Helpful questions for your life and business

Leadership: How were your first 90 days?

Nuno F. Assis — Sat, 01 May 2010 12:49:32 +0000

Dear Reader,

Easter is past and, just as in Christianity Easter marks the end of Lent, many other cultures celebrate with their own festival the approach of spring. Just the right time to consider an important date – March 31st. On March 31st, 2010, the first 90 days of 2010 ended.

How were your first 90 days?

Many studies confirm a fact that most people know. After the first 90 days of a new year at the latest over 80 percent of people have “thrown” their New Year‘s resolutions “overboard” again. I‘m sure that you as an active reader don‘t belong to this group – nevertheless, please allow me to ask here what has become of your goals for 2010.

How often did cast a glance at your goals during the first 90 days of the New Year? How often did you check your own progress? Which of the goals you set have turned out to be “only achievable with difficulty” or “not interesting enough to pursue”?

My first coach always said to me:

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in 5 or 10 years.”

If you think about this proposition for a moment, it appears completely logical and comprehensible – and precisely there lies the danger! People read this proposition just as they also read other thoughts and lessons and tell themselves: “That‘s really logical and isn‘t really anything new.” But what do you learn from this proposition or other similar propositions? Do you perhaps check off the proposition without absorbing and implementing the knowledge it contains?

Assume for a moment that you didn‘t check this proposition off. Then the question is posed what lessons and thus what actions can be deduced from it. And it was precisely this question that I was confronted with (...)
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Leadership: In what way do you distinguish yourself as a manager?

Nuno F. Assis — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:34:58 +0000

Business Coach Nuno F. Assis speaking about leadership

Dear Readers,

The recent months of economic and financial crisis have have had a strong effect on many industries and, if we take a look at the current problems of the various state budgets, the high levels of state debt, the huge budget deficits and the enormous sums used to save banks and other companies appear to hang over us like a sword of Damocles. Most people don‘t recognize these connections and also don‘t understand why these factors play a role in the daily life of every single one of us.

But if you just take a closer look at the customers you encounter in the course of your daily business, you‘ll notice that their attitude, perspective and behavior have changed. And it is just the same with those working for you. So if you now want to survive in your company or your industry, you‘ll sooner or later not be able to avoid devoting some thought to this. But which thoughts should you be considering as a businessperson or manager?

A few days ago I organized a special telephone conference for an exclusive circle of readers of my columns with some of the best marketing professors from various universities. Within the framework of this telephone seminar closer attention was devoted to why the current global situation has an effect on the lives and everyday life of every individual. In the course of this a few major questions became the center of attention. These were:

Are you in a position to distance yourself from your competitors and, if so, how?

And if not, why not?(...)
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Leadership: How much are you bogged down in your daily operations?

Nuno F. Assis — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:13:54 +0000

Leadership: A city comes to life...

Dear Readers,

The first weeks of the year are now past and scientific studies show that over 80 percent of all people have broken their New Year‘s resolutions at least once and have often even already given up trying to implement them. Particularly if as an executive you devote yourself more intensively with the management of your subordinates, the question in the title is decisive for your success as a leader.

A City Comes to Life… The city is in the process of coming to life. I‘m sitting in a café and observing all the people passing by outside and on the go. People with a coffee-to-go in their hands hurrying to work. People totally sunk in their thoughts on their way to their daily labor. People with their bags on their shoulders on the way to the gym. People who haven‘t slept well with the last night inscribed on their faces.

The city is in the process of coming to life. I‘m sitting in a café and observing all the people passing by outside and on the go. People with a coffee-to-go in their hands hurrying to work. People totally sunk in their thoughts on their way to their daily labor. People with their bags on their shoulders on the way to the gym. People who haven‘t slept well with the last night inscribed on their faces. Trucks stop, the drivers jump out of the cabins, open the tailboards and start to unload goods for all the stores. Like huge monsters opening their maws. Package by package, load by load the goods are distributed to the surrounding shops. Slowly the city is coming to life. The traffic increases noticeably. In the stores the lights go on and slowly the doors start to open. In the café the last chairs are now being taken and the waiters are placing menus, salt and pepper pots, sugar bowls and ashtrays on the tables. A city is coming to life.

And when you think that this ritual is repeated every day in innumerable cities all (...)
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The gentleman manifesto

Nuno F. Assis — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:28:42 +0000

What is wrong in this world nowadays? I often see a lot of things happening around. Everybody can see how values loose their value in the eyes of mankind. But is that the way mankind really wants to live? The times have raised people to be a kind of instant society. Everyone just wants to get his sort of “instant fullfillment”. People want instant success, instant communications, instant responses, instant knowledge and if you cant find what you search for in a second on a searchengine it is out of your life. You can see people hunting for more fullfillment and while the way they hunt is just a secure path for more emptiness they step up to close the gap faster. A evil circle.

A few days ago at the airport i saw a couple arriving with (...)
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Leadership: Management and time (Part 2)

Nuno F. Assis — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:40:06 +0000

Business Coach Nuno F. Assis speaking about leadership and time management

Dear Readers,

In the last post we began to deal with the question of how to find the time in your packed working day in order to manage your subordinates properly. After getting to know the first four levels of development and becoming aware that “managing subordinates” isn‘t something that you do “on the side” – but is rather, if you want to do it properly, something that requires time to prepare and time to do the right things (what exactly these are in detail is something that we will also look at more closely here in the near future). Therefore I‘d like to ask you a question: “How do you succeed in doing a whole day‘s work by 12 noon?” In this post you will now get to know the next steps of the new system that can also help you to finish your work by 12 o‘clock and take the rest of the day off – or invest it in the management of your subordinates!

Why you aren‘t allowed to add more work At the beginning, when you are finished, it will happen that your instinct will mislead you to start more work. Unfortunately, you can‘t do that and indeed you will have to resist this demanding force. Starting more work results in a setback for your new fledgling system, which in turn undermines your self-confidence and conveys to yourself uncertainty with regard to your new system – consciously or unconsciously.

At the start it‘s very important that you learn to trust your new system. If you can‘t rely on the fact that the points on both your lists are also really the right amount of work and contain the most important points you have to deal with, then you will quickly find yourself back in the old rat race and your new system will quickly be a thing of the past. Focusing on these two lists works so well in practice because you aren‘t allowed to start any new work when you‘ve finished the work on the list. Let me make this clear with an example: (...)
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Leadership: Management and Time (Part 1)

Nuno F. Assis — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:54:53 +0000

Dear readers,

After dealing with the various levels of development to be found among staff, the question now is “How do I best put this into practice?”

What is decisive is that you are in a position to implement your knowledge in practice so that you can provide each member of your staff with the leadership appropriate to their level of development. In the coming issues I will therefore guide you Stepp by step and show you how you can implement the demands of each level of development and thus the demands of leadership on an individual basis. The decisive resource that you should first learn to “budget” and that you have to deal with properly is TIME!

Because in addition to your management activities you also have a host of other things, decisions and activities you have to deal with yourself. In relation to providing leadership your day-to-day business is your greatest challenge. For this reason today we‘ll look at how you can handle the day-to-day business of a complete working day before 12 noon so that you‘ll then have enough time to take care of the leadership of your staff and to prepare yourself sufficiently to do so.

That sounds impossible, doesn‘t it? Again and again people ask me about my own work, organizational and productivity routines. Therefore I‘d like to give you an insight into my own personal work methods. But how do you manage to get the work of a whole day finished by 12 noon? Work that would as a rule take eight hours? (...)
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Joanna Krupa, Peta, animal welfare and dackelschnauze

Nuno F. Assis — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:15:49 +0000

Dear Reader,

early in the new year, I would like to address a topic with you which has created a lot of attention in the recent weeks and which i think needs to get your attention too from a different point of view. With this article I also want to launch a new series of articles I would like to publish in this year. In this new series I will cover different actual topics and show you what you can learn from this topics for your own life and how you can adopt them into your life, so that you can achieve more fulfillment.

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with my good friend Joanna Krupa on the subject of animal welfare. For those of you who are not familiar with the person Joanna Krupa: (...)
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The fourth level of leadership development

Nuno F. Assis — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:42:01 +0000

Dear Readers,

After a short digression into two very interesting aspects of employee and self-management we are now returning to the development of employees in our company or associates in our downline. However, before you deal more precisely with the details of the fourth level of development there are a few questions that you should look at more carefully in order to check your own progress and your personal development.

Questions

How many of your employees have you identified on the third level of development?
What concrete steps have you taken in order to promote and challenge the employees in your team who are on the first level of development?
How have you increased the commitment of your em¬ployees on the second level of development?
How have you helped employees on the third level of development and which measures have you undertaken (...)
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What has an Orange to do with Leadership?

Nuno F. Assis — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:17:04 +0000

Dear Readers,

After looking more closely in the last issue at the leadership principles Barack Obama used to win his election in the USA and at what you can learn from them for your day-to-day business, today I would like together with you to look at another important leadership principle you need not only need for “self-management” but also in order to help your subordinates develop from level 3 to level 4. Without understanding this principle it will be very difficult for you to lead a colleague from the third level onto the fourth level of development So that you understand the significance of the precept, I will have to give a bit of background information and briefly explain the concept of responsibility. Therefore I will begin with a question that may appear unusual:

“Why is an orange far in advance of most managers?”

You will now say: “Mr. Assis, what kind of question is that?” Now, I can understand why you react in this way – but give yourself the time to think about it for a moment. Let us repeat the question again:

“Why is an orange far in advance of most managers?”

An interesting question, because why should a fruit be in advance of us? Now, I mean in its behavior or its reactions? Any idea?(...)
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The leadership principles of Barack Obama

Nuno F. Assis — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:13:01 +0000

Dear Readers,

Before we look at the 4th level of development more closely, In this issue I would like to make a short digression with you and look more closely at the leadership qualities of a well-known personality. I am certain you will ask „Why?“ – and I would like to answer this question immediately. Having now looked more closely at the first 3 levels of development, the question often arises: “How can I now best implement that?” An initial response can be found in the analysis of leadership qualities of other famous leading personalities. But this also brings about a certain danger. When we look at the abilities of another great leader, we tend to compare ourselves with them. But when we compare ourselves we often miss the opportunity to learn because, as is the case with most people, their self-confidence is not strongly developed enough to make a comparison WITHOUT immediately looking for faults and mistakes in themselves. For this reason we will today only make a short digression and look at only three essential principles of leadership used by this leader and to which he owes his above-average and historically unique success.

A few months after the almost landslide victory of Barack Obama in the American presidential election we are faced with an historic moment: the first black president of the United States. But is that all we can learn from this election campaign? Today‘s view and analysis of this success is not about an ideology. The election is over. And while many believe that John McCain‘s economic program would have made more sense for business, particularly with regard to free trade, the tax policy and when it came to creation of jobs, almost everybody is nevertheless happy (coupled with a lot of hope) about the presidency of Barack Obama. Because his election campaign slogan was an “America for everybody” as he so passionately promised again and again. But enough about politics. Today I would like to examine with you what lessons you can draw as, a businessman or women, as an executive or as a private individual from McCain‘s defeat and Obama‘s victory. Because when we look closely three principles or lessons can be drawn which are valid for both the “politics & election campaign” stage and also for business and indeed our lives. And it was precisely on these three lessons that Barack Obama systematically built up his victory.(...)
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