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Articles

Graham Jones has researched and written articles that have been published in magazines and journals in the UK and America. These articles are featured below and have been listed by subject matter.


What do Glasgow and business leaders have in common?

As the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow grows looms large, Dr Graham Jones of Top Performance Consulting reflects on the achievements of the world’s best sport performers and their coaches and the lessons that business leaders can draw from them. Read more…


Bookshelf: Top Performance Leadership

The research for Graham Jones’ latest book, Top Performance Leadership, asked UK employees about their leaders’ ability to take advantage of economic growth. Read more…


Why you need to avoid creating accidental leaders

In a recent survey conducted by Top Performance Consulting Ltd, more than a third of 520 employees in UK organisations across a wide range of industries described their boss as a poor leader. What lies behind this sorry statistic? Read more…


Fast Track to Becoming a Top Performance Leader

Graham Jones, author of Top Performance Leadership, reveals his top tips on how to be a good leader
In a recent survey conducted by Top Performance Consulting Ltd, more than a third of 520 employees in UK organisations across a wide range of industries described their boss as a poor leader. Even more disconcerting is that nearly half of the respondents believed that they could do their leaders’ jobs better than them. As I explain in my book, Top Performance Leadership, this is largely because too many organisations get it wrong by promoting people into leadership positions simply because they are good at what they do day to day (accountants, scientists, engineers etc) rather than being good leaders. Read more…


Mental Toughness

How Are You Under Pressure?
My first realization about mental toughness was that I did not possess much of it. As an 18-year-old playing an age-group sport for my country, I was hugely frustrated that I never seemed able to consistently deliver what I knew I was capable of when it mattered most. And on those rare occasions when I actually did, I was never quite sure how and why, which meant that replicating it next time was pretty much hit or miss. Read more…

Staying Resilient: Tips for Sustaining High-Level Performance Under Pressure
The economic climate has rocked the legal sector. In recent months, law firms from small local practices to urban megafirms have seen tightened budgets, reduced deal activity, billing and compensation rates frozen to 2008 levels, equity partners injecting more finance into the firms, layoffs from partner level to support staff, and delays in implementing new hires. This is pressure indeed for lawyers at all stages of their careers. Read more…


Real Leadership

Leaders Playing It Safe? Get Real!
Real Leadership is the key to ensuring the future heath of organisations, says Graham Jones. Read more…

Choices and Acts: Strive to be a Real Leader
FOR SENIOR LEADERS, recent years have brought an intriguing quandary: keep your head down, stay out of the firing line, and play it safe; or, contribute to the health of the organization by stepping up to be real leaders. Read more…

Real Leadership: The Meaning Behind Motivation
Motivation isn’t just a day-to-day drive to achieve goals; it is more complex than that. Leaders must understand its multifaceted nature to achieve success in a healthy way. Read more…

The Safe Versus Real Leader
We hear a lot about “the new normal” as the world is (hopefully!) climbing out of the global economic debacle, but what does “new normal” actually mean? Read more…

Real Leaders Thrive When the Chips Are Down
The role of the leader involves several principal tasks: creating a compelling vision, coming up with a strategy to achieve that vision, and communicating the vision and strategy to the organization’s people. All of this puts the leader in a highly visible position, in which expectations can create enormous pressure. In tough economic times such as the world is experiencing now, this pressure is intensified. Leaders’ success in such environments depends largely on the path they choose: to be or safe leaders real leaders. Read more…


High Performance Environments

Environments Role In Creating High Performance
To achieve sustainable high performance, it’s not enough to bring in the right talent. CLOs must take a holistic look at the workplace environment to create results that last. Read more…


Coaching

Coaching High Achievers
The last decade or so has witnessed a growing literature on the psychology of excellence with the focus being mainly on performance excellence in business and sports domains. Read more…


Sport Business Link

Here’s What Executives Can Learn From Great Athletes
They have what both they and you need to make it at the top. The majority of business leaders I have worked with have a ravenous fascination with and curiosity about top-level sports. I have no doubt that most of them have secretly dreamed of being star athletes themselves. Read more…

Performance Excellence: A Personal Perspective on the Link Between Sport and Business
This article provides a personal perspective on the link between excellence in sport and business. It traces the author’s transition from sport psychologist to business consultant before identifying specific areas in which direct links can be drawn between the two domains. Read more…


Miscellaneous

The Future Face of Hedge Funds
The Next Best Hope. Forged in the fire of financial crisis, a new generation of managers is embracing many of the original values that once made the hedge fund industry great. Read more…