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As an Organisational Psychologist and Executive Coach, I’ve noticed there’s a slight imbalance between assessment and development in the workplace. Generally, organisations invest a lot more on their executives’ assessment than they do their development.

If you’re an Human Resources Director (HRD) or Learning & Development Manager, you may put your employees through Assessment Centres or a 360-degree performance review. You’ll spend time analysing where and how your employees can improve.

The practical tips and tricks found throughout the Engaging Executive Programme can sometimes seem too simple to work, almost too good to be true. It’s not just the individual tips that are the driving force behind your transformation into an Engaging Executive. It’s combining all of them together into one powerful mixture that causes the real transformations to occur.

In an earlier post, I addressed the ‘Push Style’ of influence and using your words, voice and body language to become more assertive. While this works well in everyday office interactions, sometimes it can be a little bit trickier asserting yourself in a meeting-style setting.
When you have something to add to an important meeting discussion, but just don’t feel like you can get a word in edgeways, use your physiology to your advantage.

Think you simply have no time for personal development? One of the biggest roadblocks I’ve seen over my 20 years of executive coaching is the idea that personal development is another job on top of your current job. It’s the idea of “I must do this on top of that” versus “I can work on my personal development during the course of my normal workload.”

If your aim is to be a leader in your organisation, just being good at your job isn’t enough.

Let’s paint a picture. You’re very good at your current job, which is mostly technical in nature. You deal well with numbers and facts, figures and charts, words and rules. Your job is almost always constant and you know what you’re doing, where you’re going and how other people in your office will respond. Everything regarding your job is a known fact.

One of my favourite topics as an executive coach and educator is influence. Many of the clients who come to me are on the introverted or outwardly passive side and this can lead, in the workplace, to their ideas not being heard. As a result, they may get pushed around a little bit by their more aggressive coworkers. It can be a very frustrating situation. If it continues, these clients will never reach their career goals.

This is where the Push style of influence comes into play. The more assertive of the two styles (Push vs. Pull), it teaches the key ingredients needed to stand up for one’s self and one’s opinions. It’s all about how you use your voice, words and body language. When used correctly, the three combine for a powerful effect.

I hope you’ve found the videos I’ve been posting useful over the last few weeks! Today, though, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about what our company does. In a nutshell, we’re helping executives go from good to great when it comes to understanding, influencing and connecting with others. More specifically, we generally focus on executives from STEM and professional services backgrounds — Accountants, Engineers, IT professionals, Lawyers, Actuaries.

There’s a strong difference between learning facts and behavioural change. Unfortunately, within many organisations, learning facts and behavioural change are treated similarly, when the two things could not be further apart.

Maybe your industry expertise has led someone to ask you to become a mentor to them in their aspiring career. Maybe you’ve found yourself more or less adopting the role organically, as you develop relationships with junior employees in your organisation. Regardless of how the position has fallen into your lap, you may be thinking to yourself, so what now?

A smile can have a fundamental impact on the way other people perceive you, but just smiling is not nearly good enough. Why? Well, there are up to 19 different “types” of smiles, according to studies, and one can benefit you the most as you’re on your Engaging Executive journey. It’s called the Duchenne smile.