationships. It includes ‘living in the grey zone’ (how to cope with uncertainty), being open to continuous learning, becoming a source of vision and opportunity and developing an impeccable character. To be an effective leader, character is critical – and we all know that it rests on a slippery slope. In this module you are challenged to assess your own character and correct past mistakes.
Module Five: Develop an Elegant Strategy
While leaders build compelling visions of the future, they also develop powerful and practical strategies for getting there. This chapter suggests that the crux of strategy is determining what your organization should do best, in terms that matter to your customers and make your organization unique in the marketplace. Here, leaders see the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, how to find a niche market and how to choose customers, among many other criteria.
Module Six: Communicate Simply and Powerfully
Of course, this entire programme is about communication, but this module reminds leaders about listening and speaking authentically, about creating concise and compelling messages, and about expanding effective communication throughout your organization. You already know that non-verbal communication accounts for 93% of understanding and that you need to listen not just for words but for emotions, but this module teaches you to listen with purpose and to be AUTHENTIC.
Module Seven: Strengthen Your Power Base
Leaders depend on the quality of their professional relationships. This module offers a simple process for identifying and strengthening your most important relationships.
Module Eight: Engage and Mobilize Employees
Many of us could pay more attention to how we mobilize, lead, coach and develop our employees. This module provides practical tools and strategies for understanding our employees and providing them with the support they need to succeed.
Module Nine: Elegant Leadership from Below
Most leaders report to somebody, whether another executive, the CEO, a board member, an investor, or customers. Since the manager is one of the most important people in the leader’s power base, this module focuses exclusively on strengthening that relationship.
Module Ten: Think comprehensively
Many leadership pundits underestimate the importance of critical and comprehensive thinking. They assume that with enough vision and passion, leaders will get results. This module takes a contrary view, and argues that leaders absolutely must be able to think clearly, practically and comprehensively.
Module Eleven : Successfully Influence Others
Leaders success by influencing others to think, speak and act differently. They do this in a way that simultaneously gets results and maintains relationships, without manipulating. This module provides tools, templates and strategies to influence others elegantly.
Module Twelve: Move Things Forward
Ultimately, leaders get results by moving things forward. This happens much more easily when leaders implement the strategies and tools elsewhere in this programme. This module builds on preceding ones by providing specific tools for moving things toward a successful conclusion.
Module Thirteen: Foster Collaboration
In authentic collaboration, all parties benefit. As this module shows, elegant leaders work hard to foster collaboration, both inside and outside their organizations.
Module Fourteen: Build for the Future
Most executives have enough of a challenge achieving short-term results. This module helps you build an organization (or a piece of one) that will last longer than you do.
Module Fifteen: Give Something Back
Elegant leaders contribute beyond their organizations. They get involved with, and solve, issues of personal interest. They also find ways to promote and encourage civic involvement
Good leaders make better tomorrows
- At October 14, 2012
- By admin
- In Executive coaching
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Elegant leaders
We know that our coaching and mentoring of your leadership style will result in a significantly better future for your business than would have been possible without this input.
We believe that leadership means creating a significantly better future than would have been possible without a leader. A good leader, either in a corporate company or a small business, creates something out of nothing – and the results are significant. A leader matters: organisations should see that without the contribution of a good leader, results would not have been nearly as impressive.
Our business and executive coaching is based on the real meaning of ‘leadership’ – namely, how to guide, direct and influence people for the highest good of all concerned. Today, the word ‘leadership’ is almost meaningless. We tell workers to display leadership by having a good attitude and showing up on time. We call training in basic supervisory skills ‘leadership’.
And when people do exert leadership, they are often sloppy about it. Many sacrifice relationships. Some compromise ethics. Others exhibit all sorts of disagreeable behaviours. Still others fail to think rigorously about the right strategy or course of action. We excuse this sloppiness by arguing that results justify the means.
‘Elegant Leadership’ tolerates neither watered-down definitions of leadership, nor sloppiness.
What are the highlights of our 15 module programme?
- Leaders are often advised to look at themselves in the mirror. This training suggests what they should be looking for and what to do about what they see.
- It provides the kind of practical learning most managers are unable to master in a life-time of practice
- The practical advice given to mentor a leader through complex decisions will result in dramatically increased leadership productivity
- It’s a simple, clear blueprint to value-based leadership – it’s a high touch approach that is badly needed in this high-tech world
- The programme is unusual in that is combines two essential elements – helping the manager to simultaneously improve the bottom line while enhancing employee satisfaction
Who would benefit most from our leadership training programme?
Our programme is not for everyone – it’s only for leaders with real courage. It asks hard questions –
participants need to assess themselves honestly, ask for advice, make difficult choices, and change ineffective behaviours.
The pay-off?
For those with the necessary courage, the rewards are huge – leaders will achieve better results in less time, with stronger professional relationships, and with greater personal and professional fulfillment.
Our programme:
Our coaching and mentoring programme provides simple, practical and powerful strategies and tools to help you lead elegantly. It offers frameworks, worksheets, questions and assessments that will help leaders clarify their thinking, expand their skills, and get better responses from their colleagues. Each module focuses on a different aspect of elegant leadership.
Click here to view our Leadership Development Programme
Leaders can be coached
- At October 14, 2012
- By admin
- In Leadership and management
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Developing good leaders and managers in our country is one of the highest priorities of both the public and the private sectors.
Never before in the history of our country has management training, mentorship and leadership development been more important than now; this applies to both the public and private sectors. In South Africa, we are navigating uncharted waters, with our own complex set of circumstances. While this is exciting, it also means that we urgently need many elegant leaders. A definition of elegant is: “pleasingly ingenious and simple“.
How does that fit in with our method of leadership coaching and mentoring?
We help to coach ingenious business and government leaders who have simple strategies.
Many leaders of yesterday proved to have clay feet and a penchant for the good life, and were part of the global financial ruin. Gone are the days of Trump-style personality leaders, power wielding autocrats or leaders who reign with no regard for “walking the walk”. Even worse, there is no room for leaders who are unable to see the way clearly and bumble along with confused followers.
This is why we take so seriously our role of coaching leaders and managers to be truly effective at guiding, directing and influencing people for the highest good of all concerned. We believe that leadership means creating a significantly better future than would have been possible without a leader.
Leadership training is currently widely offered by many firms. Training definitely has a place in leadership development, but it is coaching and mentoring that creates a robust programme and helps permeate leadership principles throughout an organization.
Who is our leadership programme aimed at?
Our future leaders need to have courage! Our coaching programme asks hard questions and participants need to assess themselves honestly, ask for advice, make difficult choices, and change ineffective behaviours.
The pay-off?
For those with the necessary courage, the rewards are huge – leaders will achieve better results in less time, with stronger professional relationships, and with greater personal and professional fulfillment.
Our leadership development programme:
Our 15 module leadership coaching programme provides simple, practical and powerful strategies and tools. It offers frameworks, worksheets, questions and assessments that will help leaders clarify their thinking, expand their skills, and get better responses from their colleagues.
The fifteen modules in our programme:
- Can be customized per client company and the needs of each leader
- Provide the kind of practical learning most managers are unable to master in a life-time of practice
- Combine two essential elements – helping the manager to simultaneously improve the bottom line while enhancing employee satisfaction.
What has been said of this programme:
- Leaders are often advised to look at themselves in the mirror. This training suggests what they should be looking for and what to do about what they see.
- The practical advice given to guide a leader through complex decisions will result in dramatically increased leadership productivity.
We welcome an opportunity to discuss our ‘high touch’, highly effective leadership development programme with you.
Why Business Coaches make good sense
- At October 14, 2012
- By admin
- In Business coaching, Coaching
0
What is a business coach? What services do they offer? Will I benefit from a business coach?
Doubtful whether having a SkillsSource Coach or Mentor would help you?
Business coaching
Business owners and managers often struggle to keep up with the demands of day to day management while still growing the business in an ever changing and highly competitive market.
Business coaching keeps the balance.
As the world of business moves faster and gets more competitive, the implementation of the
small critical steps to success gets more and more difficult to achieve amid the noise and
clutter of day to day operations.
Having a business coach is not a magic formula. Instead, it is a guarantee that all the small strategies critical for success, are put in place and:
- Integrated into the business culture
- Implemented in an accountable manner
- Utilised by the business coach to move a company from surviving to thriving by paying attention to the details that matter.
Business owners!
Overwhelmed? Too many things on your mind and too many challenges to meet? Working ‘in’ your business when you know you need to be working ‘on’ the business?
Are these the things occupying your mind?
- Growing top-line sales
- Reducing costs
- Positive cashflow
- Competitor innovation
- Losing customers
We’ve been there ourselves, and have experienced those sleepless nights too. So what is our solution? What we needed ourselves in the past is what we offer you now:
- That extra pair of eyes, that objective viewpoint and business savvy
- Support and accountability to achieve success on your terms
Why SkillsSource?
- Proven skills in taking people from where they are to where they want to be
- A passion for aligning aspirations and helping business owners achieve defined goals
- A talent for generating fresh ideas to keep you ahead of your competitors
- Ability to guide you through the isolation of self employment
- Decades of commercial exposure at executive level and as a business owner
Will you benefit from having a business coach? Take our test to find out