Hubworking

Leadership: Time to Revise the Sink or Swim Approach

16 August 2013 in Guest Post tagged Abraham Lincoln / Altruism / cooperation / Darwin / Fiona Rutherford / guest post / Herbert Spencer / Hubworking / leadership / survival / team

In today’s guest post Fiona Rutherford shares on the topic of leadership as she proposes:

Leadership: Time to Revise the Sink or Swim Approach

By Fiona Rutherford

‘The survival of the fittest’ is a phrase that gets thrown around quite a bit in conversations about great leadership, but do we understand its true meaning?

This cold, unsympathetic Darwinian concept is commonly applied to the workplace environment. For example, the ‘sink or swim’ approach is a method of leadership development used by several organisations. It involves throwing employees into the deep end as a way of differentiating between ‘The Sinkers’ (weaker employees who are unable to adapt to change) from ‘The Swimmers’ (stronger employees who are able to adapt and therefore are selected to be leaders).

There are also circumstances when the terms ‘the survival of the fittest’ and ‘every man for himself’ are used synonymously. Especially in our increasingly competitive society, both terms can be used as an excuse for selfish and brutal conduct within the workplace, between businesses and even in everyday life situations.

Although Charles Darwin is often credited with coining the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’, it was actually coined by a Philosopher named Herbert Spencer. Its initial meaning had nothing to do with ‘sink or swim’ approaches and ‘every man for himself’ tactics. Quite the opposite, ‘survival of the fittest’ has everything to do with altruism, teamwork, cooperation, support and togetherness – the very last words typically associated with this phrase!

The word ‘fittest’ has created much confusion, since the modern use of the word ‘fit’ conjures up an image of a strong, agile and healthy individual. However, in evolutionary terms, it is more about being ‘fit’ for purpose.

Using the true meaning of ‘the survival of the fittest’ concept, below I’ve suggested 3 tips that could help expand your understanding of what makes a great leader.

1. Cooperation is everything!

Great leaders understand that everything in life is about cooperation. In basic biology, for example, we are taught that our organs must cooperate with one another and work together in order to function properly and survive. Darwin proposed that people tend to perform better as a group and consequently teamwork has spread throughout the population. With this idea in mind, in order to maximise group performance and success, a great leader will ensure that each team member has their own unique role, which is recognised, appreciated and valued.

2. Bonding with team members!

Having a close-knit team is crucial. A great leader will appreciate that within all groups, there will be conflicting ideas and opinions, therefore in order to achieve a common goal there needs to be a strong bond between all team members. For great leaders, bonding is also about connecting on a personal level, ensuring team members feel comfortable enough to express their thoughts and feelings.

Abraham Lincoln, thought to be one of the greatest leaders of all time, is a perfect example of this. He was known for surrounding himself with team members who would openly question his authority and who were unafraid of arguing with him. He would also make himself very available to his team members by holding regular office hours.

3. Altruism is fundamental!

Great leaders can be kind, caring and considerate, without being a pushover. It’s important to have a genuine care for each member of your team. Instead of leaving ‘The Sinkers’ to sink, it’s essential to encourage and assist them with developing any strengths and improving their weaknesses, as long as they’re willing to learn. Altruistic leaders can inspire team members to act in the same way, thereby creating an honest and pleasant working environment.

About Fiona Rutherford

Fiona holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology with Neuroscience and is embarking on a Masters Degree in Evolutionary Psychology. She is also working part time for Hubworking, contributing to their social media activity. (Find Hubworking on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter or connect with Fiona and the rest of the Hubworking team on Facebook)

Sources:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13671-evolution-myths-survival-of-the-fittest-justifies-everyone-for-themselves.html#.UgjRJ5Wghby

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10750-why-altruism-paid-off-for-our-ancestors.html#.UgjQoZWghbx

Websites: It’s not just about content – it’s about users. 1

9 March 2012 in Guest Post tagged business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / content / executive coach / focus / Hubworking / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / Mei Qi Tan / mobile / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / related content / relevant content / seo / user / website

A coaching website is on many new coaches to do list, in today’s guest post Mei Qi Tan shares her expertise and knowledge about what to focus upon.

Websites: It’s not just about content – it’s about users.

By Mei Qi Tan from Hubworking

When it comes to websites, it seems like all everyone’s talking about these days, is content. SEO is a great tool for enhancing the findability of your website online, through making sure your individual pieces of website content like pages, and posts contain key words, phrases and concepts. This is what many SEO professionals call ‘optimised content’. ‘Content’ is the diesel that runs the proverbial search engine, but it’s ‘optimised content’ that makes it purr like a well-fed tabby cat.

However, we should try to distinguish the concept of content, from information. Information is vibrant, the creation and exchange of it, interactive. There is a human element to information – obtaining it helps us achieve our goals, whatever they may be. I don’t know what it is, but the idea of information online as a body of ‘optimised content’ just feels, well, rather dead.

Focus first on knowing what your clients want when they visit your website, not on what they think they might want. If I can find the information I want, and do the thing I wanted to do with little distraction and no fuss, then your website works (Hallelujah!) and I will return to use it again.

People visit websites to achieve specific goals. If their goal is to read articles and stories, then by all means, keep writing and keep linking. But if their goal is to buy a product, then you’re better off making sure your shopping cart is up-to-scratch, or that the information on where your business is located is easily findable and instructions clear as crystal. Websites are an extension of your business online – make sure they are purposeful, and designed to help your clients achieve their goals online, whatever that might be.

Don’t let the content storm distract you from designing your website specifically around the information needs and goals of their clients.

Here are the questions you need to answer before trying to design your website:

What do my clients want to achieve when they engage with my website? And how can I help them achieve those goals in as smooth and efficient manner as possible?

You will need to do some basic research into your website users. Don’t just find out why they use it, but how they use it. You could try setting someone a task to complete on your website and observing their actions while completing the task (i.e. Locate the address and store the telephone number in your phone)

It’s time to stop thinking about clients as visitors, and rather, as users.

When it comes to creating, or updating your website, here are some tips to get you thinking about it from a user’s point of view:

Be careful not to mistake relevant content for related content.

It’s important to remember that all content on a website needs to serve a function. If you’ve determined one of the primary goals of your users is to find your contact details, then a piece of relevant content that should be promoted on your site is a map of your office’s location, not a page on the history of your business – that would be related content. Save that for your company blog (if you have one)

Know who will be using your website, and what for

Let’s say Sarah, 25, is a big fan of your retail products and avid online shopper. Make sure your shopping cart can store her credit card details so she doesn’t have to enter it in every time she wants to buy something. Rather than using a generic ‘target audience’ to build a website for, why don’t you do some research into the people who most use your website, and create some personas for who you can specifically design an ‘experience’ for? You will pick up on situational and contextual details that influence how a person might use your website – details that you would otherwise have never discovered on your own.

Design for mobile

Ever noticed that mobile versions of websites seemingly scale back to the most basic of website versions? The future of the web is mobile: Businesses or organisations will never, ever, have control over what kind of device clients will be using (or what situation they may be in) trying to access your website. So once you’ve figured out what it is your clients really want from you online, invest in good web design that makes information findable, readable and accessible to your audiences – whether they’re on top of Mount Kinabalu at sunrise, relaxing at a desk, or crammed up against someone on the Tube during peak hour.

About the Author/Further Resources

Mei has recently arrived in London from Sydney and is embarking on a Masters Degree in Electronic Publishing. She is also working part time for Hubworking, contributing to their social media activity.

Note from Jen; the owner of Coaching Confidence, this coaching blog: For those who don’t already know Hubworking provides Ad hoc, pay as you go meeting space for businesses in central London. If you are looking for a coaching or meeting room in this area it’s a great resource.

Using social media to speak to your clients

30 September 2011 in Guest Post tagged blog articles / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / content / Delicious bookmarks / executive coach / Facebook / forum postings / Hubworking / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / Mei Qi Tan / nlp coach / online communications / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / repostings / social media / status updates / Twitter

In today’s guest post Mei Qi Tan shares her expertise about how you can use social media to benefit your coaching business.

Using social media to speak to your clients

by Mei Qi Tan from Hubworking

‘I don’t get this Twitter thing. Why on EARTH would anyone want to know what I’m doing, if I’m sitting on a toilet or picking my nose?”.

Sound familiar? I’m sure we’ve all heard this exclamation before.

Well, that person is right. No one is interested in you, and no one is interested in what you say. Unless of course, you’re saying something of interest to them. Using social media at its basest level is providing an unfiltered, running commentary of your day in thoughts, experiences and happenings. People who know you personally will probably find this more interesting than people who do not. For your followers, it’s the lure of inner-circle access and the empowerment of being in-the-know.

In a business sense, followers are customers, or potential ones at that. If someone is following you, then they’re interested in what you have to say. Creating a link between a potential customer and your business is easy – just make sure the ‘submit’ button on your website enquiry form is clear enough. Maintaining and growing that initial contact into a long-standing relationship between client and company however, is a different story.

Historically speaking, only large companies could afford to make their voices heard in the marketplace. Large budgets = More marketing. The rise of social media has allowed small businesses to be more competitive, foster a community online, and be able to attend to their needs personally. Using social media to speak to your customers creates opportunities for creative expression, and is an ongoing exercise in genuine customer service and new discoveries.

But social media is not the ‘new’ marketing. Rather, its rising use across generations and demographics represents a new tactic of marketing, particularly for building your personal brand.

Using social media for small business is like building a house, then maintaining it. The bricks-and-mortar of any small business or freelancer is your relationships with clients. The overarching structure holding it all together, is you. The furniture and objects you place in your House include your tweets, status updates, blog articles, Delicious bookmarks, forum postings, repostings of interesting content that relates to the business; in a nutshell, it’s anything and everything you say online. You are responsible for what you place in your House – if it doesn’t look right or more importantly, feel right, then it shouldn’t be there in the first place. If your clients like what they see, they’ll move in. But it doesn’t stop there – you’ll need to keep maintaining your property, and performing upgrades where necessary to keep your tenants happy and from moving out.

Maintaining these relationships requires a plan that is structured and strategic. It involves having to create a brand persona that’s consistent – constructed from the tone of your interactions with others (followers and dissidents alike), and enriched from related content you’ve discovered online that applies to your business and its customers. Using social media for your small business isn’t just about telling others what you think, it’s about listening, responding and anticipating what your customers might want. And if they want to hear about you sitting on a toilet or picking your nose, best to stick to a description under 140 characters.

Using Social Media for small business at a snapshot

Adopt a consistent and positive tone for all online communication eg. When responding to a complaint made in a public space like Twitter, always address the feedback publicly “I’m sorry for your bad experience, we would like to offer you a complimentary meal to make up for it”
Post content that is relevant – Not only should you post interesting articles or videos that relate to your business and industry, but you should also make sure your content is optimised with metadata tags and key words, which make it relevant to the search engines
Make sure your website is user-friendly – This is the base that all the content you post online should direct your followers to. If it’s not up-to-scratch, the only figures that will be soaring will be your bounce rates
Measure, measure, measure! Use free tools like Google Analytics to find out how many incoming links to your website are generated through social media. Have a look at Facebook Insights to see demographic profiles of who’s viewing your business’ Facebook page, and sign up for a bit.ly account to track the number of clicks and re-tweets of your links on Twitter.

About the Author/Further Resources

Successful Coaches – Observations From An Outsider

20 May 2011 in Guest Post tagged Andrew Ferdinando / associates / brand / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching rooms / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / customer acquisition / customer retention / executive coach / Hubworking / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / marketing / networking / niche / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / product mix

What are the traits of successful coaches? In today’s guest post Andrew Ferdinando, who runs Hubworking, shares his thoughts.

Successful Coaches – Observations From An Outsider

By Andrew Ferdinando

Having never experienced coaching, the coaching industry was new to me when I set up my business Hubworking (www.hubworking.com) in 2006. Based in 3 locations in London we operate 3 centres where we hire out meeting rooms to business people on an hourly basis.

When launching my first centre I considered that we may get some bookings from coaches but I admit to being surprised when over time coaches became our biggest source of business.

Having now worked with the coaching world for 5 years as a service provider, I have observed hundreds of different coaches, many of whom are considered to be at the top of their profession.

As a complete outsider, I have noticed many common traits which they all exhibit and which have clearly led to their success. Below are my thoughts on what makes a successful coach, simply based on these observations:

Niche yourself:

Whatever form of coaching, the more successful of my clients seem to have cut out a niche in their particular field. In some cases they are even specialists within an already narrow field. A good example would be the area of presentation coaching where I have seen several highly regarded voice coaches who work with their clients on how to project their voices and “perform” in front of an audience. Each coach offers something unique to the next and advertises themselves as such so that the client appreciates they are hiring an absolute specialist.

Marketing:

My clients all have a good understanding of how to market themselves. For the micro business, which coaches tend to be, this involves networking, writing industry specific articles, creating a good website, blogging regularly and using social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook to grow their brand virally and indeed stay in touch with their clients and future clients.

Consistent customer acquisition/customer retention

It’s clear that the high level coaches have a strong mix of regular clients and new clients which I guess is down to strong marketing and a top class service.

Product range (1 to 1’s and workshops)

The majority of rooms that my clients book with me are 1 to 1 coaching rooms. However, there is a trend that they will also book a larger room for workshops around once per quarter. It’s obvious to me that they have a core coaching product which sits alongside a public training course which they will run on an irregular basis.

Customer mix:

Speaking to my clients they seem to have a good mix of customers including small businesses, government bodies, charities and corporates.

My name is my brand

At Hubworking I work very hard to build the brand of my business. In some respects, I avoid being seen as the person behind the business. For a company like mine, this is important because for us it is the systems, quality of service and locations which my brand needs to represent. With coaches it is the complete opposite. As a specialist coach it is all about building up a brand around your name and what you represent so that your name becomes synonymous with what you do. A good example is one of my clients Alan Stevens who is known to many as “Alan Stevens – Media Coach”.

Strong network of associates

It’s amazing how small the world of coaching is. Over the years I have seen many referrals from my existing coaching clients. It is a close knit industry and this becomes very helpful when a big piece of work comes in that requires more than 1 coach. The ability to call upon top level, trusted associates is gold and something I have seen on many occasions.

If you ever need to hire at coaching room in London, please do get in touch – an****@********ng.net

About the Author/Further Resources

Andrew Ferdinando runs Hubworking, a chain of 3 business centres in central London which hires out low cost, flexible meeting space to small businesses and specifically the coaching community.

For more info, visit www.hubworking.com or contact Andrew directly at an****@********ng.net or 07985 914034.