A few years ago a research company tried to find out what made a CEO successful or not. They interviewed a lot of CEO’s, young matured and just retired. The outcomes from the matured and just retired top-leaders was a bit of a surprise. One of the questions in the questionnaire was: when you could do it over, what would you do differently? The outcome for the mature and just retired CEO’s was in 80%: rely more on my intuition. When they had important decisions to make they had all kind of data available. But when they looked back they realized that they often were not satisfied with the decisions they made only based on facts and figures. Mainly because their intuition told them something different. And that intuition couldn’t be made factual. It was more a feeling they had. And in businesses feelings don’t count that much. A decision has to be made rational, not based on feelings. But when you look closer, that rational is not so rational anymore.

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from Dana. I know Dana for several years. She works as a sales manager in Albania for a French multi-national. In 2015, she took the brave step to dismiss and to help her sister with her at that time small business. The sister of Dana owned a small shoe-factory in Tirana, the capital of Albania. After a few months Dana took over the business and became the sole owner. Reason was that Dana’s sister wasn’t happy with a leading position, she preferred more to be in the background taking care of all technical aspects.
This article was published in the BIZ Magazine, on the 27th September 2017.

A customer asked me to think together with her on what it would mean for her company to implement ‘Employer Branding’. The coincidence (if that exists) was that shortly before her request I attended a masterclass Employer Branding from Brett Minchington. Brett travels all over the world to spread the ideas and importance of Employer Branding. His definition of employer branding is: “The image of your organization as ‘a great place to work’ in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market (e.g. active and passive candidates, clients)”. Quite some companies saw the importance of Employer Branding and started to work on it.
The article was published on the website www.cariereonline.ro, on the 26th September 2017.

During my work as coach and consultant, I meet a lot of people. And they tell me a lot of stories regarding their work and personal life. And all those stories taught me an important thing: People are very agile. Even when life is not so ‘sweet’ for them. I never met a person who had a perfect life. Always there were ups and downs and sometimes those downs were heavy. And most of them, when they look back, they say: ‘But you have to do something, life is going on’.

When we are talking about bonuses, we immediately think of money. In a lot of companies, the bonus is used as a motivation tool. And, actually, we know for more than 40 years that the carrot (= bonus) and the stick method is not working as motivation, and, even more important, not in the benefit of the company. Actually, it works against when the bonus is not related to a good key performance indicator. We also know more than 40 years that motivation is not coming from bonuses.

John was 55 years old and, within the last 10 years, he was leading the maintenance department. At that time, I was the HR-director. John was visiting me every week, asking when he could be pre-retired. He wanted to enjoy life and especially spending time with his grand-children. Unfortunately, I had to disappoint him every time. The pre-retirement was only for those employees whose job would disappear. A few months later, we needed a big restructuring because of bad financial results. I was able to cancel the job of John. And he was on the top of the list of the people who could go with the pre-retirement procedure.
This article was published on the webste www.cariereonline.ro, on the 21st July 2017.

Often, we don’t realize how important our work is in our life. People in Romania make long working hours. Ten hours a day is no exception. In these cases, people spend 30% of their time on work, an equal 30% for family and friends and 40% is spend on sleeping and travelling. And this all includes the weekend. So, I think it is very relevant to think about those life questions.

Bonuses, in this article, I mean bonus in money, is meant to increase the motivation. And an increased motivation increases the performance. But is that really the case? When people receive a bonus, two variables are important: When you receive it and how much you receive.  And these variables are also connected with each other. Let’s have a closer look to these two variables.

Leadership is all about relationships. As a leader, you don’t need to ask if you have relationships with employees, the question is what the quality of the relationships are. And, also generally speaking, women are better in managing the relationships than men. Men are better in the content of the subject. Off course also very important, but in leadership less nowadays. And, also, research shows this.

How do we recognize the dictatorial leadership style? Actually, this is quite simple to determine. A dictator doesn't ask questions. Because a dictator isn't interested in other people's opinions. The dictator expects that the people in his or her team are following without questions and without questioning his or her authority. The dictator doesn't allow mistakes. They expect a high performance with the highest quality all the time.
​This article was published in Cariere Magazine on the 25th April 2017.

In successful companies, assertive employees and leaders go hand in hand. Shanon Anthony Bower describes the difference between assertive and aggressive people as follows: “The basic difference between assertive and being aggressive is how our words and behavior affect the rights and well-being of others”. You can read more on this subject in the article published in BIZ Magazine on 7th April, 2017.

When I was asked to write an article special for the 8^th of March, I had some options. I could write about a trending topic in business: Gender diversity. But I would like that firms are busier with the Diversity of the Mind.

When I see that in a management team there is a discussion about a decision I suggest almost every time to look for a third possibility, that is not a merge of the other 2 possibilities. Background: if people are not agreeing on the decisions there is a realistic chance that both are not the best. Go to look for the alternative third.