As life’s pace picks up remorselessly, clients are increasingly looking for ideas on how better to manage themselves and their time. In this short article, I explore the self-managements myths I most frequently come across. Myth #1 Time can be managed I’ve covered this one in a 2010 posting on my blog: You can read…
Category Archives: self-management
Ask the Enneagram Coach, Part 10
Ginger Lapid-Bogda’s The Enneagram in Business portal contains an “Ask the Coach” feature, where a coach of each Type answers the same question about coaching, to give a flavor of the different possible perspectives. Ginger asked me to be the Type 9 – or Peacemaker – representative on this panel. Here’s my answer to the…
The Leadership of Letting Go, Part 7
When leaders operate under the illusion of control, it’s a sign that their ego is running the show. Sometimes this is a good thing (it reminds them to get to a meeting on time), sometimes it leaves no space for a good way to emerge to meet their current challenge. However, this show running…
The Leadership of Letting Go, Part 5
Leadership is increasingly challenging: more demands in less time. Upping the number of hours doesn’t help either since the time to recharge and be fresh for the next day’s challenges gets eaten away. During the rest of the week, we look at some simple tools that leaders can use to help them let go of…
The Leadership of Letting Go, Part 1
The Leadership Think Tank group on Linked In has been discussing the difference between leadership and management for several months now. The discussion shows no signs of running out of steam. One fundamental difference between leadership and management revolves around (the need for) control. The tools of management benefit from control over the situation or…
Time Management: Why it is futile
Time management is a topic that will always be with us. In a recent leadership workshop, one of the participants, a professor of physics, asked me about it. I thought that the wise words of Lewis Carroll, the pseudonym of Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson, on time management might appeal to him. They did. They illustrate…
The Power of Time Off
Many thanks to Kati Järvinen, a colleague in the Enneagram in Business network, for bringing Stefan Sagmeister’s TED talk to my attention. In it, he describes how he made a conscious decision to take a one-year sabbatical every seven years and the impact of this decision. Conceptually, he took five years out of the retirement…
How much initiative do you want?
When discussing with clients how to lead subordinates, one question that arises often is, how much initiative should my people show? In their classic HBR article, Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? Oncken and Wass lay out a five-level scale of managerial initiative (1 – 5 in the figure). My clients’ staff are more resourceful…
Shoulda, coulda, woulda …
Michael Bungay Stanier has just posed the question Should you be working on vacation? on his Great Work blog, as part of a follow-up to an entry on the Brazen Careerist blog: I’ll Be Working On Vacation: What’s Your Idea Of Work/Life Balance? “Should you …”: My life used to be full of shoulds, each…
One more time: Why Work-Life Balance isn’t healthy
In the Practice Makes Perfect blog, guest writer Barry Moltz wrote Work – Life Balance? Nonsense! about the artificial split between work and life. His basic suggestions is that in the age of the iPhone (or, in my case a Nokia E71) classical tips such as “never take work home” are no longer applicable. Work-Life…
