Giving Engaging Feedback
People are reluctant to give each other feedback in the workplace. On the one hand, some people hold back on giving constructive feedback as they worry about how the other…
8 Unavoidable Moments Leaders Need To Communicate Through
When it comes to leading an organisation, every leader fundamentally understands the consequences of a poor leadership approach to finances.
Eight Things Great Leaders Do
What do you think is the number one factor that determines a high-performing workplace? A great coffee machine? High rates of pay? The threat of redundancy hanging over everyone's heads?…
Organisational Alignment
There is no one factor that stands above all others when it comes to great execution. However, given that, for any organisation, there are a limited number of business strategies…
How Leaders Can Support Remote Trust Building
Trust is a critical factor to the success of teams. The more trust exists, the easier and faster the right work gets done. Building this trust in a remote team…
Thrive, Survive Or Perish?
In business, your success is largely determined by your focus. If you have clarity of focus, your action is purposeful and you will more easily achieve what you set out…
The Cornerstone of Learning
For many years now I have been concerned about the way we teach and impart knowledge to others. I have also been concerned that our methods of learning have been…
Creating A Cohesive Team
Whether you are leading a small team, managing a large department, or are part of a group of professionals, your personal success is going to hinge on building an ambitious,…
Essential Reflection
Essential reflection is an active, tenacious and meticulous assessment of any operational belief, behaviour, assumption or experience. In a general sense, essential reflection simply considers and challenges what we know…
The Leadership E-Factor
For today’s leaders to be genuinely successful now and into the future, I believe that there are four critical dimensions to establish within your workplace. These four dimensions are being…
3 Seeds To Plant For Future Growth
Now is the time to plant seeds that can bear fruit for your organisation in the future. You can even provide seeds of value at little or no cost. Here…
The Weakest Link
We all know there is always a weakest link on any team (always someone else, of course!). As the old saying goes, "a team is only as strong as its…
How To Increase Your Leadership IQ: Implementation Quotient
How do leaders accomplish more than others? And how do they achieve great things with others? I believe a leader's success is due to their IQ: implementation quotient. That is…
9 Ways to Break Down The Barriers Undermining Collaboration
How well do people across your business work together to achieve your collective goals? Do managers work with one another to identify priorities and coordinate their team's efforts?
How To Use Presentations As A Tool To Change Internal Culture
Have you conducted a culture assessment in your organisation? How would you rate the morale and the current attitudes of your workforce?
How To Make Stronger Leadership Decisions
Leaders are required to make decisions every day, and in a world that is constantly changing and increasingly complex making good decisions is harder than ever.
Are Your Staff Eager To Work?
Studies show that approximately two-thirds of employees are not fully engaged at work, and 26% are actively disengaged. But you don't need studies to prove that.
Why people resist change
There is no doubt that there is an extraordinary amount of change taking place in many workplaces today. Restructures, redundancies, major changes from head office or funding bodies, and new…
Dealing with defensive personalities
When you're dealing with someone whose behaviour is obviously problematic, there’s nothing more frustrating than their refusal to see any problem with their behaviour at all.
Co-Ceo
Richard joined Proteus Leadership in 1999. Up until his appointment as Co-CEO in March 2019, Richard was the Managing Director and a Lead Educator at Proteus Leadership. He is recognised…
The Service Factor
Imagine if everybody at your workplace saw customers like they were running their own small business and had what Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, called having a ‘Day One’ philosophy.…
Transparent Leadership
We all know that trust, respect, integrity and service have been the go to values and behaviours for any successful workplace. However, in our new digital age, ‘Transparency’ has become…
Building Your Credibility
It is sad that the usually well-intentioned efforts of hardworking people is so easily discounted, mistrusted or ignored.
Top 10 Leadership Lessons
A common thread to being an extraordinary leader is being open to new ideas and ways of thinking as well as staying committed to growing their business, themselves and others.
Successfully Lead Your Team – Get Bad At What You Do
Leader, manager, foreman, boss... These titles (and others) describe people who are responsible for getting a job done by directing others.
8 Ways You Can Incorporate Strategic Awareness In Business And Life
Strategic awareness rarely features in modern text books on management, yet is something that can fundamentally change conversations and decision-making at the board level.
One Thing A Leader Needs To Practice
There is the constant quest to define the qualities that make a great leader. This quest will go on until the end of time, as it should.
Avoid 5 Pitfalls Of Difficult Conversations
Have you ever watched two people handle a difficult conversation poorly? It is always easier to see the mistakes other people make, but much harder to see our own contributions…
The Culture Pulse Test
Workplace culture is going to happen with or without you, and because it is not linear, your culture will do one of two things.
Seven Keys To Instant Rapport
Have you ever met someone that you instantly liked? Or have you ever met someone that immediately rubbed you the wrong way? Of course you have.
Are You A Taskmaster Or A Prospector?
Setbacks and challenges are embedded into the fibre of business, education, customer service and parenting. Finding the motivation to get up and keep going is the life blood of success.
Leverage Your Leadership Skills To Improve Your Impact
What makes a leader more effective? How can you leverage your leadership abilities to increase and improve your impact?
Accessing The Confidence/Competence Loop
We all recognise that our success accelerates when we're confident. The reason is simple - without confidence we revert to fear, and when we are fearful we don't take any…
Top 4 Tips For Delivering Authentic Presentations
The most positive, memorable presentations are the ones that are authentic. When we deliver an authentic presentation, who we are shines through. We connect with our audience.
How To Keep Your Best Employee Before They Become Your Competitor
Steve Jobs worked for Atari before founding Apple. Jeff Bezos worked for Bankers Trust before launching Amazon. Elon Musk sold his first company to Compaq before starting Tesla and SpaceX.
Building Psychological Safety
In 1999, I joined Des Penny the CEO & Founder of Proteus Leadership to help run and grow the business. Shortly after, we co-wrote and launched the first culture workshop…
Leverage Your Established Relationships
In our obsession with social media metrics, followers, likes, connections, reach, Klout and so on, it's easy to forget that the people who will make the biggest difference to you…
The Dangers Of Compulsive Multi-Tasking
Leaders today are getting smashed with work. There is more to do than time available, everyone wants a piece of you, and time seems to evaporate into thin air. The…
Why Good Leaders Start As Good Followers
People in leadership roles have the latitude to decide who they want to work with. That's one of the perks. We spend significant numbers of hours each day; creating companies,…
Five Steps To Rediscovering Happiness
Life provides us with challenges. Sometimes we suffer circumstances that leave us in a bad space. The only truth is that you cannot control what happens to you, only what…
Shadowing – Your Surprise Secret Weapon For Leadership Success
Help your team members step up by letting them 'shadow' you in your job. This shows them how you spend your day, what you do, how you do it, what…
9 Ways Leaders Can Overcome The Tendency To Micromanage
Micromanagement. The word creates emotion in almost anyone who has ever worked a day in their life. Most have been micromanaged, and none liked it.
The 3 Elements Of Successful Innovations
One of the most commonly-quoted stories around disruption is about Kodak, which was the market leader in film photography, but failed because it couldn't adapt to digital photography.
10 Tips For Building Relationships That Work
Almost everything you have accomplished, or will ever accomplish, or may never accomplish can be traced to the quality of your relationships.
Demystifying Thought Leadership
The term Thought Leadership was first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, then the editor-in-chief for the magazine Strategy and Business.
Dealing With A (Good) Employee You Don’t Like
Have you ever had an employee who did their job well, yet still managed to drive you mad? If you have, then you'll know how rapidly frustration can snowball.
Stages Of Growth
The excitement of another year is always something that gets our creative juices going. New goals are set in all areas of our lives and HOPE reigns eternal that this…
Leading The Future – Getting All Your Ducks In A Row
I remember as a child going to my Grandparents farm just outside of Adelaide in South Australia and right across the lounge room wall was a line of plaster ducks,…
Creating A Culture Of Innovation
"In the mind and heart of every person is a car park of unfulfilled ideas and dreams that have not yet come to fruition - but they still can." - Des…
Stepping Into The Unknown
I am a great believer in setting clear goals for our lives. Goals that will make us better people and improve our knowledge and skills; but sometimes even goal setting…
4 Leadership Steps For Building A Workplace Community
Workplaces, teams and organisations are communities. Given the time and energy (physical, emotional and mental) that we put into our work, it's not unreasonable that we want our workplaces to…
What To Look For In Future Leaders
Someday, the current leaders won't be there and someone else will need to fill their shoes. It might not be soon, or it might be very urgent due to demographics,…
What Do You Expect?
Poor performance, turnover, conflict and disengagement. This reads like a checklist of most leaders’ worst fears. While there is no single silver bullet answer to solve all four of these…
Five Reasons Why Leaders Need To Relax
Leaders have a lot on their plate. They have lots to think about, lots to do and lots to decide. This likely conjures a picture of frantic busyness and not…
Encouraging Progress In A Changing Workplace
A friend of mine was recently part of an organisational restructure that involved painful redundancies, changed responsibilities, and completely different ways of working. As you can imagine, the scale of the…
Excellence Isn’t Enough
A car is a car, but a BMW is a driving machine. There is the iPad, and then there are products generically called 'tablets'. And why the premium on bags with…
7 Myths of Coaching
Business coaching is becoming one of the most effective business tools to improve performance, and where it works well, results can be seen within days of the coaching session.
Change: Turning Resistance Into Resilience
Change is going to happen in your professional life. No doubt about it. Some change is poorly conceived, ineffectively managed, and/or insanely implemented.
Are You Overcomplicating?
Chances are there's something you're working on now that seems overwhelming. You may have lots of moving pieces on a never-ending project. Or you've got too many people involved in…
Put On Your Leaders Hat And Watch Their Attitude Change
People are the biggest cost to any organisation and their performance has a direct impact on your bottom line. The most successful organisations are the ones that can get the…
Accelerate Leadership Effectiveness – By Giving Up
When you think about surrender, you don’t likely think of great leadership. People who surrender, lose, right?
The Power Of Positive Emotions
There is always an emotional component to change, and personal experience will tell anyone this is true. There have been changes in your life you were excited about, and those…
Speak Up & Sort It Out
Being reluctant to sort through difficulties at work is a very human condition. Many of us get frustrated or hurt by others at work, but we refuse to speak to…
Moving From Old School To New School Leadership
In 2016, Proteus CEO and Founder Des Penny and I, designed and delivered a new conference called Shake It Up.
Why Leaders Need To Be Abundance Thinkers
What we believe about ourselves, our situation and our world drives our thoughts and actions and therefore has a huge impact on the results we achieve.
The 7 Deadly Sins Of Customer Engagement
Despite the innovation and resourcefulness of entrepreneurial organisations, they can also fall victim to the 7 deadly sins of customer engagement.
Riding The Dragon: Taking Risks And Transforming Fear
Clare Bowditch is an Icon of the Australian Media Landscape. She is an accomplished speaker and business mentor, and prides herself on teaching both professionals and artists the balance between…
Our Lack Of Focus Is Killing Us
Let’s be blunt. Our lack of attention is costing us big time in how effectively we get through our day, and how we feel as a result.
Making Clever Happen
Dr. Jason Fox is on an epic quest to liberate the world from poorly designed processes and work.
Is Your Business Out Of Control?
Are you clear about your business vision, direction and goals? Is fear, second guessing and over analysis holding you back from taking action for your business?
How Do You Handle Conflict?
There was once a time when people thought that if couples or coworkers argued, there was something wrong with their relationship. This is not true, of course.
3 success factors for leaders to capitalise on the power of passion
Passionate leaders foster passionate teams. Passionate teams create customers and powerful results!
Are Your Communication Strategies Really Engaging Employees?
There is only one question that you need to ask yourself to find out whether your employee communication strategies are going to engage employees, rather than simply inform.
Every Leadermanager™ Is Responsible For Succession Planning
Succession planning is not just about executives, it is about every role in your organisation.
6 Attitudes For Winning At Work
You've probably got some great employees and wonderful coworkers on your team. They're hard working, dedicated, and loyal.
Encouraging Great Team Debates
In summarising the behaviours of 150 leaders identified as either 'multipliers' or 'diminishers' of the people they led, it was noted that important organisational decisions are always subject to debate.
Three Ways To Increase The Effectiveness Of Your Frontline Leader Development Programs
Developing effective frontline leaders is an important task that needs to be achieved as effective and efficiently as possible.
Your Development Belongs To You
Your development is yours. It doesn't belong to your boss or your organisation - it belongs to you.
An Evening With Oprah
Recently, I had the opportunity to spend an evening with Oprah at her show in Adelaide at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. What a great evening it was!
How Disruption Can Improve Your Leadership
It's easy to sometimes slip into a mentality of 'comfortable shoes leadership' where the comfort zone takes over as the business benchmark.
21 Questions That Will Make Teamwork Work!
To assist and evaluate team building efforts, I've developed a list of 21 key questions you need to answer to make teamwork work.
9 Tips For A Dynamic Team
Do you want a high-performance team? But individuals on the team are at odds with each other?
What I Learned From Richard Branson
“I read a blog by Robin Sharma regarding a discussion he had with Richard Branson in Bucharest about taking our careers and lives to their next level of WOW! Thought…
3 Ninja Tactics To Leverage Your Big Ideas
How often do you find yourself daydreaming and a big idea pops into your head?
Harnessing Your Emotions
Have you ever overreacted with anger to comments or actions from your colleagues, managers, suppliers or customers?
Get Rid Of Brain Clutter
Many people express concern about being able to manage their time well.
Stop Employees Running On Autopilot & Engage Their Brain
Some employees only engage their brains to do their jobs just to the level so they won't get fired.
Becoming A Master Of Time
If you want to become an individual who maximises every second, versus one who spends time on an unlimited budget, there are four simple actions you'll want to take.
Ten Things You Can Do To Make Your Workplace Mentally Healthy
Around one in five Australian employees is likely to be living with a mental health condition, which can affect their productivity at work and personal wellbeing.
3 signs your office is in need of a ‘health make over’
Many business owners are making the move towards healthy workplaces, deciding to not only transform their own health habits, but those of their employees as well.
The Eight Values Of An Employer Of Choice
Every organisation these days – big or small – wants to become an employer of choice. Many claim they are when in reality few can be considered as such.
Hitting Turbulence? Build Resilience
It happened again. Something didn't go according to plan. Things were running smoothly – and then you hit turbulence.
Engaging People During Tough Times
An engaged workforce is a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage that requires investment in good times and in bad.
How Leaders Communicate
Communicating isn't the objective of a good leader. Understanding is the objective. Communication is simply the most important tool for accomplishing it.
Brain Racer!
How to be on when it's needed, and off when you're home.
How To Network With The Elephant In The Room
Belonging to a networking group that meets regularly helps to establish and maintain relationships that can prosper for years.
Leadership Lessons From Sport
Chances are, you will be watching sports soon. Any team sport is more than a chance to relax, eat or spend time with friends.
Good Customer Service Alone Does Not Mean Referrals
Many businesses are under the impression that if they provide good customer service, people will refer business to them – just like that!
Essential Leadership Conversations
These insightful words from Ronald Heifetz (lecturer in public leadership at Harvard, and author of several books including The Practice of Adaptive Leadership) encapsulate the everyday expectation we have of…
It’s Not All About You
You don't become worked up because of what people say. You don't become emotionally charged because of their tone.
Four Behaviours Of Strong Leadership
There are so many things leaders are supposed to do that it can feel overwhelming.
Maximising The Benefits Of Negative Criticism
No one likes criticism. But it's a fact of life. There's simply no way you're going to go through life without some criticism.
Destination Darwin – A City Like No Other!
Some people would say that Darwin is ‘off the grid’ but that just isn’t the case. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, it's the second fastest growing capital city…
The Five Keys To Momentum
When it comes to mastering the power of mindsets, genuine communication and influence, Chris Helder was on fire at the 2014 Leaders With A Life Conference.
The Magic Of Leadership
My name is Vinh Giang and I am proud to admit that I did not fulfil the stereotypical Asian prophecy.
Making Your Life Count – Leaving a Lasting Footprint
Life. The subject of many a heated conversation, the core to so many of our cherished writer's and poet’s work, and the inspiration to so many of our greatest art…
Leading Workplace Cultures Into The Future
Most leaders are searching for ways to eke out performance improvements from their team.
Leadership Is All Around Us
A great deal has been and will continue to be written about Leadership, given it is a topic that can be discussed, debated, and challenged in the many environments in…
Do You Want To Be A Great Leader? The Act As If…
There is no doubt that the most important and powerful form of communication is our body language.
Create A Culture Of Courage – Engage, Inspire And Embolden
Fear is a potent emotion that can sabotage success for even the brightest minds.
Personal Mission Statements of 5 Famous CEOs
Looking for some inspiration to help you set some goals?
The ‘Gift’ of Fault Finding – When to critique and when to shut up!
Being analytical in nature, I find myself naturally gifted at fault finding.
Growing Self-Regulating Teams: A case study in saving lives
One of the most difficult dilemmas leaders are faced with is knowing when and how to ‘let go’, in order to allow others to grow and achieve.
