Mentoring
Mentoring is a Very Personal Gift
Mentoring is about YOU prioritising YOU. It is a gift you give to yourself, an opportunity to stop and take time for yourself and enhance your professional leadership development. It is a time to reflect and think about what you are doing and why you are doing it, with a guide on the side in your mentor. It takes you outside the day-to-day challenges and with the help of your mentor, you can look at them differently. You will sleep at night, confident in your ability to lead your organisation inspiring and motivating your people.
Read MorePut First Things First with Stephen Covey
Are you one of the many people who feel overwhelmed and overloaded at present? Are you at burnout stage? Do you feel bombarded from all sides? Is your mental health being affected by this pressure and stress? Are you also one of the people who are being ordered back into the workplace where you know the stress levels you now feel will be escalated?
Why is this happening? Is it your manager putting you under this pressure? Is it the culture of the organisation in which you work? Is it your expectations?
Could it be that you aren’t managing your time constructively? Are you spending your time putting out bushfires, being challenged by the pounding surf or mending fences, all unfulfilling work that is urgent but not important? What would happen, how would you feel if you could do work that was important, where you were able to put first things first and saw you making a real difference?
Read MoreFrom Team Member Friday To Team Leader Monday
Moving from team member Friday to team leader Monday is challenging. Within 6 weeks of her promotion Jane had a problem that was causing her great anxiety. A close friendin the team, Emma, was coming in late to work and leaving early. Team members were complaining to Jane about it because they felt she was not addressing it because Emma was her friend. Jane who had been a long time mentee of mine came back to mentoring for help in managing the situation. How was she, as team leader, going to address this behaviour with Emma without damaging their personal relationship. Jane wanted a win/win outcome. She expected the mentoring to be quite straight forward, given her previous work with me. As result of the mentoring the outcomes was quite unexpected, much more successful that Jane ever imagined or thought possible. It was certainly a win/win outcome.
Read MoreLeadership Development Through Mentoring.
In spite of billions of dollars being spent by organisations on leadership development programs globally, 75% have found their programs ineffective. Add to that the 70,000 books and videos on leadership development, and leaders are still left with big gaps in skill development. With some programs and courses costing a fee of anything from $50,000 – $150,000, organisations are realising a poor return on their investment.
The reasons for the failure of so many leadership development programs are varied, but the key criticisms are that the programs are too theoretical and academic, not addressing in a practical way the real issues that leaders are facing. There is no follow up within the organisation afterwards, and no support to implement what was taught and learned. Gallup’s research had shown that 87% of the skills learned in a single workshop are lost within a month and participants revert to the way they did things before. Knowing this was a strong reason for me to shift to focusing all my leadership development work on mentoring post COVID.
Read MoreIntroducing Mentoring at MareeHarris.Com.Au
It was back in 2005 that I established People Empowered, my leadership development company. For the past 17 + years I have been conducting workshops, masterclasses, two day retreats and doing mentoring and coaching. Passionate about what I was doing, I saw myself continuing to do this for many years into the future.
I have already shared with you how COVID disrupted that idea, and the reflection I did that led me to my decision to specialise in MENTORING. It became so clear to me what a powerful process it is for developing leaders.
In the last few weeks, however, I have made another change that I wanted to share with you here, given it has been finalised just yesterday.
Read MoreMentoring Women for Career Development
In mentoring women for career development, Maree focuses on six priorities women need to address for career success. They need to (1) have a career development plan, (2) develop their networks, (3) build a social media presence, (4) create a professional identity, (5) learn to self-promote, (6) integrate work and family. Most women will have mastered some of these; few will have mastered all. It is those they haven’t mastered that are probably blocking the career development they seek. Because mentoring is so personalised, it can focus on those individual challenges that each woman brings to the process.
Read MoreAre You Ready For A Career Change?
COVID gave so many professionals the opportunity to step back and do a re-think on every part of their lives, their professional lives being no exception. Many decided they were ready for a career change. They decided, when the disruptive virus caused them to stop and reflect, that they didn’t want to go back into the rat race in which they had worked for too many years. Nor did they want to continue visiting groundhog day. Others realised that the job they had was never really what they wanted to do anyway. They had gone into that industry or professional sector because mum and dad had done that. Unfortunately others lost their jobs during that time and began to contemplate a career change that offered more security in this disrupted world.
Some viewed this reality with fear and trepidation, not knowing where to start. Other approached it with excitement and took pro-active initiatives to pursue their career change, one of which was to seek mentoring and coaching to accelerate the process. These excited professionals gave an Encore Performance. If you are still parked in the garage with the car running too afraid to back out, get on the road and make the career change move, then this article is for you.
Read MoreProcrastination is an Emotional Issue
Procrastination is not a time management issue as many think. It is an emotional issue.The irony is that many people, if not most, want tips and strategies for managing it. They are easy to give but they may work one or two times, but then people find themselves procrastinating again. Why? Strategies, which sit well within our rational and logical self, only work when they are aligned, and work hand in hand, with our emotional self.
Many people who struggle with procrastination have all kinds of emotional obstacles blocking their success. They procrastinate for a whole range of reasons, and finding out why is the first step in overcoming procrastination.
Read MoreAdvancing Your Career As A Professional Woman
If you’re reading this blog post, then you are a professional woman, one of the hundreds out there, committed to advancing your career. I’m sure, however, that you have a variety of motivations for doing that. I asked two groups of women who did a workshop with me on “Advancing Your Career”, why they wanted to advance their careers. Here are 11 of the many responses I received. But what are the obstacles standing in the way of these women achieving them? I don’t necessarily agree with all of these realities and I have great respect for the women who challenge them wanting to make a difference. There are significant structural and cultural issues in society that are often all but impossible for professional women to surmount. But things are begining to change. I am inspired by professional women of all ages who are wanting to make a difference. I am privileged to support them in mentoring.
Read MoreWhat Now After the Death of the Annual Performance Appraisal?
Many organisations are not aware of the death of the annual performance appraisal. The main reason is that it no longer, if it ever did, produces the outcomes it sets for itself. There are still too many organisations using them to develop, enhance and assess the performance of their people. There is an alternative, moving from Performance Management to Performance Leadership. This is a move to on-going daily or weekly performance conversations that give feedback on the spot or certainly on a very regular basis, rather than the retrospective feedback that comes with an annual appraisal.
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