Tag Archives: teams

career, Career choices, career plan, Career Success, Coach, Communication, Leaders, leaders. leadership, Leadership, Leadership Development, Learning, life success, Mastery, Projects, strategies for success, strategy for success

A Better Way To Manage Your Task List

Most effective people who I know use a task list to help them to stay focused throughout the day. Some randomly work their way through their list, while others start at the top and work their way down.

Gary RyanA better way to manage your task list and to improve your daily effectiveness is to follow these simple steps.

1. Prepare your list

This is a classic brainstorm of all the tasks that you need to complete today. Given it is a brainstorm your list will be in a random order in terms of priority.

2. Identify your high value tasks

Rate each task in the context of value that you receive from completing the task. A ‘High’ rating means that the completed task gives you a lot of value in the context of what your role requires you to do, a ‘Medium’ rating gives you medium value and a ‘Low’ rating gives you low value.

3. Identify your hard-to-do tasks

Rate each task for how hard you find it to complete the task. A ‘High’ rating means that you find this task difficult to do (such as having that ‘important’ conversation with your colleague about her ability to meet deadlines). A ‘Medium’ rating is a task that is moderately difficult for you to do and a ‘Low’ rating is a task that you find relatively easy to do.

4. Identify how long it takes you to complete each task

Rate each task in terms of how long it will take you to complete the task. a ‘High’ rating means that the task will take you a long time to complete (you decide your time scale for yourself as it will depend on the type of work that you do), a ‘Medium’ rating means that it will take a reasonable amount of time, and a ‘Low’ rating means that you can complete the task quickly.

5. Complete your tasks in the following order

A. High Value, Hard To Do Tasks That Can Be Done Quickly (H/H/L Task Rating)

In his book Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy refers to these tasks as your frog. If you were to eat a frog at the start of each day, nothing you do for the rest of the day will be as bad as eating that frog! In this context, your High Leverage, Hard-To-Do Tasks that can be done relatively quickly are your ‘frogs’. When you do these tasks first, you clear your mind for the rest of the day. This is a terrific habit to form. When you know that at some stage during the day you are going to have to eat a frog, it clouds your mind until you do it. So you might as well get it over and done with at the start of the day! You won’t regret it!

B. High Value, Easy To Do Tasks That Can Be Done Quickly (H/L/L Task Rating)

Getting these tasks completed creates a sense of accomplishment and shortens your to-do list in the process!

C. High Value, Easy To Do Tasks That Have a Medium and/or High Time Rating

These tasks take longer for your to complete them, but they provide high value in the context of your role.

D. High Value, Hard To Do Tasks That Take a Long Time To Complete (H/H/H Task Rating)

In my world these are my proposals. Each one needs to be tailored to my clients specific needs, so they tend to take a fair amount of time to create. I require decent chunks of dedicated time to complete this task. Knowing that I have already completed other high value tasks before getting to these provides me with the clear ‘mental space‘ that I need to get on with completing this task.

E. Everything else on your list

All these tasks are the things that provide a level of value but aren’t the most important tasks that you need to get done. Sometimes you may find that these tasks can change in value if they are time related. As a deadline nears the value in completing the task may rise. If you find yourself moving these tasks across to your new task list each day (because they aren’t being completed), make sure that you continue to rate them just in case their value has changed. Another option is to set aside an hour or two every week that is dedicated to completing these tasks.

If you follow the five steps that I have outlined above you will discover that you get more high value work done than you do today. Give it a try and let me know how you go!

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to move Beyond Being Good.

career, Career choices, career plan, Career Success, Coach, Communication, Leaders, leaders. leadership, Leadership, Leadership Development, Learning, life success, Mastery, Projects, strategies for success, strategy for success

Project Matrix For Learning

My first permanent job was to commercialise a fitness centre for Monash University in the early 1990s. I was the only permanent employee and had a strong team of casual employees with whom I worked. I quickly learned that there was too much that needed to be done in a short period and that I needed to better use the full suite of talents of the members in the team.

Projects For LearningI was aware of the various interests and strengths of the team members that went beyond their skills and ability as Gym Instructors. One team member was studying Information Technology and had a clear passion for it, another was highly officious and had a passion for consistency among the team, and yet another loved to organise things.

I knew that somehow that I had to find a way to tap into their talents that would benefit the Fitness Centre and themselves, and not break my budget!

I drew up a list of the tasks that needed to be completed. I then rated each of those tasks from a Risk perspective. A Low rating meant that the outcome was a ‘nice to have‘. If it got completed it was a ‘Bonus‘. A Medium rating meant that the outcome was important and the performance of the Fitness Centre would be reduced or slowed if it wasn’t completed in a timely manner. A High rating meant that the task was extremely important to the performance of the Fitness Centre and if it wasn’t completed properly the Fitness Centre would suffer serious consequences which meant that I wouldn’t have been doing my job properly.

Before you ask, the option to hire more permanent staff was not available. First I had to generate the revenue that would eventually pay for more full-time staff. It was a great challenge!

I spoke with each team member and asked if they were interested in leading a project to help us create the performance we desired. All team members said ‘Yes‘. I arranged their schedules so that they had time during their normal shifts to work on their projects. I knew that this meant that they wouldn’t be ‘on the floor‘ as much as normal but I was prepared to take a half step backward to take five steps forward. We also agreed that the projects would have a six-week timeframe within which they needed to be completed.

I took responsibility for all the High rated projects. It was my head that was on the ‘chopping block‘ if we failed so it was only fair that I took responsibility for those projects. I ‘parked‘ the Medium rated projects. I decided to wait until after the first round of projects had been completed and then use that experience to assign the medium rated projects. I needed to have confidence that the medium rated projects would be done properly. I also knew that I would have to coach the team members through those projects which meant that I would need to have more time available to provide that assistance.

I could not have been happier with the results of the first round of projects. The team member who had a passion for I.T. completed an important project that related to setting up ‘norms‘ as comparative data for our fitness tests. The ‘officious’ team member completed a project that set clear standards for the fitness testing procedures and protocols that the team was using. The ‘organised’ team member completed a project that involved re-organising the equipment to improve the ‘flow’ in and around the equipment. I managed to complete the High rated projects as well.

This experience taught me at a very young age the power of projects for learning. Projects create real outcomes. By assigning low risk projects to my team members I was able to tap into their passion and skill. If they ‘failed‘ I wasn’t going to ‘lose‘ anything. By tapping into their passions I also increased the likelihood that their first projects would be a success – which they were! That success built confidence and provided energy for the Medium rated projects which were also embraced and successfully completed by the team with great enthusiasm.

Best of all our success drove the performance results that we were seeking which meant that the following year I was able to engage a number of the team in permanent roles.

I also learnt a great lesson. A lesson that I continue to use to this day. Projects are a powerful tool for creating results, building confidence and assessing team member capabilities. They allow you to learn a great deal about your team members. They also allow your team members to learn that they can produce results themselves.

I created the Projects For Learning Matrix above and have used it many times throughout my career. I assign Low risk projects to inexperienced team members, Medium risk projects to team members who have ‘proven’ themselves and High risk projects to highly experienced, energetic and motivated team members. I avoid giving too many low risk projects to highly experienced and motivated team members – it is better to use those projects to developed inexperienced people.

I have found this simple matrix to be useful and highly effective over many years. I am confident that you will too!

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to move Beyond Being Good.

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Walk Tall

On a good day I am 170 centimetres tall (five foot seven). It’s fair to say that I’m not a tall man.

Confused, young businessman looking at chalk drawn arrows on a cGrowing up in suburban Melbourne, Australia I dreamed of being an Australian Rules footballer. Unfortunately I forgot to get in the queue for skills and talent when I was being made! So I didn’t have much natural talent when it came to sport. That said I loved sport and coupled with being a determined little fellow I made the best of what I did have and played and coached Australian Rules football until I was 30 years old.

Dreams, however, have a funny way of coming true. As a result of my professional career in November 2006 I was invited by Ray Mclean, a founding director of Leading Teams Australia to be interviewed by Kane Johnson, then the captain of the Richmond Tigers and some of his fellow Leadership Team members about taking on the role of mentoring Kane and facilitating a program for the leadership group at Richmond.

Despite having many years of public speaking and leadership facilitation behind me I remember feeling extremely nervous as I drove to Swan Street in Richmond for our meeting that day. Who was I, this guy who was a ‘battler’ at best to tell these elite athletes about leadership? What had I gotten myself in to! I kept thinking to myself.

My negative self-talk was making me more and more nervous. You know the feeling. I started to feel sick in the stomach. Maybe I should cancel the meeting, after all I clearly don’t feel well. My mind was racing.

But then the skills that I had developed over time, which was one of the reasons why I had been asked to take on this job, kicked in.

I can do this. I am good enough. I do know a lot about leadership. Just be yourself. If they don’t like you, that’s okay. Not everybody has to like you. Just be yourself, listen to them and be honest in your answers.

As I got out of my car I was still nervous but I felt more in control of the situation and more in control of my mind.

Walking toward the cafe where we were to meet I kept saying to myself, Walk tall Gazza, walk tall!

No doubt that may seem strange coming from a man only 170 centimetres tall. But it summed up all of my positive self-talk. I felt a sense of calm in terms of preparing to meet these champions of the game. Ray Mclean had confidence in me so why shouldn’t I! If it turns out that I’m not the right person for the job, then that’s okay. It doesn’t make me less of a human being.

Needless to say the meeting went well and I ended up mentoring Kane and working with the Richmond Leadership group, the coaches and the playing list. In fact, I sat in the coach’s box in the 2007 Round 1 game versus Carlton and had the opportunity to stand in the middle of ground before the game, at the quarter-time and at three-quarter time. There was a crowd of nearly 80,000 in the Melbourne Cricket Ground and here I was standing in the middle of it. While I wasn’t a player, I was there as a professional! In fact, I was being paid to be there.

I teach people that it is important to let your dreams come true via a thousand pathways. Life is too complex to limit yourself to a single route toward success. Constructive self-talk, as demonstrated by my story is critical along this journey. I don’t believe that it is possible to 100% eliminate negative self-talk. I do believe that when negative self-talk occurs then you have the power and control to change it to something more constructive so you can take whatever action you need to create the success you desire. This may be relevant when you are going for a job interview, a promotion, delivering a presentation, speaking with senior executives or starting an exercise program. Learning to master your self-talk is a strategy that enhances success and will enable you to bring your dreams into reality.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Failure and Success

One of the biggest challenges associated with creating life balance and personal success relates to how you manage failure.

Yes For Success, Life balance, plan for personal success, Gary Ryan, Organisations That MatterFailure can manifest in many ways:

  • You don’t get offered the job after you attend an interview
  • The project you are working on doesn’t achieve budget
  • You lose three kilograms instead of four kilograms
  • You have a ‘rest’ day when you were supposed to go for a five kilometre jog
  • You yell at your child when they climb the fence
  • You only read three literature articles when you had intended to read five

Creating success invariably includes many small failures. None of us are perfect so you will let yourself down from time to time. However, if you focus too much on when you have let yourself down and failed, you risk letting the negative energy from failure grow even more and cause more failure.

Equally we can’t disregard failure and pretend that it doesn’t matter. Clearly it does matter when we fail because it delays us from achieving the success we desire.

What then, can we do about failure?

In simple terms you can learn from it. Not a unique concept I know. Your learning will be on multiple levels. For example, what did you learn about your expectations? Were they realistic? On this point it is my experience that one of the only ways to discover what is realistic is to create an expectation, ideally a high one, and then go and do everything you can to achieve it. In doing so you may then have a ‘reality check’ in which a lot of valuable learning can occur.

What did you learn about your planning? Was the planning process itself ‘solid’? Did it help you to consider unintended consequences?

What did you learn about how you put your plan into action? Did you follow your plan or did you just make up each step of your journey as you went along in complete disregard of your plan?

When you did whatever you did, how could it have been done better? This last question can also lead to too much focus on failure if it isn’t done correctly. In retrospect it is always very easy to say that you should have known better. No doubt sometimes you should. There will be other times when your plan was the best that it could have been at the time. How you executed your plan could have also been better. Retrospect highlights the gap between what we did and what we could have done based on what we have just learned. In other words it will be rare for you to take action and then decide that there wasn’t anything that you could have done to have done it better. Retrospect, by nature highlights learning gaps.

Despite your failures, when traveling the journey of creating more success and life balance it is important to notice your progress. Become acutely aware of your small successes and despite all your failures, focus on learning from them to help you continue your journey toward more and more success.

Find out more about the Yes For Success Program here.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Harvard Research Aligns With Life Balance and Personal Success Program

Harvard University researchers Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams have recently released the findings of their research that involved almost 4,000 executives worldwide. Their article Manage Your Work, Manage Your Life (Harvard Business Review March 2014 p.p. 58-66) identifies key factors that are addressed by the Yes For Success 10 Module Program (keep in mind that the Yes For Success program has evolved since March 2007). Here are some of their key findings with the corresponding Yes For Success Module(s) that address that finding:

  1. Yes For Success Program For Life Balance and Personal SuccessDefine Success For Yourself – This is what the Yes For Success Program is about and specifically it is in Module 5 you get to put your definition down on paper
  2. Managing Technology – One of the Bonus programs inside the Yes For Success Platform is the 21 Module Yes For Career Success program where several modules are dedicated to helping you better use technology in the context of managing your time and achieving high performance
  3. Building Support Networks – Module 2 of the Yes For Success program includes a section on identifying your Personal Success Team, which is 100% about creating a support network
  4. Traveling or Relocating Selectively – Module 5 includes a section that helps you to find the role that travel will play in your life, including the possibility of having multiple ‘homes’
  5. Collaborating With Your Partner – Modules 2 and 5 address this issue, as does the specific actions that you identify in Module 8. If you don’t have a current partner, but want one, Yes For Success can help with that issue too (we have had weddings happen as a result of people executing their plans – including actions to find love!)
  6. There Are Multiple Routes To Success – once again all 10 Modules re-enforce this concept, while enabling you to follow a simple step by step process to identify your own answer and route to success. In addition, while everyone’s route to success is unique, it doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from the success of other people – Yes For Success is a community where members share their strategies that are enabling them to create success
  7. Life happens – Module 9 includes a section on what to do when ‘life happens’ and things get in the way of you executing your plan

My own experience of facilitating the Yes For Success Program is that it works. The seven key points identified in the Harvard research are all addressed through the program. Find out more about the Yes For Success Program here.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Jason Barrie’s Perspective On Health & Fitness

On May 1st 1999 Jason Barrie’s life changed forever. Playing local Australian Rules Football he was involved in a tragic accident, the result of which left him as an Incomplete Quadriplegic. Jason often describes himself as, “The luckiest, unlucky man alive“. Despite being an Incomplete Quadriplegic, Jason is able to walk. While his spinal cord was damaged in his accident, it wasn’t completely severed. This means that he has about 80% use of the right side of his body, but considerably less on the left side of his body.

The Yes For Success Platform is an online service that steps members through a process for identifying and creating a plan for life balance and personal success. Every month members have access to a Question and Answer Webinar where they can ask questions that relate to their personal success. The above video is a recording of the February 2014 member-only webinar. Usually these videos are kept for the exclusive use of members of the Yes For Success Platform.

However Jason’s story where he shares his perspective on health and fitness is so inspiring I just had to share it. Enjoy it and please feel free to share it with others.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Chaos and order ARE the natural order of things

Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA International, arguably the most profitable organisation in the world, explains in his book One From Many, that chaos and order are the natural order of things.

Consider this. VISA exists to exchange value, represented by digital money. How can chaos be part of such a world? Surely everything must be ordered for VISA to function.

senior couple of old man and woman sitting on the beach watchingYet its founder argues that while it is human to desire everything to be in order, the natural order of life is that it isn’t.

To demonstrate please come for a walk with me. You are standing on the edge of the ocean facing inland. Slowly you walk up the beach. At first you encounter some small sand-dunes with no sand grass on them. Then you notice some larger sand-dunes with scattered sand grass. The sand grass gets thicker as you venture inland from the waterline. Gradually the sand grass begins to give way to small shrubs, then bigger shrubs. You start to notice less sand and more dirt under your feet. Soon you are entering a forest with tall trees and shelter from the sun and the beach seems a long way behind you.

This walk seems orderly. There is an obvious progression and change from sand to sand grass, to small shrubs and eventually to fully grown trees. Yet there is a large degree of chaos that exists within the order presented above.

Sand-dunes shift. Which seed of sand grass survives and which one doesn’t is seemingly random. The same issue exists for the seeds for the small shrubs and finally the larger trees. Chaos exists side by side with order.

Dee Hock created the word ‘Chaordic‘ to describe this reality.

People who do not understand that chaos and order co-exist are constantly frustrated. As much as we may try to make the world orderly, it isn’t. One of the primary reasons is that humans are chaordic by nature. We have the power of choice and will exercise that choice in both rational and irrational ways.

Leaders need to understand that ‘chaos happens‘ from time to time. A highly valued staff member resigns and tells you they are leaving the industry. The government changes a law which directly impacts your revenue. Your computer system crashes due to a virus.

I’m not advocating that you shouldn’t do whatever you can to increase order. Look at traffic on our roads as an example. What would happen to the road toll if we eliminated speed limits and traffic lights? It is hard to imagine that increasing chaos on our roads wouldn’t increase accidents and therefore deaths. Clearly more orderly roads are safer for us all. But accidents still happen and some humans choose to break the rules.

My point is that no matter how hard we try to control everything, chaos will find a way to penetrate our order. Why? Because, it is the natural order of things.

As a leader, your challenge is to develop the capacity to live with and manage chaos when it comes. Because it will come.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

How to receive feedback from your peers

One of the most critical features of a High Performing Team is the ability of the members of the team to be able to give and receive feedback.

If you think giving feedback is hard, how would you go when it is your turn to receive it?

Would you take it personally? Would you get upset? Would you want to get back at the person who gave you the feedback?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn order for peer-to-peer feedback to be effective it must have a context. The only reason for providing feedback to each other is so that the person who is receiving feedback has an opportunity to help them be the best that they can be for the team. All team members need to share in their understanding of this reason for giving feedback to each other. Secondly, feedback is only ever based on opinion and should be supported by evidence. But evidence is subject to interpretation which is why the folk providing the feedback must understand that there may be other valid ways at looking at the evidence that they are using as the basis for their opinion.

Next, feedback is a two-way conversation. Too many people believe that because they have provided a peer with some feedback then that peer should immediately respond and change their behaviour. Treating feedback as a two-way conversation helps to keep the purpose of feedback in focus (to help the person be the best that they can be for the team) and allows a shared understanding to occur. Once my direct reports told me that they believed that I wasn’t a very good example of life balance, one of our agreed behaviours. Specifically they felt that eating my lunch while continuing to work put pressure on them to do the same. After I thanked them for their feedback and made sure that I fully understood what they had told me, I explained that the very reason why I ate my lunch at my desk was because of life balance. At the time I had three young children and as often as possible I wanted to be home by 6:30pm to have dinner with my family and then bath my children. There were certain tasks of my role that required that I was on site and I couldn’t take the work home to do after my children had gone to bed. So I had made a conscious choice to eat my lunch while I was working so that I could get home by 6:30pm.

The two-way conversation resulted in my direct reports having an increased understanding of my behaviour. It also raised another issue. My team wanted more social contact with me instead of everything being work oriented. At the end of the conversation we agreed that I would continue to eat my lunch as I had done, but that I would make more effort to have some social interaction with them.

A challenge when receiving feedback is not to be defensive. This is why it is important to make sure that you fully understand what you have been told, and the evidence used to support what you have been told, before you explain why you have done what you have done. Which, by the way, won’t always be possible. Sometimes you will receive feedback that is a surprise and while you may understand what you have been told, you may need some time to process it.

Your mindset when you are receiving feedback is to consider the feedback as a gift. When you have this mindset then you will be open to discovering what your gift is. Some gifts are great and expected, others are wonderful and unexpected and some gifts are for the giver of the gift, not the receiver of the gift (like the PlayStation I gave my wife for her 30th birthday many years ago…). No matter what sort of gift you receive, the first thing to say is, “Thank you.”

Many people are worried about receiving feedback because they are concerned about what they might say if they receive some feedback they don’t like. This is why having a mindset that feedback is a gift is so powerful. You always know what you are going to say after hearing the feedback. Once again what you are going to say is, “Thank you”.

Finally, I am a fan of the process of group feedback than too much one on one feedback. In a group feedback process the group should only report what behaviours they unanimously agree that you should cease, commence or continue. One on one feedback can result in personal issues being over emphasised and the status of your peers being under or over emphasised. Weight of numbers is what matters. That is why when my entire team of direct reports told me that they didn’t think I was a good example of life balance it was critical that I understood what they were telling me and why they were telling me. The two-way conversation enabled me to re-enforce that I didn’t mind that they had lunch breaks – what I cared about was results.

In summary:

  • Feedback must only be provided to help peers be the best that they can be for the team;
  • Have the mindset that feedback is a ‘gift’;
  • Always say “Thank you” after receiving your feedback;
  • Unanimous group feedback is more powerful than too much one on one feedback; and
  • Feedback is a two-way conversation.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

A massive career development opportunity

In July 2010 I released my first printed book, “What Really Matters For Young Professionals! How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career“. Despite releasing my book I had a problem (fortunately it wasn’t selling the book). You see  I had originally written over 600 pages of content for my book but the market was saying that people wouldn’t buy a 600 page book.

YFCS Colour logoASo I trimmed my book down to 128 pages and even included a number of pictures to help the reader get from cover to cover. This meant that I had just under 500 pages of high quality content that hadn’t been used. Why not create an online course to support the book?

Did a better way exist to share my knowledge? At the time I couldn’t think of one. My work had seen me bridge the gap between university student development programs and corporate staff development programs. I was addressing educational needs about what to actually do in the real world that wasn’t being addressed at university. Time and again students (from both undergraduate and postgraduate programs) and graduate program employees would tell me, “Gary, we just don’t get taught this information at university. I know what you are teaching isn’t rocket science, but I didn’t know about it before and I wish I did. At least I’ve learned it now and can use this information about developing my employability skills to my advantage.”

As my work evolved into Executive Coaching roles, even these people would tell me how they found the material enlightening and helpful in their roles, even though I hadn’t written the book or designed my course for them.

I’ve now been delivering these programs for over eight years in university faculties and schools as broad as business, law, education, pharmacy and even higher degree by research programs.  Universities don’t keep asking people who are teaching non-academic programs to come back year after year if the program isn’t any good and isn’t getting outstanding feedback from students.

At the start of 2013 I launched the Yes For Success Platform and included a new version of my book’s online course on that platform, except this time I gave it a makeover and called it Yes For Career Success. The course now includes 21 Modules, the extra five modules all being designed to help folk improve their formal leadership skills either at work or outside of work. You see, leadership is one of those skills you can’t learn by theory alone, you must do it. So I show people how they can develop their leadership outside of the work environment if necessary so that they can advance their career over time. I provide the tools so that you can consciously rather than unconsciously develop your skills. Conscious skill develop outstrips unconscious skill development any day of the week!

Those of you who know me personally will know that I genuinely want to help people to be the best that they can be. I am literally putting my money where my mouth is to back up that statement. For less than the price of two coffees I am providing as many people as possible (including you of course) with the opportunity to get access to the entire 21 Modules of the Yes For Career Success Program for under $10 for a full 12 months. Just the content on Systems Thinking is worth many times your fee to get access to this content. If you aren’t aware, Systems Thinking is a critical leadership skill that despite being identified by the Australian Government, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry as an essential skill for effective leadership, is not being taught in any academic programs of Australia’s Group of Eight Universities, arguably the top universities in Australia.

This means that my program is providing you with an opportunity to master critical skills that aren’t being taught anywhere else. Clearly this gives you a significant advantage over your competition.

My offer is valid until midnight on Friday 31st January, 2014 and once again I am offering you 12 months full access to the entire 21 Module Yes For Career Success Program for just $9.97.

You can download the entire Course Outline here.

There are no bells and whistles about this offer. No marketing hoopla. It is a straight offer and that’s it.

I’m not going to repeat this offer again (those of you who know me will know that statement is true too). Click here to accept this offer.

Finally, too many people leave the responsibility for their development to someone else. Please don’t be like them. Take control of your career and learn how to master the employability skills that will separate you from the rest and enable you to have the career you desire.

If you have any questions or comments about the program, please leave a comment below.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Fun Is An Important Ingredient For High Performance

This morning I read with interest Australian Cricket Vice Captain Shane Watson sharing his thoughts on Australian Cricket Coach Darren Lehmann. Watson reported that a big reason for the Australian Team’s Ashes Whitewash over England was the fact that Lehmann had created an environment where the players were having fun. Watson believed that this key element had been missing over recent years.

Big group of young jumping people.Fun. The word itself makes you smile!

International cricket is serious business. Whole nations thrive on the success of their sporting heroes. The media presence and diagnosis of performance is never-ending. While success is public, so is failure. You could easily understand that ‘fun’ was something you did outside something so serious.

Yet humans yearn for fun. We love it.

When I work with teams one of the first questions I ask them to discuss is, “If we were a high performing team we would…?”.

The vast majority of teams have included ‘fun’ as part of their answer to this question. To be clear a high performing team does not exist to have fun. Rather, having fun is one of the critical elements that contribute to creating a high performing team.

The fact remains that if you are not having fun, at least some of the time then you are unlikely to be a high performing team.

When was the last time that you and your team had some fun? If it has been a while, do something about it. A simple suggestion is to celebrate your successes.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

Enabling organisations to be worthy of the commitment of employees