“Encourage and enable Ideas” Idea-lead working environments foster creativity, engagement and ultimately commercial success for the Business. …

“Beware of the Appraisal process!” This is an extension of Principle 8, but it deserves its own section as the Appraisal Process is a territory that has the potential to make or break your Management credibility. It’s important to remember that people have very different relationships with Appraisals — for one person it’s an important…

“Don’t ‘save up’ feedback” As you move through the ranks at work, the event of having to manage ‘big’ conversations becomes a more regular one. They are more frequent if you manage a team of people, but also crop up when managing any nature of relationship; client, supplier, legislative etc. In the event of…

“Avoid plagiarism & be generous with your knowledge” There are few quicker ways to destroy our team members’ respect for you than by plagiarising their work. It’s surprisingly easy to fall into this trap unintentionally — you may have been asked to present a larger piece of work to your boss/the Board/Client that includes a section of material…

“Celebrate Achievements & Mistakes” For long term Continuous Improvement, it’s important to practice clear distinction of Achievements and Mistakes. Celebrating Achievement not only boosts the confidence of the wider team but also allows the achiever a moment of pride, and to some extent, fame, depending on the forum within which it is being acknowledged. …

“Diarise Key Dates” This is another one of those basic, common sense activities that are so often neglected and can have a massive impact on the person — negatively or positively, depending on your attention to it. Make sure you have all of your reports Birthdays in your diary, with a reminder beforehand…

“Don’t let high-achievers get bored” High-achieving team members need to be kept busy to avoid them getting bored. Boredom quickly converts to apathy, especially in high-performance people. This will inevitably lead to underperformance and eventually they will go in search of new pastures in the quest for engagement and inspiration. Leverage the training policy in…

“Enable structured flow of Internal Communications” Good management of communications is generally acknowledged as one of the keys of a successful business culture. There are several tools and behaviours that need to work together to enable information to move appropriately and in a timely manner. One of the key platforms is team meetings — always agenda…

“Leverage Strengths & be supportive of weaknesses” It’s easy to feel let down when a member of your team who is a star in most respects repeatedly struggles with delivering a certain task or persistently under-delivers a seemingly minor part of their role. It can tempt you into bad management techniques such as micromanagement or collecting unbalanced…