Here's a quick thought to help you become a better leader.

There are several different styles of leadership; and the best leaders combine these styles to get the best results.  One view of these styles, that of Daniel Goleman, is that leadership can be:

• Co-ercive, in other words, the leader is effectively saying to his followers, "Do what I tell you!";
• Authoritative, where the 'leader knows best' and is inviting his people to come with him;
• Affiliative, or building relationships with people and strengthening team work;
• Democratic, where people come first;
• Pace setting, in which a leader with high standards tries to guide a high performing team towards a stretching goal, or
• Coaching, where a leader invites followers to try an approach that he thinks will work for them.

Not all of these styles, however, always have a positive impact on the culture of the organisation (can you work out which ones?), so it's important to be wary of using them indiscriminately.

However, regardless of the leadership style that you choose to adopt in any particular set of circumstances, it's important to remember that your staff will expect to be treated like people and not machines.  So to help you do this, remember to 'practise the REST'; in other words:

• Respect
• Empathy
• Sincerity
• Thanks

If you're not used to thinking in this way, then it certainly does take practice, but if you seek out opportunities to do so, then you will indeed become a better leader.  And of course it would be remiss of me not to mention in passing that an easy and no-cost way to find out more would be to come along to the next bite-sized Business Doctors seminar at Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry next Tuesday morning.  Just click here to book a place.

Last week I really enjoyed delivering my new seminar at Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  It was made enjoyable in particular by the input from the broad selection of business people who attended.

As promised during the session, I'm providing a list of some interesting reading here and follow-on activities you might like to undertake if something you heard on the day struck a chord or if you're interested in how you can make successful changes to your business or organisation.

Reading List

The following books are pretty useful.  They may have them in your local library:

• Leading Change, John P Kotter, Harvard Business School Press
• Successfully Managing Change in a Week, George Hardy, Institute of Management
• Managing Business Change for Dummies, Beth L Evard & Craig A Gipple, Hungry Minds inc.

Further Seminars

If you would like to explore any of the topics covered in the seminar in more detail, check out the following options:

• Building Better Relationships at Work (17th August) - all about developing the leadership skills you'll need if you want to change your business without collateral damage to your relations with the people that work for you!
• Secrets of Great Communication (29th September) - to lead successfully you need to be able to communicate with people in a way that they will respond to.  The secret of great communication is that there is no secret! This workshop aims to help you to communicate in a natural way that helps you strengthen your influence over the people that work for you.

Training Courses

Some thoroughly recommended and reasonably priced training to take these subjects into more depth depending on your own particular development needs can be booked through Aspire Business Development by contacting Sharon Mackle at aspire@fsmail.net.  Some of the courses planned include:

• Managing Change (September)
• Leadership and Management Overview (September)
• Introduction to Project Management (October)
• Communication skills (November)

As always, I'm happy to help where I can so do contact me if you've got any questions.

Kwai Yu, who, through his work with Leaders Cafe 2020, is quite an inspiration to me personally, has told the story of how he settled upon a vision of helping twenty million people to raise their leadership aspirations by 2020.

Now, not only is that quite a catchy line, Kwai's point is that the psychological effect of a stretching vision is like the effect of gravity on a large mass - the larger the mass, the bigger the thump it makes when it falls to Earth.

So, as a Business Doctor who is constantly banging on to SME owners about the importance of having a vision for their business, I'm thinking I should be taking some of my own medicine by developing my own vision a little further.

In my case, my vision will be to help 15,000 Yorkshire businesses by 2015.

So I'd like to know whether you think this is achievable or perhaps not ambitious enough.  So I'd love to hear from you - do contact me or let me know your thoughts via my LinkedIn poll.

And good luck with developing your own vision - I'd be really interested to hear about it; sometimes it throws up some fasincating insights like the undertaker I was speaking to recently who told me that his vision was to help people think outside of the box!

As reported by The Business Desk today, there are tough times ahead, especially in regions of the UK outside of the south east of England.  One of the few business minds to spot the riskiness of the now infamous 'slice and dice' financial instruments such as credit default swaps before the credit crunch took hold is a voice worth listening to. Moulton suggests that one of the last things we should be doing is relying on public sector bail-outs and issues a call to deal with the recessionary problem now rather than later.

Relying on funding is indeed a risky strategy, especially since much of it is drying up (see Yorkshire Forward Suffers funding cuts).  But as I see very frequently indeed, this leaves business owners who are trying to grow their business whilst cash isn't forthcoming in a real dilemma... how do they afford to grow?

Well, it often has to be a gradual process to put the business back into a shape where investors will consider it as an attractive proposition, but there is still some help available to kick-start SME growth by helping owners and senior managers develop their business strategy - a crucial prerequisite fopr growth - and leadership skills.

If your business has between 5 and 249 employees and you haven't benefited from such funding before, then you can claim from £500 to £1000 worth of funding to help you develop and get a head start.  Business Doctors are happy to sign post you in the right direction if you get in touch.

Following yesterday's cabinet meeting in Bradford, it's been announced that Yorkshire Forward has been instructed to cut £40 million from its budget in a move that is undoubtedly set to affect the business support framework in the region, as reported by the Yorkshire Post.  Indeed, in my meetings with Business Link advisors, the news has already started to filter out that some important funding streams such as the Strategic Business Review have now been canned.  The news comes on top of recently announced cuts in council funding, such as the £1.5 million slashed from Bradford's business support budget.

Whilst the political squabbling about who is to blame for the state of the public finances and the economy more generally continues, it's important to recognise that every piece of bad news holds an opportunity for those prepared to seize it.

In this case, there's more at stake for businesses that are prepared to really focus on what they do, the value they add to customers and the way they do business.  In such a climate, it's more important than ever to take a step back from the business and get smart.  By doing so, you will set yourself apart from your competitors, who continue to plug away with the day to day grind of running their business - a risky approach indeed, since, as the above news goes to show, the macro economic environment is shifting rapidly.  One of the messages of the Business Doctors business growth seminars is that if you're a business owner, you'll just get run over if you stand still...

For those of us familiar with the problems caused in the 1980s in areas of the country that were previously heavily reliant on manufacturing industry, it came as a welcome relief to learn recently of Yorkshire Forward's new manufacturing strategy for the region.

Like all good strategies, it starts with a vision, which is to grow the manufacturing sector until it reaches 20% of the regional economy  in 20 years' time from its current level, which is nearer 12%.

It will achieve this by selecting and supporting strategically important manufacturing sectors to target (not to the detriment of other sectors, it insists, but presumably using something like the 80/20 rule).  These are:

• Advanced Engineering and Materials;
• Digital;
• Low Carbon and
• Healthcare Technologies.

Someone's clearly been doing their STEP analysis (see our Top Tips for Growing your Business), since these sectors are very much in line with where the added value work is in Manufacturing at the moment.  In other words, gone are the days where we should be competing on price, because the 'low cost geography sourcing' as I've heard it called (in other words, shipping stuff out overseas to be made cheaply) will always follow the lowest cost of production (i.e. low wage economies).

So here's a call to manufacturers in Yorkshire to tap into this regional strategy.  Use it as an opportunity to think about what your sustainable competitive advantage really is and get focussed to grow your business in the knowledge that the time is right and the support is in place.

What are your views on where manufacturing should be heading?  Leave a comment below, or if you've a specific business problem you'd like us to address, ask a question.

What with looming spending cutbacks as a result of the public sector borrowing requirements, plus the current political uncertainty around the future of business support agencies - in particular the regional development agencies - following the change in government, it would be fair to say that the current picture relating to business funding is also 'uncertain' (just goes to show you the benefit of doing your STEP analysis - see our free top ten tips for growing your business).

Connected with this, I've just fielded one of the most jaw-droppingly naive questions of my Business Doctors career so far from a member of the Bradford business support community that's compelled me to blog this entry.  Now, admittedly, Bradford has its own issues relating to poverty and regeneration, but I think we need to try a little harder to pull ourselves up by the boot straps.

Names have been witheld to spare any blushes, but the conversation was along the lines of:

Questioner: "Business Doctors - now that sounds interesting."

Me: "Yes, it is, it's keeping me extremely busy."

Questioner: "So what do you do, do you basically dish out loads of free funding to businesses"

Me: "Er, nooooo....! We help businesses to achieve their vision by helping develop a unique strategy that matches their own unique internal capabilities with the most attractive external opportunities."

Now to me, this highlights that whilst publicly funded agencies are working really hard to make the changes cities like Bradford need to see, potential clients need to look very carefully at any service they are being offered in order to check it meets their own needs.  If the wrong service is matched with the wrong client, then the business support community as a whole can be tarnished by the project failing to meet its objectives.

What are the benefits to business owners of getting professional outside help?

• As owners of SMEs have often undergone organic growth ‘from the tools’ themselves, they may not have the skills and experience to make the changes they need to make;
• There is usually value in taking independent advice because it challenges your own thinking; as humans we are poor at thinking through the downside of our bright ideas;
• Bringing in an extra pair of hands can help free up time to help prioritise what really needs doing – enabling the business owner to start to see the ‘wood for the trees’ and take a long term view of where he or she is going.

So I would say, let’s get away from this something-for-nothing trap that we can fall into and get real about the value that professionals deliver.  Business support is just that – it’s not free money to burn, it’s support to help entrepreneurs achieve their vision.

What do you think?  Leave a comment or contact me with your view.

At Business Doctors we really try and strip out the corporate claptrap, but some of what might be considered management mumbo jumbo it resolutely remains resistant to being purged as we can find no better way to describe it. So for those of you who consider the word ‘strategy’ just another group of letters that belongs on the bull**** bingo card, let’s consider for a second why this might be.

It’s true that people I’ve worked with in the past, including directors in well known firms, have sometimes considered ‘having a strategy’ to being a substitute for needing to do any actual work whatsoever – the thinking apparently goes that if you can show your boss a strategy paper then he’ll get off your back.  Well this works, right?

Wrong! OK, so strategy may be a word that’s over-used by consultants and the like, but I reckon it’s also much under-used by business people like you and me. 

Think of it this way, all that a strategy is, is simply a scheme to guide your actions towards a set goal in a reasoned and clear way.  Check this out on Wikipedia.  Now you can go about your business without having a strategy, but you’re much more at the mercy of events if you do.  You can have as many strategies as you see fit (a marketing strategy, an IT strategy, a quality management strategy) but as we've seen, you need to be aware of over-strategising and keep them at the level that's right for your business.  However, in all cases, your strategies need to fit into your overall business strategy.

You could also liken having a strategy to playing a board game with the family at Christmas.  Now, fuelled by too much wine and mince pies, who doesn’t want to thump the cocky brother-in-law at Monopoly?   Well, you’ll only do so by having a winning strategy and who would argue that having a strategy for playing a board game is a daft idea?

So, get in touch to let me know what you think – this could be an interesting debate.  Alternatively, Business Doctors tour the UK to tell SMEs about strategy, so if you’re open to ideas, come to one of our seminars or download our top ten tips to learn how getting a business strategy will help your firm.

OK, so we all know that change is constant.  In other words, we have to live with the fact that the world is changing at a fast pace and this has an effect on our day to day lives.  So our ability to respond to change becomes a key factor in whether we merely survive or whether we thrive.

So as leaders, we are responsible for making these changes happen.  In business, at its most simple level, changes we have to lead may be new technologies, new ways of working, but they may also be radically different business models that could have a fundamental impact on the lives of the people who work with us.  Now it would be no surprise to me to learn that a few of us have found the task of delivering and embedding such change to be quite a tricky one.

So what can we do to make it easier?

• Firstly, accept that resistance to changing on the part of the people affected by it is only natural.  This can be thought of as a curve, which maps the psychological journey made by people confronted with change.  Early feelings of denial are followed by fear and anxiety, subsequently gradual acceptance, leading to changes ultimately being accepted and even ultimately embraced (yes, that does happen!).
• Secondly, be aware that the earlier you get buy-in from those affected by change (often referred to as ‘stakeholders’), the smoother the resistance curve is likely to be.  Make your consultations with those affected early, sincere, genuine and meaningful.
• Thirdly, communicate, communicate, communicate during the transition process.  This is an effective way (arguably the only effective way) to minimise the feelings of fear, anxiety and depression and consequently minimise the negative personal effects of change on people (and consequently their view of you as a leader).  At Business Doctors, we run an extremely effective staff communication workshop to get staff engaged with and motivated by significant changes in a business.  We’ve seen how it works in practice.

Do these and people will thank you for it.  Trust me, I’m a Business Doctor…

Read more about the process of personal change on the Businessballs web site.

In this guest blog, Kevin Parry of Cogenic Management Consulting provides a view from Hong Kong, where he is lucky enough to be engaged in project work at the moment.  Kevin's view provides an interesting counterpoint to the current economic and political malaise affecting the UK.

Hong Kong is essentially a trading city (these days a Special Administrative Region) in China which has not lost its long tradition of fast moving, adapting and risk-taking since the handover from British rule back to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. The overall Chinese economy, if you believe the official statistics, is growing fast. 11.7% in the last quarter according to the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com) and the evidence is here of deal-making everywhere.

Hong Kong people are hard working (an average of 44.5 hours per week) and are famous gamblers, and one aspect of the hard work and willingness to take a risk for money is that people are very resilient in the face of losses, simply coming back to the table to bet again  The feeling about the future is positive; Hong Kong has some of the highest property prices in the world as a result of the rising levels of wealth and investment here. It is the main south China trading hub with the rest of the world and a knowledge centre for Chinese businesses, with a reputation for innovation and sophisticated tastes.

The warm weather (today is 26 degrees whereas London is 7 degrees) and excellent transportation systems make it easy to buy and sell services, goods and financial instruments. The ready availability of capital for investment; from Angel investors to corporate banks, also encourages new ventures expansion and growth. Income tax is 18% at the top rate here and most people only pay 15%. This means that far more of their salaries are disposable income than in the UK and translates into both personal investments and consumption of all kinds of products and services.

The business environment is also encouraged by the number of private clubs here, almost every business person belongs to one of more, which create a sense of a small and integrated community in which personal relationships count for more than contacts and purchasing portals. Here if you are trusted you can do business which is a contrast with the lack of trust sometimes evident in the UK business environment in which procurement is increasingly about price and little else. This must surely lead to a deflationary environment and will tend to make postponing investment the logical choice.

Hong Kong is a melting pot of cultures, ideas and influences. From Canada and the US to Japan, Singapore and Europe people, technology and ideas circulate freely, supported by advanced communications networks and fully integrated public transport systems. So is this a kind of Utopia? No, of course not. Hong Kong has its problems like everywhere else, but is striking when you arrive here is the “can-do” attitude; and if that’s not a competitive advantage, I don’t know what is.

Kevin Parry is a Programme Director and Consultant who has held programme director roles in global telecommunications businesses and healthcare and is interested in meeting fellow professionals and making presentations on the subject of project and programme management to suitable groups during his stay in Hong Kong.