8 Traits of good managers

Project Oxygen, a research study undertaken by the tech giant Google, collected over 10,000 pieces of data about managers — across more than 100 variables, from performance reviews to feedback surveys. They found that a good manager has 8 specific traits:

A good coach
Empowers and does not micromanage
Expresses interest and concern in subordinates’ success and well-being
Results oriented
Listens and shares information
Helps with career development
Has a clear vision and strategy
Has key technical skills

BUSINESS, CAREERRonan Kennedy15 February 2017Management, Coach, career development

2 Research backed teamwork skills that anyone can implement quickly

Is it optimal to have a team of high performers working together? Does the team need to be good friends? What are the two things that cohesive teams do? What is the number one factor that determines a team's effectiveness?

BUSINESS, CAREERRonan Kennedy13 February 2017Teamwork, Transferrable Skills

Disconnect to Reconnect

Delete the social media apps - turn off the notifications.

Forget the continuous news - it's not a true reflection anyway.

Put the phone out of the bedroom - buy an alarm clock.

Look up and listen - it's 'LIVE' right now.

Enjoy the moment - it'll be gone soon.

BUSINESS, LIFERonan Kennedy9 February 2017Communication, Concentration, Connection

My 20 most asked questions and one line answers

I’m at a crossroads in my career, what should I do?

Identify the problem with your current role, and seek to solve that first.

I have a lot of self-doubt in my abilities. How to I improve my confidence?

Make sure to do some Victory Stacking. Also, check out these tips that you can implement for free.

CAREER, BUSINESSRonan Kennedy6 February 2017Communication, CV, Goal-Setting, job descriptions, Jobs, Confidence

Fight distraction and embrace deep work

Videos, news articles, social media, emails and phones are all common distractions throughout our workday. How many of them are work related compared to just communicating about work? I'm writing about this not because I can do this perfectly myself, but because it’s something I’m focusing on improving. Deep Work, a book by Cal Newport...

CAREER, BUSINESSRonan Kennedy30 January 2017Work, Career

Google's highly unlikely success story

“Do you know what Google did?”.

You’ve heard it said before as if it’s describing some game-changing business strategy that nobody else thought of at the time. The reality was much different with a myriad of complicated factors involved, many of which were totally unpredictable. Apple is the other classic story that is presented as inevitably successful, after the fact of course. In reality, many occurrences were entirely dependent on fate, not faith - as Apple commentators would have you believe. The problem with the real success stories is that they are complicated to understand, not quite as inspiring, and seemingly impossible to reproduce.

BUSINESSRonan Kennedy23 January 2017Google, Success, Decision-Making

Overcoming office politics

People engage in office politics because they think it will lead to better career prospects for them in the future. They align themselves to influencers, which by default means they will also be distancing themselves from others in the organisation. But who is actually influential? Sometimes we know, but sometimes we don’t. Lots of companies will have hidden influencers that employees aren’t aware of. This could be the receptionist or the security staff, the canteen manager or the IT administrator.

BUSINESS, CAREERRonan Kennedy17 January 2017Office Politics, Relationships, Emotions

Am I being managed out?

'Managing out' refers to when management makes an employee's working life so unpleasant, the employee decides to hand in their notice. Some employees aren't aware that this is a management tactic, even though they may be the victim of it.

It's quite difficult to legally sack a worker if the management of a company is unhappy with them; that's why they have to use covert strategies to make life unpleasant for the individual. This process could include: criticising an employee's work repeatedly and never giving them credit; not supporting them in learning or developing; keeping them out of communication loops; ignoring their requests or making their life at the company difficult in general.

Now, let's think about what it's like for both parties involved.

CAREER, BUSINESSRonan Kennedy16 January 2017Management, leadership, Employees, Engagement

Distinguishing content from process

Do you ever feel like you can't do something? Or that you don't have the skills? Most people do.

It's easy to fall for the idea that you don't know how to do something, even if it seems entirely different from everything else you've ever done.

The content could be different, but the process is often the same. In other words, the 'what' may be different, but the 'how' is often similar. That's where transferable skills come into play.

BUSINESS, CAREERRonan Kennedy12 January 2017Content, Process, Passion

Avoiding Peter’s principle

In his book published in 1969, Laurence Peter proposes the Peter Principle: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

Many promotion decisions are beyond logic, such as promoting an engineer to a manager because they are an excellent engineer. The decision is made based on the employee’s performance in an engineering role, but engineering and management are completely different sets of skills and should be treated as such.

CAREER, BUSINESSRonan Kennedy10 January 2017Eponym, Promotion, Management, leadership

Progress means satisfaction

Occasionally a client will come to me who doesn’t experience enough professional growth in their career. There are a couple of possible solutions for this depending on the situation.

CAREER, BUSINESSRonan Kennedy2 January 2017Growth, Money, Learning, Progress

Mini-experiments versus chronic dabbling

There aren't any summary bullet points for this post. No dabbling on this one; you’re either in or you’re out.

I’ll admit it straight up that I’ve dabbled before. We all do it to some extent.

Doing risk-free mini-experiments is a necessity but we should be careful to distinguish that from dabbling. Mini-experiments should give us an opportunity to try something in a structured fashion; get help from someone who understands the area and overcome at least one obstacle while learning from it.

BUSINESS, CAREERRonan Kennedy15 December 2016Mini-Experiments, Commitment, self-employed

Best tools for optimising your career development

LIFE, CAREER, BUSINESSRonan Kennedy7 April 2016Career, Tools, self-employed

4 Alternative ways of getting your foot in the door

You’re not getting any good results from your job search, right? You’ve emailed every company in your desired industry and you didn’t get the job. You’ve tried "everything" and nothing has worked! Without knowing anything about you, I know that if what you’re doing isn’t working, then it’s time to try something else. Simple, right?
Please keep in mind that some of these suggestions will be more suitable than others, depending on the type of work and the industry that you’re interested in, so it’s up to you to choose the ones that are best suited to you.
Here are 5 alternative ways to get your foot in the door of a company that you’d really like to work for.

CAREER, BUSINESSRonan Kennedy31 December 2015Networking, Opportunities, Jobs

5 Movies with awesome lessons about following dreams

Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden, holds a gun to the head of a convenience store assistant while asking “WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE?”. Pitt’s character is obviously using a violent threat, but in an unusually encouraging way. He wants the assistant to follow his dreams so much so that he threatens to kill him for not following through. When the assistant eventually answers that he’d like to “veterinarian”, but that there’s “too much schooling”, Pitt’s character gives him an ultimatum to follow his dreams. Not the typical example of encouragement.

LIFE, CAREER, BUSINESSRonan Kennedy7 November 2014Dreams, Certainty, Perseverance, Goal-Setting Sessions, Career Coach, Career Change

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