NLP Podcast Extract : David Sales on Leadership

David is an energetic practitioner, coach and speaker on effective leadership. His approach is based firmly in his experiences of leading teams through challenging situations. He honed his skills and values in the changing world of UK telecommunications, as the industry moved from a monopoly environment to the competitive battleground of today.

"It's a very personal thing I think, and different people like to use different words, but for me really the essence of it is really around three things, in terms of the person. I think it's all about bravery, I think it's about excitement, and I think it's about determination - all focused around creating change in an organisation, and obviously that change can vary greatly depending on what's needed and what's appropriate."

"But for me the change has to have meaning, to the organisation and to the world, and it has to be sustainable - so leadership is about the kind of energies and skills that you bring to create change."

"I think the one that would be most useful, because it was certain one of my most impactful, informative experience is when I was the CEO of BT conferencing. Which was a stand-alone business, a global business running all of the telecoms scene with video-conferencing technology that BT provided to its costumers."

"There were several, and my role their changed over time for five or six years - so when I first joined, the big issue, that hit me in the face straight away was the organisation, that had grown fairly rapidly, but had grown in a process way so that customers had been forgotten."

"The purpose of the business was to run an efficient process and give the customers a satisfying experience."

"So the first issue was to remind people that customers were top of the pile - that if they were going to have a successful business, that is where the focus would be, not internally."

"And during the time, as we began to expand on that business ethic, we had to change the business from one that was really trying to serving equipment, like business conferencing terminals, to a service business when we were really running telecoms, audio-conferencing, and video-conferencing services. So that was a big system change, a big change internally. "

"In parallel with all of that, we were expanding globally - originally it was an English business, and by the time I left we were operating in twelve countries and the US, currently the biggest market, was coming up the rails as it were to chase the UK in terms of sales. "

"The key aspects of leadership for me there were, number one, that we were doing in a good direction, for everybody in the company - and there are different aspects of that - but overall you must have the handle of where you're aiming to take the organisation, in both the short term and the long term in explaining that to people and you must be consistent, every day of every week of every month. "

"Now over a year or so, of course the market changes, and things might change, but it's your responsibility to maintain the direction of the business."

"The next thing is to champion customers as I've mentioned before, in any reasonably sized organisation, the work that we're doing now would suggest that an organisation of less than twenty people is very good at focusing on customers, but when you start getting bigger than that, the company and the internal processes - sometimes people forget that the customers are the reason that we exist."

"So being the customers champion in an organisation of seven hundred people was important for a leader today. There are a couple of internal things, I think, for a leader to do. One of those is to remember that its your role to help people through the changes that you're instigating - and that at the end of the day change does not stick in an organisation unless the people are behind it, with it, and happy about it."

"And that's much more difficult than just announcing a reorganisation, you need to understand the psychology of the people within the organisation as well as how to make them feel comfortable with the ongoing changes."

"And then finally, and this is specific to the fact that we were an organisation within a bigger organisation - was to provide air cover. So the politics, and the pressures that exist within a bigger company, that constantly try and distract a small organisation from it's task - if a leader can deflect those, with an efficient use of the time, and not seven hundred people trying to deflect them."

" There are lots of resources, but the more that I thought about it at the time - and I have to say, the more that I look back at it - only one resource really matters, and that's the people."


Read or listen to the full David Sales transcript and podcast on Leadership.



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Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Peta Stapleton on Health

Dr Peta Stapleton has 14 years experience as a registered Psychologist in the State of Queensland, Australia and has completed a Bachelor of Arts, Postgraduate Diploma of Professional Psychology and Doctor of Philosophy. She divides her time between lecturing for the School of Health, Griffith University, coordinating psychological research trials into new therapies, and private practice, specialising in addictions and eating disorders.

(Photo Dr Peta Stapleton and Terri Sheldon)

"I guess my official title is Dr Peta Stapleton, I'm a registered and qualified psychologist here in Australia, and have been for about fifteen years. My official job is as one of the lecturers in medicine at Griffith University which is one of the universities here in Queensland."

"My specialty areas I guess, as far as health goes, is that for fifteen years I've worked in the areas of eating disorders, addiction, obesity - and in line with being a psychologist, I'm a certified practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Time-line Therapy and EFT, or the Emotional Freedom Technique."

"And I'm also a member of The Health College of the Australian Psychological Society, which I guess sums up that most of my work clinically is in the health area."

"I guess for me, because I'm in the area of particularly physical health, with eating issues and obesity, health for me is all encompassing - it's not just about health as in physical health, so how you eat, you eating habits, your physical exercise. "

"But to me it's also your connection with your mind, so it's very much about how healthy things are in between your ears - how your looking after yourself in many ways. Listening to your own body and your own needs is very high up on my list of importance - and my understanding and definition of what health is. "

"So it might be that it's not only resting when you need to rest eating what your body wants to eat, drinking good water. but for me health extends into lifestyle things like finding happiness in life, or in your job or your career - it might be meditation or relaxation, it might be spending time with your family or any daily activity that suits you."

"So health for me goes well beyond what we might do physically, with our bodies and what we feed ourselves, but also stretching into that area of emotionally how sound we are as well."
"For me it would encompass some of those ideas that you'd have somebody that listens to their own body physically. So they would obviously look after their nutritional needs, drink good water and make sure that those needs are being met."

"But also finding some physical activity that suits them - it might not be that they join a gym to get their activity everyday, but it might be that they're into yoga, or love walking down the beach with kids in the pram, that kind of thing."

Read or listen to the full Dr Peta Stapleton transcript

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Liam Beale
Business Development Manager
PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training