The AltusQ Blog
News, upcoming events and articles written by our coaches
Why slowing down can speed you up
Why slowing down can speed you up Xmas is the perfect time of the year for reflection. Before you pack up and head off to enjoy your Xmas break, take 5 minutes to consider what you’ve learnt this year and how it’s helped you to grow both professionally and personally. Write it down, share it…
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Loved this quote…
The compelling ROI of the ‘I’ to ‘We’ shift of great teams Loved this quote by entrepreneurial business leader Jean-Francois Bouchard, founder and chief executive of Sid Lee in Saturday’s Herald which so succinctly sums up the compelling ROI of the ‘I’ to ‘We’ shift of great teams. [ Return to QLead ] [ Return…
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Why having a laugh is a sign of a healthy team
Why having a laugh is a sign of a healthy team In great teams, connection is everything. It’s the source of trust, the foundation of productive conflict and the energy that fuels discretionary effort. One way to check in on connection in your team is by how often you share a laugh. Connected teams laugh…
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Building High Performing Teams – Teams That Trust
Building High Performing Teams – Teams That Trust When I set out the write this series of blog’s relating to the formation of high performing teams I set myself a goal of writing a blog post each month for 6 months. Now, fast forward 4 months and I have written and posted 3 blogs. For…
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Dear boss, you’re sacked
Dear boss, you’re sacked! Never get one of these! This letter to the partner of an accounting firm is so typical of what goes on in the professional service and other service based professions. It’s stuff we see every day. It’s stuff we help our clients deal with – especially when they want to change…
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Blowing our own trumpet
It’s time to blow our own trumpet (just a little) We have received confirmation that AltusQ has received a European Quality Award for another of our coach training courses. To quote from the EQA Report: The AltusQ Coaching Foundations Certificate Programme has been skilfully designed to meet the EMCC Foundation Level standards. A broad range of…
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What this horse taught us about failure
What this horse taught us about failure Ever heard the expression “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”? Well, try taking away the lead and I’m not sure you’ll even make it to the water. This is a real photo taken from our AltusQ coach conference last week. The…
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Navigating beyond the uncertainty
Navigating beyond the uncertainty No one made a successful business by treating it like a part-time job. Running any business is a full time, all-consuming thing. When it is your business, that you have pain stakingly built from the ground up over many years, then everywhere you look, you see your work. You remember hiring…
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Building High Performing Teams – Trust Yourself First
Building High Performing Teams – Trust Yourself First Early on in my own leadership development journey I was asked “how do you build trust?”. This simple reflective question had me stumped. I really couldn’t articulate it, I mean Trust is a feeling, right? I had established and maintained trusting relationships, not only at work but…
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10 leadership lessons from failure
10 leadership lessons from failure Learning from failure is a concept that many organisations embrace yet few in reality seem to really know how to do. As coaches, we are increasingly experiencing organisations that talk openly about their desire to build a culture where risks are taken and innovation thrives, yet in most the status…
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Getting piggy ready for market
Getting piggy ready for market We’ve all heard the phrase “fattening up piggy for market”. Pig farmers have a strategic choice to make about the market they are selling into (the bacon market, the processing market or the fresh pork market). These markets fluctuate over time with the farmer needing a return on investment analysis…
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Building High Performing Teams – Collaborate or Delegate?
Building High Performing Teams – Collaborate or Delegate? What is a high performing team? What does it look and feel like? Can you name a few high performing teams/organisations? When describing what makes these teams or organisations high performing, you get an almost story-telling mythical response often with success attributed to people, places and events.…
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What makes a good culture? Hit the slopes to find out!
What makes a good culture? Hit the slopes to find out! Here’s a pic of yours truly atop Mount Cardona, a ski resort near Queenstown, NZ. I have just returned from a wonderful week – good snow cover , blue skies and friendly people – the trifecta. This is the ‘before picture’, taken just a…
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Brace yourselves – Winter is coming
Brace yourselves – Winter is coming In the opening episode of Game of Thrones, the ultimately doomed hero Ned Stark made this speech to galvanise his people to prepare for the leaner times he saw coming. Much has been written about the economic disturbance caused by the baby boomer population (Born 1946 -64) as they…
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Why your mentoring program needs to go online
Why your mentoring program needs to go online On the face of it mentoring would seem a quintessentially human activity. It inherently centres on a close, personal relationship between two individuals and it is the quality of that relationship that ultimately determines success or failure. What possible justification could there be for adding technology to…
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