Blog
Unleashing Clarity and Motivation: How Asking Three Questions Can Enhance YOUR Team Performance
When I work with new clients, I often start my first official meeting with them by asking them three questions. These questions always work like magic because they trigger them to pause and to think deeply. And trust me when I tell you that they will work with you as well.
The Feedback Dilemma: Why Leaders Struggle and Then Fail to Give Effective Feedback
A lot of employees around the world consistently complain that they do not get enough feedback from their managers.
But before jumping into blaming the managers immediately, let me share with you a real-life story that might explain why managers do not give enough feedback to their employees.
But before we begin, let me ask you a question and I want you to be patient with me as I have a point that I would love to make.
The Importance of Embracing Change: Lessons in Leadership from Failed Change Initiatives
A leader at a big multinational company approached me several months ago. He told me that they need my support in a huge change initiative that they are running.
The goals of this change initiative were 2 things:
1- To improve cross-functional collaboration between the Business unit’s different teams and departments, as they didn’t collaborate effectively.
From Vague to Vivid: How Clarity Can Transform Your Life and Work
Several days ago, I watched a very inspiring movie on Netflix called ‘’The Swimmers’’.
It is about the life story of teenage Syrian refugees Yusra Mardini and her sister Sarah Mardini.
Yusra and Sarah were competitive swimmers, and the story was about how they fled the war in Syria and the pain that they went through until they reached Germany and applied for an Asylum permit.
Empowering Managers to Drive Organizational Growth: A Simplified Checklist Approach
Two researchers, Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer, conducted an impressive study to try to find an answer to 2 questions:
1- How do positive and negative work environments arise?
2- And how do they affect People’s creative problem-solving?
To find answers to these questions, they collaborated with different companies in different industries and recruited 238 people in 26 project teams in 7 companies in 3 industries.
The Illusion of Perfection: How Positive Illusion Causes Workplace Problems
Imagine with me this situation...
A stranger enters the room, reads some information from a piece of paper in less than 90 seconds, and leaves. And then I asked you to guess this person’s IQ. Would you be able to?
Of course, you can make a guess, but most probably you will say ‘’how can I accurately guess the IQ of someone that I just saw for the first time and for less than 2 minutes?’’
Why Workplace Transformation is Imperative for the Future: A Call to Action
In 2017, I was about to die.
I was completely and daily under work stress and working extended working hours to solve the never-ending problems of the projects on my table as an employee at one of the big multinational companies.
I used to attend nearly 6 back-to-back meetings almost daily and the work pressure and problems were to the roof. To the extent that one of my colleagues went behind my back to my boss and told him that if someone didn’t interfere now, Mohamed could die from the work pressure.
Your Next BIG Career Decision and ”Suits” Series
A few months ago, a friend of mine who is working as a Director in a big multinational company met with me and told me that a middle-sized company contacted him and that they offered him a CEO Position, where he will be responsible for the whole business and more than a thousand employees.
We were chatting together, and then he asked me for my opinion and if he should take this new opportunity or not.
How Can a Company Create a Great Internal Culture to Attract & Maintain Talent?
The right employee in the right company that provides him or her with the required tools to do a great job becomes automatically an ambassador.
So how can a company ensure that they hire and maintain the right type of employees that can act as ambassadors and improve the company’s image? That’s what we will discuss in this article.
There are a lot of things that companies can do to create and maintain a great internal culture, and now I will share with you 6 tips, and you will be impressed by how easy there are.
Why Leaders Can’t be Authentic?
We always want to assume that our leaders are authentic. And thousands of leadership books wrote that one of the good leadership characteristics is authenticity.
But is this true? Do we really want leaders to be authentic? And is being an authentic leader an advantage or a disadvantage?
Why are Employees Demotivated & Disengaged? Part 3
In the last 2 articles, we spoke about how big companies have Technology, manpower, budget, and people with great experiences. So why is the performance going down, and their employees are disengaged?
And we said that we have one main reason and 9 sub-reasons that follows. These 9 sub-reasons are the consequences of the main reason. And the main reason that we spoke about last time is choosing the wrong unqualified leaders to fill managerial positions, and we also spoke about what to do to resolve this issue.
And in the last article we spoke about 5 of these sub-reasons or consequences, and today we will speak about the last 4.
Why are Employees Demotivated & Disengaged? Part 2
In the last article, we spoke about how big companies have Technology, manpower, budget, and people with great experiences. So why is the performance going down, and their employees are disengaged?
And we said that we have one main reason and 9 sub-reasons that follows. These 9 sub-reasons are the consequences of the main reason.
Why Employees are Disengaged & Demotivated? Part 1
It’s 10 a.m. and you have a meeting at the company that you are working at.
You enter the meeting room, and then you get hit by the demotivated faces of your colleagues.
5 minutes later, you look around you to see some of your colleagues are already checking their phones; others are hidden behind their laptops, and some of them seem extremely bored and about to sleep.
A Master Class in Persuasion in 3 minutes
I want to share with you a simple story about a situation that happened to me lately and that I consider a Master Class in Persuasion.
I went to the dentist to conduct my annual check. As soon as I entered the room and sat on the chair, the doctor checked my teeth, and then she said, ‘’your teeth seem to be in great condition. But are you using the teeth floss that I recommended to you?’’
Forget the cute posts about Leadership Qualities. Here are 5 Brave Steps instead
I am literally sick and tired of seeing all these posts, articles, and videos describing the traits of good leaders, how good leaders should act, and so on. No matter if these are in the form of images, infographics, or posts.
And with this amount of content, I started really to believe that we are lying to ourselves because all this content will not really solve the leadership problems that we have inside our companies.
How to Say ”No” in a Simple way?
The ability to say ‘’No’’ is one of the most important abilities in our lives.
Saying no to others-when needed-allows us to:
Manage our daily schedules as planned.
Focus on our most important goals or tasks.
Maintain the balance between our different priorities.
A Lesson in How People & Companies Succeed Together
A few weeks ago, I attended an entrepreneurship event where the main speaker was Founder and investor Claude Ritter, the co-Founder of Lieferheld, Book A Tiger, and Cavalry ventures.
Claude gave a fantastic speech. He spoke about his journey and how he built several successful companies. He gave a lot of helping tips to aspiring entrepreneurs such as..
The first step to building REAL relationships with others
Ever watched a movie or a series and found yourself feeling empathy towards the villain or the bad character in this movie, to the extent that you became a big fan of his or her actions and behavior?
Several weeks ago, I was watching a series
How Do You Cook Your Fish?
If Julia asked herself one time through the past 20 years ‘’why am I doing what I am doing?’’, she could have easily figured out that she is wasting time, effort, and resources on an unnecessary cooking step.
As a leader, how to avoid the pain of your overloaded Calendar?
Are you as a leader -no matter if you are a Manager of a team or a Project Manager- complaining about lack of time and that your calendar is always loaded with meetings which are usually going over time? Do you want a solution?
The answer is simple and in one word