RocheMartin Blog


Building Leadership Capital - A 'Retreat' with a Difference

Posted by Stacey Newman on Monday, October 12, 2009

I'm a subscriber to HR Daily, an online publication. Their recent article on disengagement in the workforce really got my attention. It states that nearly two in three workers are at risk of fleeing their jobs within the next 12 months.

Right Management's Bridget Beattie, says that disengaged employees are seven times more likely than their engaged colleagues to look for alternative employment in the year ahead. "Our research shows... that 64.3 per cent of Australian employees are disengaged," she says.

I thought I would share this finding with you as it seems quite timely that our directors, Dr Martyn Newman and Ms Judy Purse, have been conducting back-to back Leadership Retreats, over the past two weeks, for ExxonMobil executives

We having been running these retreats with Exxon executives for many years now and it is clear that this organization values their employees and can see that benefit in keeping them engaged.

Their 5 main objectives for the retreats are as follows:
  1. For each participant to conduct a profound review on themselves and their career
  2. Enhance ability to learn and to develop real enthusiasm and passion to learn
  3. Learn more deeply about oneself and more about others - motivations, personality types, values, and beliefs
  4. Combine this understanding with skill development, which will increase effectiveness in: leading, working with and in teams, encouraging self-reliance and a solution focus in others, leading/influencing others, embracing change
  5. For each participant to leave the program with refreshed reinvigorated view of themselves and their work and real plan for their own progress and development over the next 12 months.
I can't wait to hear how this year’s retreats have been received. If last year's feedback is anything to go by, I'm sure they have been an overwhelming success.

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Top 5 Strategies for Developing Leadership Optimism

Posted by Stacey Newman on Monday, September 07, 2009

Optimism is perhaps the most important quality you can develop to achieve greater success as a leader. Generating scores almost one standard deviation above the average in all of our leadership studies, optimism differentiates high performing leaders from the rest.

Emotional Capitalists look on the brighter side of life and sense opportunities even in the face of adversity. The brain's expectation system releases a sense of anticipation as soon as we set a goal, and we experience triumph when we reach it. Thus, optimistic activity of this kind almost always leads to positive feelings. Optimistic people are also resilient. They often have a history of significant failures, losses and bitter disappointments but display a remarkable ability to bounce back. But if we give in to negative emotions, like disappointment or sadness, we not only fail to ease them, we reinforce them.

Repeated emotions- like joy or sadness- act like drops of water on a rock. Each one evaporates quickly, but over time many drops carve out a channel.

Fortunately, it is not only negative emotions that can become entrenched with regular use- optimism, too can become a habit.

Five Strategies
1. Look for the benefit in every situation
2. Seek the valuable lesson in every problem or difficulty - remember there are no mistakes, only lessons
3. Focus on the task to be accomplished rather than your negative emotions, such as disappointment or fear, and see the possibilities within the task
4. View success and happiness as your normal state and see negative elements as temporary glitches on the path to your inevitable progress
5. Decatastrophise and ask yourself: 'What's the worst thing that could happen, and can I live with it?' Then focus on doing everything you can to minimise the fallout.



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How does a leader go from good to great? - They build emotional capital

Posted by Stacey Newman on Thursday, April 30, 2009

Read  The Sunday Times to find out how Boeing, Deloitte and ActionCOACH, measure the skills of successful leaders.

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