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Somewhat difficult people are often the most interesting to deal with. Usually clever, assertive – sometimes to the point of being combative – and very caring even if the care is more about themselves than other people. They are usually eccentric with a strong personality. Their apparent confidence may cover deep insecurity. What can seem like brashness is more often than not a form of shyness – itself an arrogance of sorts.

Every now and then I get Mentees like this. One I recall very well from USA. Smart chap, he had made three fortunes and lost them. He had had two wives, one of which he had lost through being immature while the second was hanging on by a spider’s thread. He had lost his way in his personal and business relationships. His employees distrusted him because they could never tell if he was going to be derailed by their efforts or rather too attentive for comfort.

His view of how to deal with looming failure – both domestic and business – was to search for complex analyses of his personality, to read pompous books on business management and to attend advanced courses in interpersonal skills. He needed none of that.

We helped him to see the three vital decisions he had to make.

First, to be disciplined enough to write a simple one page, three year plan saying what he expected to achieve for the business. A plan is not a large book of tables of figures. It is a statement of objective with basic measures to see if you are on the road to reaching them. In a business, a plan is about what you expect to make and by when. It should also cover when you expect to exit the business. Plans are not rules but objectives. Even backpackers need them.

Second, he had to devise a new approach to his relationship with his wife. Polite behaviour instead of the casual taking-for-granted plus a practical, simple set of rules for conducting the marriage headed the list. After a few years marriages usually need updated terms and conditions if they are going to work. The fundamentals may remain the same but flexibility and adaptability can make even difficult relationships work well – provided both parties know and subscribe to the new rules.

Third, some simple but rigorous practice in how to ask questions that matter and show concern for his colleagues. If his focus remained exclusively on himself and his problems, the high turnover of senior staff that he had experienced would get worse, not better. Role plays and practice usually achieve what is needed fairly quickly, especially if the Mentor or Trainer involved is observant and sympathetic.

Notice that the word common to these three remedies is ‘simple’. If a Mentee like this gets entangled in complex company planning systems, nit-picking discussions with his wife or elaborate HR programmes of man management he will fail. He has a business to run and a life to lead. He needs to devote most of this time to doing those things.

The remedies are easy to understand. To be effective they must be easy to apply.

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We used to call it carrot and stick; now we call it delegating and micro-managing. Whatever the name we run the risk of presenting two extremes neither of which is real. In fact, a Manager who sees his job as ‘managing’ is not a good Manager. The title is wrong and needs changing.

A good Manager sees himself as a Mentor – and his purpose as that of developing people who report to him. If he can make himself redundant, he has succeeded. The criteria for being a top Manager are therefore the same as those for being a top Mentor.

Determination is what we all need to succeed, whatever our criteria of success. The route to determination is via encouragement and enthusiasm. Think of how you help a child to become determined. You encourage and encourage and encourage. The reason some young people are lethargic, lazy, de-motivated and afraid to explore is often because their Mentors have failed to encourage them.

Why is encouragement so important?

Anyone who is encouraged in any endeavour becomes more enthusiastic about it. Enthusiasm is the mother of determination. The enthused child perseveres turning their enthusiasm into determination. So encouragement becomes enthusiasm becomes determination. It is a logical progression.

Look at the obverse of this. Someone who is perpetually criticised becomes discouraged. Discouragement kills enthusiasm and without enthusiasm determination has no chance to flower.

In building a winery in the Barossa Valley in the mid 1970s we were the victims of a tornado just at a critical time. There has never been a tornado before or since. We were insured but the discouragement of losing so many good silos was considerable. Some even thought it a sign from ‘above’, wherever that was.

I got my managers together and said it was a challenge that meant that the finished winery would be stronger, more productive and more successful than that originally designed. I treated the situation as though we were climbing a mountain together in a blizzard. Then I let them get on with it. The enthusiasm this encouragement stirred up caused us to build to the original timetable and to an even higher specification.

The good Mentor Manager does more than encourage. S/he positively promotes risk and uses the inevitable failure that will follow as the basis of good lessons not just for the individuals who made the mistake but for their peers, too.

The good leader leads, then delegates – in that order.

Failure is the salt that

gives success its flavour

Penn Olson recently wrote about Mentors who took equity in start-up companies and did little – and eventually nothing – to earn their rewards. They are right to sound a warning note.

First, Mentors are not certified, there being no Mentoring Certification Programme available at present. I am not keen that there should be because mentoring is a flexible business and we do not want to see it rigidified and turned into a series of checklists and scores. That could destroy the essence of mentoring. It does mean, however, that Mentees should examine the record of a potential Mentor they are thinking of asking for help. Good business experience, well-written and easily understood articles and a history of many satisfied Mentees are comforting signs.

Second, no Mentor should EVER take equity or options for his mentoring efforts. It provides him with a conflict of interests. When the company is in trouble he will be motivated to look for the simplest and financially most advantageous way out instead of encouraging the always-required perseverance. All start-ups go through a rocky period just before they flourish. Good Mentors charge money but they also do about 25% of their work pro bono and this is likely to be in the area of start-ups and career advice for the very young.

Third, all good Mentors offer a preliminary meeting at no cost and make suggestions based on that meeting. In the case of Terrific Mentors International, we move forward from this meeting cautiously and one step at a time. We never put Mentees on fixed contracts. When they want to stop, we encourage it. Our objective is to help Mentees to stand on their own feet. When they do so it is a win-win for both of us.

Good mentoring is invaluable. It requires trust and there is no room for rogues or charlatans in the profession.

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The trouble is that every day that goes by, every percentage point that government borrowing costs increase, every Prime Minister who falls in the Euro Zone Tumble, makes recovery harder, not easier. Politics is the art of the possible. What is possible when promises of improving welfare, cast iron currency stability, relentlessly continuous growth turn out to be empty? If the consequences of the failed promises are serious enough, people protest. Initially, quietly, in tents at cathedrals or on traffic-easy weekends, but that does not last.

Listening to Tony Blair – yes, you remember him – fumbling on about the Euro crisis I am reminded of the man who said that everything that was not easy tended to be difficult. Ex-politicians are usually full of advice for their successors. Not any more. The men who dug the hole do not know how to climb out of it. What is going to happen and what should we do about it?

Let me start by saying that nobody knows the answer. And that means nobody. The person who gets into deep debt can go on borrowing to pay the interest for a time. It is a kind of inverted Ponzi scheme. Like all Ponzi schemes, it comes to an end. What causes the end?

When enough people recognize a Ponzi scheme it collapses. What is happening now in Europe, America and other parts of the world is that fund managers have lost trust in the burgeoning debt and will not lend more money to bail it out. That is why Italy’s borrowing rates have topped 7% – a figure that is regarded as totally unsustainable even in the short term.

So financial punters have recognised the fraud that is being perpetrated on them, governments know the game is up and they must begin to put their houses in order and the average person does not want austerity to achieve an orderly house and will strike if necessary to resist it. At last we have grounds for thinking that politicians do not always have it so easy after all.

Strong men like Monti will appear and flex their muscles to prove that order can be restored. We have yet to see whether any of them will be the Full Monti. If they do flex their muscles, expect recession. If they don’t, also expect recession. In both cases expect inflation. Your money?  Into safe havens even if they don’t pay dividends.

You have a better idea? Please tell me.

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Now the Italian Prime Minister has resigned we can turn our attention to the difference between charisma and buffoonery – something he so noisily demonstrated. The dividing line between the two is normally a fine one. Those who exceed it as energetically as did Mr Berlusconi are warnings for us all.

We all like and respond to charismatic people. They hold our attention, have an aura of confidence and make their points lightly but effectively. In helping people to reach senior management roles we concentrate on their stature, that elusive quality so easily recognised when we see it, so sadly missed when we don’t. Stature and charisma are different – but very good neighbours.

What gives people charisma? Eccentricity, provided it is not overdone, confidence – yes, it both imparts and reflects charisma – perhaps above all sure-footedness in tricky places. Goats may not instinctively spring to mind as charismatic but when you see mountain goats leaping confidently from one danger point to another they certainly are.

Good actors are usually charismatic even when playing unsavory or dull parts. Their charisma comes from a combination of wanting to show off – they wouldn’t be on the stage if they didn’t – and a vigorous training. There is some of each in all charismatic people.

Here are four key points to help you to be more charismatic.

Be identifiable, preferably colourfully but not so loudly that the colour distracts from the substance of who you are and what you have to say. We talk about ‘signature dishes’ of good chefs. You should have a signature identifier – something that makes you instantly recognisable. Mine is a bow tie.

Deliver short and simple messages. Brilliant minds need space to record their weighty thoughts; the average person doesn’t. Some will tell you that ‘not everything can be simplified’ and it is true. But more can be comprehensible than specialists like you to think. As famous scientist Sir Peter Medawar said: “People who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief”.

Smile, laugh, make light of heavy subjects. The world takes itself too seriously; it would be happier for a laugh every now and then. And if your sense of humour is underdeveloped, work on it because it can be helped to grow fairly easily. People seldom remember what you tell them; they never forget how they felt when you told it to them.

Keep integrity of purpose about your charisma. It is not for your glorification, it is to help the people you need to communicate with understand what you are saying and why you are saying it. If you aspire to lead your charisma will give you the head start you need to attract followers.

Don’t overdo it. You do not want the Queen saying, as she did of Silvio Berlusconi at a heads of government meeting, “Does he have to be so noisy?”

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On a visit to the du Pont company’s research laboratories in Wilmington, Delaware I met a man whose sole job in life was to measure the length of a piece of string. Yes, really. Of course, it was more complicated than that. He was measuring the expansion range of different fibres under different pressures, something of vital importance to the company. The laboratory in which he did this daunting task was very high-tech and we had to change our clothes to visit it.

I got a chance to talk to him afterwards over a cup of coffee. We dropped the charismatic discussion of string and talked about many aspects of life, business, ethics and how he reconciled his extreme specialisation with the needs and expectations of the wider world. He was something of a philosopher and I pondered why. It was obvious, of course. He needed to relate his efforts to the American Dream, then still very much alive and aspired to.

The world is inevitably becoming increasingly specialized. Unfortunately, in the process we seem to be losing the ability to understand and think about the fundamental reasons for our existence, about what makes a successful and fulfilled life and how we should develop society in a way we can call civilised.

Here are some of the reasons for this.

Greed Pressure is affecting us all, not just the greedy. How we have let ourselves get pushed into a corner as Greed Slaves I am not sure. Probably we had so many things changing in our lives that we did not notice the move away from lifestyle to workhorse. Beauty imperceptibly gave way to noise, justice subtly to corruption and family painfully to overtime.

Noses always to the grindstone do not see visions. Instead of painting a future we have assumed that leaders are there to map out the big scenario while we skirt round the law as best we can and meet our KPI’s. Many have lodged their philosophy in religious beliefs, content that it is then dealt with. It isn’t.

Trust has been broken in so many ways that we assume everyone is untrustworthy – ‘better safe than sorry’. Fair is a word we seldom hear any more because it is assumed to be unattainable. The sum of these pressures causes us to largely ignore the fundamentals and in the process we fail to relate our work to the purpose of life. This is how today’s major world problems have come about.

I was astonished to see a headline in a newspaper the other day reporting that an Education Ministry had said it would allow teachers – even science teachers, goodness! – to teach moral values integral with their subjects. You mean they were not meant to previously?

I’d encourage every student to make part of their studies philosophy and require every thesis to include a thoughtful piece on one of the world’s big issues.

It would not improve the specialisations but it might spruce up the fundamentals.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently

that which should not be done at all

Peter Drucker (1909-2005)

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We measure the most valuable of our assets – time – by how well it is spent. Quite right. Such a valuable commodity must not be squandered. Good time management is a key mark of a professional. We complain about time-wasting meetings (and so many of them are), about the dreadful and inexcusable waste of time caused by unpunctuality, of how ‘ritual’ interferes with our precious time. I even had a boss who regarded lunch as time-wasting. Poor chap.

So how can time be well wasted?

If all our meetings are agenda driven we will have a very neat, minuted record of who said what and what we are immediately going to do. And absolutely no idea of why, or whether we could do it better – or, indeed, should do it at all. We will suffer from a disease I have dubbed ‘fileofix’. It is the concept that everything can be solved if it is filed in the right place. Alas, it is a myth.

Creating two businesses at different times – and now a third, mentoring – I have learnt that the most valuable use of time is when it is unstructured, casual, informal, unminuted and not necessarily even with an agreed objective.

When building Cerebos Pacific I used to spend some days with my office inaccessible so that I was forced to sit in other people’s offices, chatting to them about the business, about their own aspirations and lives and learning the most important thing a boss needs to know – what makes my colleagues tick?

Who is in control of these sessions? The other person, of course. That is why they work. I may have things I want to impart, guidance I need to give but they pale into insignificance alongside the question I want answered – “what’s eating you?” Every time I waste time I learn so much.

How do you waste time efficiently? There is an art to it.

First, don’t announce it. Let it happen. The minute it is planned it is formal; as soon as it is formal it is, well, minuted. It is then pointless except as a means of passing information which is, in any case, more efficiently done by email.

Second, ask questions. Not penetrating, statistics-based questions requiring the other person to lie or admit he doesn’t know. This is not a ‘yes-no’ quiz. Ask about what he thinks is driving customers, what his view of the future supply situation will be, how the antics of European Prime Ministers is going to affect his business, how the wife and kids are doing.

Third, listen to the answers and probe to find out what they mean for your colleague. I have seen men ruined by their bosses ignoring their family and personal needs, and all for the want of a ten minute chat. And if your colleague cries, don’t blush, cry with him. His tears are as important to your business as all the statistics he may produce. Yours will reassure him that you understand that.

Time well wasted is time well spent indeed.

When small men begin to cast big shadows,

it means that the sun is about to set

Lin Yutang, writer and translator (1895-1976)

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The word presentation is used in different ways. It denotes a gift to mark achievement, an offering as part of a rite of passage, an educational lecture to generate ideas and infuse information, a sales pitch with the purpose of extracting money. In practice we are all giving presentations much of the time.

We generally do it rather badly. Why? Because we prepare inadequately, think too little about the audience, use old material to save effort and try to cram too much into the time available. What I suggest here is mostly relevant to educational and marketing presentations; the principles of it apply to all sorts.

A presentation does not revolve around its subject but around its audience. More important to know about them than to know what you are to talk about. Many years ago my wife, Eliza, gave a series of lectures on the QEII – the ship, not the financial bail-out. She was asked to talk about management. Her audience was mostly made up of octogenarians and her talks would have been more appropriate if they had discussed sex after eighty.

What the audience wants to know is more important than what the presenter wants to say. Of course, if you are giving potentially life-saving instructions discussions about frivolous matters would not serve. The audience’s interest in the subject and ability to comprehend it are still paramount, however.

In a forty minute presentation you can make five points, no more. Try to make the twenty-five you deem essential and you will make none. Afraid of being criticized for missing some points? Accept the criticism and offer a day’s seminar on the subject at a respectable charge.

You may wish to use visual aids – PowerPoint slides, film clips, artwork boards, exhibits. By all means, but keep them short and making only one point each. A PowerPoint slide that has more than twenty-five words on it is useless but a little clip-art picture will help to convey the message. Your slides are prompts for your audience, not for you.

Keep it informal and light. Never read a script. Reading is more difficult than talking, so a talk with minimum notes to remind yourself of the five points you are making is better than a read lecture. You will miss a point or two here and there; no matter, your audience will pay attention to the ones you do make. If you are going to tell jokes make sure you can tell them well, that they are appropriate and that they are never salacious. A bad joke is a rotten egg.

Above all, ask your audience questions, do not preach at them. Get them thinking and they will admire you as a great thinker. Do their thinking for them and they will disagree with you. A good presentation is a show.

May you be Barnum and Bailey rolled into one.

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Most people think they communicate well; very few do. Why? In his contribution to The Daily Paradox (http://www.terrificmentors.com/2011/09/school-report-2-by-john-richardson/), Prof John Richardson made a simple but vital point. We communicate most of the time today by keyboard and yet we do not teach keyboard skills. So obvious that we seem to have overlooked it. That is often the case with the obvious. So it is with other forms of communication.

In our PASDAQ Review (Personality, Ability, Skills, Dreams, Ambitions, Qualifications) we ask over 100 questions. One is this; If you were with someone who was dying what would you say to them? We get all sorts of answers to this question but seldom the right one. Can you figure out what it is?

The clue is that while most people devote part of their lives to attention giving each of us is attention seeking most of the time. There is nothing wrong with this. As a baby we want attention to get us onto our feet. As a teenager we seek approval for our gauche and destructive behaviour. In our early loves and marriage we need the affection and attention to reassure us that we are a whole, complete and satisfactory person.

Perhaps the hardest time to get adequate attention is middle age when we are weighed down with responsibilities and our lives may seem not to have been as successful as we had hoped. Even into old age we seek attention to smooth the path we recognize but do not fully understand. Old age can be a great time – if we get the right sort of attention.

All our communication training is based on attention. “To get attention, give attention” is our guiding principle for successful communication. How do we achieve that? Developing interpersonal skills is easy when you are trained to recognize the other person – their understanding, their mood, their interests, their ability to comprehend, their needs and how good their hearing is. Realising how few of the words we speak ever reach the other person’s brain will make us enunciate more clearly and confirm that we are being understood.

Mentees going for job interviews are often under the misapprehension that the interview is about them. There will, of course, be questions for them to answer but the interview is essentially about the interviewer, as a person first and as a representative of his or her organisation second. Any interview conducted without this recognition is doomed to failure.

A day’s concentrated training can transform anyone’s communication ability. It is probably the most valuable lesson you can learn.

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Where is the new moral code to come from? Not from the cathedrals that shut their doors the minute there is a hint of protest about capitalism. Not from the monasteries that preach isolation as the only means of salvation. Good example is still the best teacher but is often drowned out by noisier commerce.

China is searching for it in the wake of its economic revolution, according to David Pilling (Financial Times Asia Editor). The churches in many parts of Asia are packed with people wanting to express their spirituality, at least on the day of the week they regard as holy. Old religions retain rituals that some people find important but have largely failed to provide guidance suitable for a digital age.

Most of the major issues of the day – wealth distribution, population control, justice not just law, planet maintenance and refurbishing, balanced education and life, ageing societies, gainful employment for gainful rewards, how society can cope with globilisation – are left unaddressed by the established institutions and religions. Many individuals in each them make valiant efforts to help with social work but in the process often forget their personal pastoral roles.

Back to basics? It has been tried many times but the basics are often in a form that is outdated and generalized to the point of meaninglessness. Compulsion? We already have it; it is called taxes. For the very rich they are easy to avoid in an international world where there is no consensus about who should pay what.

There is no quick fix to the world’s problems. At present there is little effort to define the ways in which they could be practically fixed. The almost total lack of a plan for the future for any part of society is leading us into an abyss from which it will, at some point, be impossible to recoil.

It is time for every institution to produce a twenty-five year plan for its section of society. This must be more than brave words and aspirations. It must be a moral guide for the institutions’ members with specific achievements by identified dates.

This plan will be scrutinized and discussed and, when agreed, endorsed by the rest of society. Any institution failing to produce one within one year, or failing to get it agreed within two, should lose its charitable status. Future legislation concerning its section of society will take into account the plans thus produced.

On 5^th march 1955 Churchill said something that is as applicable today as it was then:

“The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow-men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.”

If we don’t start, it will never happen.