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Who are your hero's in life? Are they real people or characters from a comic book or film? Are they world famous, or are they unknown? What traits do you recognise in the people who inspire you to achieve more? We were posed the questions this month - who are our heros, who would we like to spend a day with and what would we like to learn from them?

People often talk about how to manage teams but I believe Managers also need to be aware of how team members are managing. Overwork, high levels of stress, taking work home, working too long hours. these are not just problems for an individual but for an organisation as well. This article looks at how Managers need to be aware of their responsibilities to their team

What is it that people who lead by inspiration do so differently to those who lead through position? It might just be that those who inspire do so by 'being' who they are - that is their message and beliefs create a connection between humans.

It’s ‘that’ time of year again when we dig out our ‘to do’ list for the last twelve months, enjoy a smug 5 seconds of celebrating what we accomplished and then feel guilty at the remaining actions that we never even got close to achieving. I’m completely guilty of ‘over promising and under delivering’ when it comes to my own New Year goal setting so this year I’m going to do things differently – everything is going to be about my career.

Transitional management (moving someone into a new role) can be incredibly challenging. When people move into a new role, particularly when promoted, they often need a great deal of support. One frequent mistake is assuming that they know what they're getting into. So often we believe that because someone is great at their job, and get along so well with their colleagues, that they will be natural leaders or managers.

The career aptitude test (also termed ‘career-building assessment’) is a good tool for you to take advantage of when you are trying to figure out which direction you want your life to go in . Trying to decide what career you want for yourself can be a very daunting task. With so many possible roads to go down, how do you find your path in life? Taking one of these assessments is a good starting point to find what what type of occupation would be good for your personality type.

I learnt another valuable lesson this week and would like to share.

As a leader, if you want people to follow you, inspire them with a compelling vision, affirm the importance of their roles in achieving success, and then give them the resources they need to innovate and make the vision a reality ... they will find the way! By David Savage with extracts from the the book The New Leaders by Daniel Goleman

How do we encourage a baby when they are learning to walk? We celebrate their successes – well actually we celebrate them just trying!

Today leaders need to know how to ‘lead’ themselves through their own life and their daily responsbilities as leader at work. We have a frighteningly fast pace of change and innovation, changing expectations, demands and concerns for staff and their well being and development – not to mention new ways of communicating, selling, distributing to make a difference…..and thriving in a global financial ‘crisis’ The leader who understands a couple of things will fare better than those who don’t.

The facts about Switchtasking in business. Has this ever happened to you? You are deep in conversation with a friend or business associate. Suddenly a distraction; the mobile rings, a waitress serves your latte … The distraction ends, you both look up at each other and say, ”What were we talking about?”

Planning on studying at university, or know someone who is? Find out how university entrance works, and figure out what you need to do to get into the university programme you want. Universities have moved on from ‘bums on seats’, where eventually everyone could get into university. In the past you either got 3 C’s in bursary, or turned 20. Now funding has gone down, and there are caps on how many students universities can enroll. Students need to know what is required or they could miss out.

As a linguist I have always been interested in improving my linguistic ability. Learn about a new approach to Linguistic Excellence using NLP to develop latent skills you may have only ever dreamed about.

When personal values and company values clash, there can be a general 'unease' or 'unhappiness'. People often try to get on with the job and ignore the things they don't agree with, but eventually this gets too much and decisions have to be made...

Have you been in organisations that have staff that are disinterested and negative. Do you want to know how to deal with them? As organisations look for that competitive edge the concept of “employee engagement” has been growing in popularity over the past ten years, yet with that increased interest comes a lot of confusion and misunderstanding on what “engagement” actually is and more importantly how and why it will benefit the organisation. This articles explains all

There are many great coaches for you to choose from, and they're featured in this amazing website so that you can find out more about their work, and what they have achieved. To help you decide who is the right person to work with you, try checking out our tips for idendifying a coach to help you be even more amazing.

Every great organisation has elite teamwork at its foundation of success. They have found that more than processes and systems,it's the dynamics of the relationships between people that generates the energy required to take a company from average to truly great. They have teams that care and respect each other. They watch each others back and push each other to achieve results together that they couldn't do on their own. Sounds fantastic but how do you make this happen

"Key traits written all over PM's speech notes" - Dominon Post 21 May 2011. The photo of John Key in the Dom Post speaking at the announcement of the 2011 Budget is a great example of how our every move can be caught on camera and that even our own scrawled comments or speech notes can become the centre of publicity. As a seasoned Toastmaster I was contacted by Kiren Chug of the Dominion Post and asked to comment on Prime Minister John Key's use of notes when speaking. Read the article...

I recently watched a TED video with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and it stimulated my thinking further. If you have started looking for another job it does not mean you have to mentally check out of your current one. This is a common occurrence; most people who have had enough of their current environment will no longer participate fully, will shy away from additional responsibility and ignore any new opportunities that might come their way. Does this sound like you?

When you meet someone new, do you find yourself curious to know what they do and why? Are you interested in the things other people do well and equally, the things people love to do as work?

When you take on a Coach there are a few essential ingredients you need in place to make the most of it ... Yep, the right goals for a start and a solid game plan. But also, it's how you engage with the coaching and the little things you can do to maintain the focus you need to nail your goals!

Have you ever thought about becoming a professional Coach? More and more people are and since I began Coaching in 2003, much has changed. And so updating an older article I wrote some years ago, here are some things to know about the Coaching world and becoming one.

Strengthen your influence factor by using these tips to have more leverage with your colleagues, boss, children, friends or anyone else. These tips are easy to use and you may find them more than a little surprsing.

Increasingly I find that people I work with are extremely capable, work hard, deliver results, however they put their work demands ahead of their own (including career planning). Does this sounds like you?

Have you returned from a fabulous holiday break and realised nothing has changed in your work environment? Does your time on the beach, tramping in the hills or reading on the deck seem like a distant memory? Did you leave work on the 23rd of December thinking "I just need to relax, unwind, laugh with my friends, eat great food and spend time out of the office and then I will feel so much better"? If this sounds like you, read on...

Emotional bank account withdrawals and lost opportunities… a common event in many business settings resulting in loss to the individuals and the company. I know this is a common occurrence, and yet it doesn’t need to happen this way.

Motivation is one of the most powerful forces in the world; it gets us up in the morning, it takes us to work and gives us the desire to achieve our dreams that is when it is working. When we are lacking motivation then minutes feel like hours and our dreams stay just that, dreams. This article explores the power of motivation and the formula that can help you unlock it

First why do people fail to get motivated? Here are 3 common mistakes: 1. Getting hung up and stressed out by details. This is what I call “doing overwhelm”. Imagine the following situation: Sarah puts on a pair of pants she hasn't worn for a while and notices in horror that they no longer fit. This triggers her to think she needs to lose weight. If she then thinks in detail of all the things she has to do to get back to her old size, she is likely to get overwhelmed.

Are you finding that you have to do more and more work presentations and experience issues when you get up in front of others to speak? This article is designed to help you understand what you need to do to get good at public speaking so that you can overcome any issues.

It seems, getting enough sleep is now a hot topic and is being studied in relation to learning, remembering, maintaining information context and even managing your preferred weight!

It’s all about enabling yourself to pick up information through your senses, principally so you can gather information more effectively as you work with people. Building on and developing sensory acuity means that people not only learn how to gather information about those around them, but also gather insightful information about their own behaviours and attitudes, empowering them in creating more deliberate, helpful styles of engagement with others.

Life/Work balance is challenging when jobs are becoming more time consuming in these times of a recession. Time management becomes improatnt more than ever to achieve balance in our lives. The need to increase incidental activity in "bite size" pieces goes a long way towards getting active. How can we get more active when at work?

We all aspire to be great leaders. When we look at leaders, we admire one quality. That quality is the ability to inspire people. How do they do this? Is it a skill that can be learned, or is it just natural charisma? The good news is that the ability to inspire people is the same as any other aspect of leadership, a skill, a skill that can be learned. This article contains some top tips that will help you develop this rare and invaluable skill

Some people have that ability to create something amazing out of the conversations they have. Whether it’s helping someone gain insight over a dilemma, adding a little sunshine to someone’s day or replacing conflict with collaboration. So how do they do this? What skills are they using?

You've been working hard, you are a business expert and everyone knows how good you are at your job and now that special day has come that the boss invites you into his/her office and gives you the promotion you have been working for. Great news - right? You are now a boss, you now have people reporting to you and your whole working life is now about to change forever. Here’s a few tips to avoid those common first time manager mistakes

You’ve probably had times in your life where you’ve achieved a goal so easily that it seemed totally effortless. You established a goal and then it just seemed to arrive, as if you’d picked it out of a catalogue, placed your order and it was delivered to you at just the right time, all wrapped up and nicely packaged.

First, we'll discuss what consideration is not, because, as in the process of elimination, you can never truly see something, until you recognise what it is not.