How many times in a week do you get asked for advice?
If you’re half-way good at your job, I’m going to guess that the answer is “frequently”. If you’re quick to offer your advice I’m going to be blunt: you’re not helping.
I’m going to argue that most people who ask for advice are really asking for clarity and for the confidence to make a decision.
And by clarity, I don’t mean clarity about knowing what you think or what you think should happen. I mean clarity in the asker’s own mind.
Advice doesn’t give clarity or the confidence to act
These things are not in our power to bestow on others – they come from within. Clarity and confidence come when new insights emerge, motivating the asker to act from their own conviction. read more…
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
Whether you call these gatekeepers Chiefs of Staff, Personal Assistants or – not a favourite word of mine – “admins”, they are essential to the high performance of their bosses.
Gatekeepers help managers to lead
In the fifteen years or more that I have been helping managers and their teams, I believe that I can predict how able a manager is to adjust to change by the quality of the gatekeeper who works for him or her.
After all, in a change process you need to protect and manage your time in order to focus on new ways of doing things and not fall into old, easy habits. Whoever has control of your diary has the power to make or break that change.
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
If all of those things are being nurtured on a weekly basis, most of your managerial headaches will subside. And those that don’t, can usually be helped by making sure YOU have regular one to ones with YOUR boss.
But an hour a week! Does it really have to be that often?
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
If every manager has a team of six or eight direct reports, it’s easy to see how many people can be motivated by effective leaders or demotivated when they are neither led nor managed.
Effective leaders develop high performing teams that produce results. Ineffective leaders manage disengaged teams.
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
