One for the Ladies

An interview with Carrie Hindmarsh (CEO of M&C Saatchi Group’s advertising agency).  She is one of the judges at the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year awards which is being held on Wednesday.  There is a section on Emotional Intelligence which you may all find interesting.

Step 4 - Dream Big

If you want to be larger than life, you need a dream that’s larger than life. Small dreams won’t serve you or anyone else. It takes the same amount of time to dream small than it does to dream big. So be Big and be Bold!

Write down your One Biggest Dream. The one that excites you the most. Remember, don.t be small and realistic; be bold and unrealistic! Go for the Gold, the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Oscar, the highest you can possibly achieve in your field.

After you.ve written down your dream, list every single reason why you CAN achieve your dream instead of worrying about why you can't.

You may want to listen to R.Kelly - Worlds Greatest to give you inspiration

Step 5 - Vision

Step 3 - Follow Your Bliss

Regardless of how busy you are, always take time to do what you love doing. Being an alive and vital person vitalises others. When you are pursuing your passions, people around you cannot help but feel impassioned by your presence.

This will make you a charismatic leader. Whatever it is that you enjoy doing, be it writing, acting, painting, drawing, photography, sports, reading, dancing, networking, or working on entrepreneurial ventures, set aside time every week, ideally two or three hours a day, to pursue these activities.

Believe me, you’ll find the time. If you were to record yourself for a day, you would be shocked to see how much time goes to waste!

Step 4 - Dream Big

Step 2 - SWOT Yourself

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Although it’s a strategic management tool taught at Stanford and Harvard Business Schools and used by large multinationals, it can just as effectively be used in your own professional development as a leader.

This is a useful key to gain access to self knowledge, self-remembering, and self-honouring.  Start by listing all your Strengths including your accomplishments. Then write down all your Weaknesses and what needs to be improved.

Make sure to include any doubts, anxieties, fears, and worries that you may have. These are the demons and dragons guarding the door to your inner attic. By bringing them to conscious awareness you can begin to slay them. Then proceed by listing all the Opportunities you see available to you for using your strengths.

Finally, write down all the Threats or obstacles that are currently blocking you or that you think you will encounter along the way to achieving your dreams.

Step 3 - Follow Your Bliss

Ten easy steps to developing your leadership skills by Sharif Khan

I would like you to join me in reading or revisiting an article by Sharif Khan that explores 10 steps that can help you become a truly great leader.  Over the coming weeks I am going to take you through each step and invite you to think about your own leadership development.

Leadership development is about moving you, inch by inch along a personal leadership continuum. At the beginning, is a rough management style – perhaps the one that came to your naturally at the other end, is a perfected and optimised way of leading.

Leadership isn’t just a way to speak, or a manner of dealing with employees or team members. It’s about how you approach the world, and how you respond to it.

Are you pro-active? Are you re-active? Do you speak more, or do you listen more? Do you imagine, or do you empower? Are you kind, or are you ruthless? These are all characteristics within our personality, our habits.  Some of these can be changed easier than others.

Leadership development is concerned with identifying your development needs and one-by-one, proactively engaging in learning, activities and experiences that will improve them.

Whatever the development need, whatever the issue, you can work to resolve it, and you can become a better leader.

Ten easy steps to developing your leadership skills

by Sharif Khan who is a professional speaker and author of highly acclaimed, Psychology of the Hero Soul, an inspirational book on awakening the Hero within and developing peoples leadership potential.

Many motivational experts like to say that leaders are made, not born. I would argue the exact opposite. I believe we are all natural born leaders, but have been deprogrammed along the way. As children, we were natural leaders - curious and humble, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge, with an incredibly vivid imagination; we knew exactly what we wanted, were persistent and determined in getting what we wanted, and had the ability to motivate, inspire, and influence everyone around us to help us in accomplishing our mission. So why is this so difficult to do as adults? What happened?

As children, over time, we got used to hearing, .No,. .Don.t,. and .Can.t.. .No! Don.t do this. Don.t do that. You can.t do this. You can.t do that. No!. Many of our parents told us to keep quiet and not disturb the adults by asking silly questions. This pattern continued into high school with our teachers telling us what we could do and couldn.t do and what was possible.

Then many of us got hit with the big one .institutionalised formal education known as college or university. Unfortunately, the traditional educational system doesnt teach students how to become leaders; it teaches students how to become polite order takers for the corporate world. Instead of learning to become creative, independent, self-reliant, and think for themselves, most people learn how to obey and intelligently follow rules to keep the corporate machine humming.

Developing the Leader in you to live your highest life, then, requires a process of .unlearning. by self-remembering and self-honoring. Being an effective leader again will require you to be brave and unlock the door to your inner attic, where your childhood dreams lie, going inside to the heart.

Based on Sharif Khan's ten years of research in the area of human development and leadership, he proposes ten easy steps you can take to Awaken the Leader in YOU and rekindle your passion for greatness:

 Step 1. Humility

Leadership starts with humility. To be a highly successful leader, you must first humble yourself like a little child and be willing to serve others. Nobody wants to follow someone who is arrogant. Be humble as a child . always curious, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge.

For what is excellence but knowledge plus knowledge plus knowledge - always wanting to better yourself, always improving, always growing. When you are humble, you become genuinely interested in people because you want to learn from them. And because you want to learn and grow, you will be a far more effective listener, which is the #1 leadership communication tool. When people sense you are genuinely interested in them, and listening to them, they will naturally be interested in you and listen to what you have to say.

How do you rate your listening skills?

 Check out my next blog Step 2 - SWOT yourself

Pizza of Life – How big is your work slice?

Being an effective leader means that you should strive to have a healthy worklife balance. 

What role does your work play in your life?  If your whole life was a Pizza, and one slice was called“work” how big is your slice right now? And what are the other slices called?

When you look at your Pizza of Life, are the slices how you would like them?

I recently re-drew my own Pizza and noticed that the slice called “fitness” had disappeared and had been replaced by a slice called “watching TV", especially anything Vampire related.  Looking at the whole of my life in this way means I can make sensible choices.  A well balanced pizza probably has slices that cover a range of areas of your life that may include any of the following:

·         work
·         learning and development
·         family
·         friends
·         social life
·         health and fitness
·         spirituality and religion
·         rest and relaxation
·         hobbies
·         money
·         pets
·         travel

When you are facing any kind of personal challenge or change this can be a great time to re- evaluate your "Pizza of Life".

Why don’t you review your Pizza of Life ? 

What slices do you want to include, enlarge or reduce correspondingly?  Is there a slice that has been neglected like my fitness slice that needs to be added in?  If so, what will go to make room for it?  Just remember that the most wholesome, nutritious Pizza is a well-balanced Pizza.

By the way I now have reduced my TV watching and by joining a Zumba and Pilate’s class each week I now have a fitness slice and my Pizza is better balanced and definitely more nutritious but it’s still a work in progress.

What Is Charismatic Leadership And How Can I Achieve It?

Some pearls of wisdom from Diana Vanbrabant whi is an Executive Coach and trainer based in Paris. As Managing Director of ETACC: 'The European Training and Coaching Company', Diana works with clients based in Europe, America and the UK. Her high quality training courses include topics such as public speaking, motivational speeches and people management skills – as well as cross-cultural business skills and international leadership skills.


Leadership became a hot topic in the 1970s, and both the business world and the academic world have been busy discussing it ever since. We are bombarded from all sides with books, articles, training courses, surveys, conferences. If you do a Google search on “Leadership” today you will get over 500 million results worldwide, and over 16 million for the UK alone. Amazon.co.uk offers close on 19,000 books on the topic.

So, what is the definition of Leadership? There are many! John Adair, one of the world’s leading authorities on leadership and leadership development, has this to say: ‘Leadership, like all personal relations, always has something unknown, something mysterious about it’.
Most people will say that each of the successful leaders they have known behaves in a different way, even in similar situations. There is no rule for how a leader should behave, or for what action he/she should take in any give situation. Different leaders will use different aspects of their leadership qualities, and different aspects of their own personalities, in different circumstances.

Winston Churchill is a classic example: he was acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest leaders during wartime; but in peacetime, his leadership style just did not fit the bill.

John Adair, in his definition, hits on one of the key requirements of a successful leader: something in personal relations that is unknown and mysterious. This is charisma.

Skills, training, experience, behavioural traits, cultural background; all these are important in a leader. But to be truly successful, to arrive at the top level, a leader must be charismatic.

Are you a charismatic leader?

Try asking yourself the following questions:

Do I stand out from the crowd? What makes me unique? Do I inspire and invigorate my team? Do I communicate a vision that can exhilarate my followers? Do I motivate them to share my values?

A manager who can reflect the image of her vision and her values is a charismatic leader that people aspire to work with!

The key to success is finding the perfect balance: a thoroughly professional image and excellent communication skills. The way you act and the way you communicate combine to produce your charismatic professional image as a leader – to your team, to your peers and to everyone you come into contact with.

Live your charisma 24 hours a day. In today’s competitive business environment it is the first impression that will make or break you. You won’t get a second chance! In the boardroom; giving a speech to your shareholders; leading your team through a crisis situation; your charismatic attitude will position you as a true leader in every aspect of your top-level role.

What is charismatic leadership? And does it make you a better leader?

During my career, I have had the privilege of working with some excellent leaders in a variety of business environments and in many different parts of the world.

My fascination for good leadership led me to spend some time studying the different aspects of it. My findings, together with my on-going development as a coach, have helped me to identify three key qualities that all good leaders have:

• they can inspire people with their vision
• they can communicate this vision with clarity
• they get the best out of people

Is this charismatic leadership?
Yes, I believe it is!

And I would also claim that there are skills you can develop as a leader, which will help you towards charismatic leadership.

1. Inspiring your team with your vision

Teams need strong leadership from a leader who is able to project a clear and inspiring vision. When the economic climate is challenging it is even more important to keep your team’s motivation on a high.

Your vision can – must – become a positive, powerful tool for your team. Communicate it with simplicity and clarity.

And with the exhilarating enthusiasm that only true charismatic leadership can engender.

2. Communicating your vision

Your team cannot read your mind or intentions. They listen to the things you say – but remember, they also see the things you do.
We do not only communicate with words. We are always communicating, whether we realise it or not. Your team is watching everything you do: the way you walk into the room; the way you stand or sit; the way you look at them; the way you don’t look at them. Everything movement carries a ‘message’ that people will pick up and respond to.

Around 90% of the messages in face-to-face communication are carried in ways other than words – via our tone of voice, our facial expression, our posture, etc. Inspire your team with every move you make!

3. Getting the best out of your team

Your charismatic leadership has fired up your team. Their motivation is triggered, they are ready to go! Now, how do you get the best out of them?

Know your team! Learn their strengths, their individual areas of competence. Find out the areas they need to improve, and guide and coach them to gain competence and confidence in these areas.

Communicate clearly what you want to achieve and why. Explain what each individual's role is in the big picture. Ownership of his personal role will boost each team member’s sense of responsibility and fire in him a passion to help you achieve your charismatic vision.

As a leader, focus on honing these three skills – inspiring, communicating and knowing your team. You will feel your charismatic leadership taking you to ever greater heights.

What are your thoughts do you think that to be an effective leader you have to be Charismatic????

Would this leadership approach work in your workplace ????

Another fantastic website  for you to check out with some really useful resources to help you on your leadership journey.

Women Entrepreneurs

Hi everyone check out this website that has been emailed to me by one of my Female Entrepreneurs Sharon Clarke who has recently completed the Leadership workshop and wanted to share this nugget.  This is a visionary young female scientist who plans on changing our world for the better by developing a low cost solar panel that is also more efficient than and environmentally friendly than anything else currently on the market. And she WILL make it happen. She is currently being funded to develop her ideas in Silicone Valley. This is the value of nurturing our little girls' innate vision and encouraging them to step forward and lead!