Tag: leadership

  • How does an ant kill a buffalo? Leadership lessons on the future of work

    How does an ant kill a buffalo? Leadership lessons on the future of work


    Forward-thinking leaders and managers are looking for ways to prepare themselves and their organisations for the future of work. One of the biggest challenges I see for them is how to address a change that is generated by a chain reaction of interacting factors.

    In case you’re wondering about the ant and the buffalo, here’s what’s happening:

    1. An invasion of big-headed ants drives out acacia ants from their residence in whistling-thorn trees.
    2. While they had been resident there, the acacia ants’ sharp jaws had deterred elephants from damaging the trees.
    3. Having lost the acacia ants’ protection, the trees are destroyed by the elephants.
    4. So the lions can no longer use them as a hiding place from which they can attack fast-moving zebras.
    5. Instead, the lions switch to hunting more of the slower-moving buffalo.

    So, what does this have to do with future changes in the ecosystem of work?

    We can look ahead and anticipate some big changes coming, such as increasing digitisation, the growth of AI or an increasingly diverse and global workforce.

    But it’s harder to spot the big changes that occur because trends coincide, or when disparate factors reinforce each other.

    Think about the Covid pandemic – while scientists had predicted a pandemic was due for many years, did anyone expect an end result of it might be struggling dry cleaners or city centre sandwich bars? These impacts were the result of chain reactions caused by the coincidence of the pandemic with:

    • Technological change. Innovations such as video conferencing and highspeed broadband meant there was an increased ability for office workers to work from home.
    • Social change. Over time, and partly due to the internet, people’s interconnections and relationships had become less dependent on attending the workplace.
    • Infrastructure change. For many people commuting had become ever more time-consuming and expensive.

    This fuelled an enduring desire to work at home, even once the pandemic was over. Since then we’ve seen lower footfall in town centres and people no longer needing to wear office clothing that requires regular dry cleaning.

    And these chain reactions aren’t just about levels of business – the increase in working from home and adoption of hybrid working also means that managers need to learn new approaches to communication, performance management and team dynamics.

    So, like the ant and the buffalo, one change within the work ecosystem can have far-reaching and unforeseen consequences. As Professor Todd Palmer states in the article about the ants: “it’s the interactions which are the glue that holds the entire system together.”

    For leaders looking ahead to the future of work, there is one key lesson.

    It’s impossible for leaders to imagine every feedback loop and plan for every possible chain reaction that might take place in the future world of work – but it is possible to build up capacity and capability.

    You could:

    • generate a learning culture so your team members are change-ready
    • develop your interpersonal skills so you can manage and support your people through the pressures and opportunities of change
    • build an empowered team who are forward-looking and able to take initiative.

    All leaders and managers can take a range of steps now so that if unexpected change occurs, you’re in a better place to adapt.

    Just like the lion.

    Image credit: Keyur Nandaniya on Unsplash

  • “Being a leader is not about you.” How leaders can achieve performance success

    “Being a leader is not about you.” How leaders can achieve performance success

    You’re a leader with a great organisational business strategy, operational plan and team objectives. So now the big question is – how do you get your team to perform and deliver success?

    One approach I encounter is focused on command and control. Some industries, companies, leaders and team members seem to favour a directive model of leadership. While a preference for instruction over facilitation may be appropriate in some circumstances, there is a risk it leads to a vicious cycle of micro-management and disempowered staff.

    But there is another way.

    “Being a leader is not about you. It’s about the people that are on your team and how you can help them to be successful.”

    Susan Vobejda

    Everything we know about performance shows that the greatest success is achieved by those people who are empowered and trusted, who are given both the tools and the autonomy.

    For me the key element in Susan Vobejda’s excellent advice is “how you can help” – the leader’s role is not to provide ‘one size fits all’ support. The challenge is to find out what each person needs to deliver the performance the leader needs.

    How can leaders do this? When I’m working with leaders and managers I recommend they develop individualised support for their team members by asking the following questions:

    1. What are your motivations and aspirations?

    Purpose prompts performance. Where leaders select or align tasks with people’s aspirations, this energises and encourages people to deliver.

    2. What do you need from me to meet your targets?

    The model of Servant Leadership emphasises the value in the leader helping employees to develop and deliver. By asking them what they want, the leader avoids top-down assumptions and empowers team members to identify their own support needs.

    3. What are your unique strengths and how can you use them best?

    Performance is enhanced by identifying strengths and generating opportunities to leverage them through alignment, selection or re-framing. A strengths focus means doing more of what you are best at and which energises you.

     

    Providing leaders listen and enable, they can achieve business success by helping their team members be successful.

     

    Photo credit: Fauxels on Pexels
  • It’s good to talk…

    It’s good to talk…

    “Meetings are the bane of everyone’s life. No-one likes meetings. Nothing ever gets done”

    This appears to be the mantra of many a corporate warrior, and it is always interesting to see how different companies and industries try to break this view. So I particularly enjoyed an article in The Guardian newspaper about team meetings and the weird and wonderful ideas that are being used to keep them relevant and on-track.

    While some of these ideas look like they could only really exist in Silicon Valley, there is a consistent message – how do you make your meetings productive, relevant, engaging and on-time? And while this question has been kicking around forever – probably since the first cave-people sat down to work out how they were going to kill a woolly mammoth – it is even more relevant in today’s world of remote teams, flexible work patterns, video and phone conferences.

    I do a lot of work helping teams with their performance, and in my career have sat through my fair share of meetings. I will share with you my simple formula for successful meetings – plan,clarify, facilitate, support.

    1. Plan

    Whether you’re leading the meeting or not, time spent planning pays dividends. What are you going to get out of the meeting? Are you going to share information, for ideas, for decisions, to build team spirit, or to observe your team’s performance? What do you need to make it run smoothly? Who needs to be there and what role will each participant play?

    2. Clarify

    Make sure you and everyone in the meeting knows the purpose:

    • Why are we here? What is the purpose of the meeting as a whole, and each of the items on the agenda? Make sure everyone knows what is going on – having clear goals gives you structure, keeps everyone on track, and stops people going off on cross-purposes.
    • Why am I here? So often people switch off because they don’t think what is being discussed is relevant to them, or they don’t see the bigger picture. Take time to ensure each item is presented so that everyone feels involved and buys into the conversation.

    3. Facilitate, don’t dictate

    It is a team meeting, not your meeting. If you take more of a back seat you can encourage:

    • Ownership and personal development by having your team members take ‘meeting management’ roles such as chairing the meeting, time keeping or taking minutes.
    • Accountability by having the focus of the meeting on team members reporting back on their performance, on the agenda items, on their issues.
    • Group accountability by encouraging all members to ask questions of each other. A team meeting is not a series of conversations between you and your team members.

    4. Support each other

    You might need first to do some team building or thinking about how to structure the meeting for this to work, especially if you have a really competitive team! Think about how you can build the meeting around getting support from:

    • You as the team leader
    • Each other
    • The organisation (e.g. training or feeding upwards on changes to policy / practice)

    Focusing on support in this way helps you keep the meeting focused on positive solutions, not complaints and negativity.

    The missing factors

    There’s also another really important point that I think some of the ideas and attitudes in the article are missing. They focus so much on ensuring the meeting is not wasting time, there is a risk that this is overplayed to the detriment of social interaction. Especially with dispersed teams or infrequent meetings, don’t neglect the social side.

    What could you do to help your team members get to know and trust each other?

    • Always be in the room 5 minutes early to have a quick chat
    • Occasionally add in a team building exercise: quick quiz, craft challenge, presentation from each member on a non-work topic.

    And it’s not just a loss of social interaction. If project team meetings adopt the extreme position of ‘leave if it is not relevant to you’ you miss out the chance for innovative thinking or learning from each other. Or your meeting could come up with a great idea which falls apart immediately another department looks at it.

    Help is at hand

    If you want to know more about developing teams, I’m leading a session hosted by the Chartered Management Institute in London, on 19th November. I’ll share the techniques, models and ideas that I’ve used to help managers build high-performing teams. You don’t have to be a CMI member to attend, just follow the link: Developing Successful Teams

    For an engaging and practical guide on team effectiveness and collaboration, I’d recommend starting with Patrick Lencioni’s Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team [Amazon UK affiliate link]

    If you want bespoke help on effective team meetings and building strong teams, then click here to see how you can work with me and the coaches and facilitators at Formium Development.

    FREE STUFF !

    Our Positive Team Meeting checklist has really helpful guidance that is easy-to-use and practical.

    If you’re interested in team building, then check out our 10 Actions to build a strong team – top tips for helping you use a strengths approach to build better teams.

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  • Avoiding the stuffed anteater: striving for authenticity

    Avoiding the stuffed anteater: striving for authenticity

    In recent times we’ve grown used to the idea of ‘fake news’ and doctored photos, and even been warned about technological advances enabling ‘fake video’ – but the story a while ago of a photographer accused of using a stuffed anteater in a competition entry was sadly amusing. It was followed up by a couple of articles about the cheats regularly used in wildlife photography… like the bizarre practice of putting ants in the freezer. And all this is in contrast to – and possibly the reason for – the demand for authenticity that is current in brands, politics and a host of leadership and management books (and a fair few blog posts, too).

    And this poses a dilemma for many people. We’re pretty good at looking at other people and weighing up how authentic they are. But how do you ensure that you’re being authentic, and not inadvertently being, to paraphrase Holden Caulfield, a phony? How do we remain authentic whilst operating within the parameters of corporate polices, or when the responsibilities of our role means we have to step away from our usual habits? I’m thinking about those disciplinary meetings, difficult conversations, and other situations where as a manager you might have to act in a certain way that doesn’t come naturally – ‘feeling the fear and doing it anyway’ as Susan Jeffers said.

    In short, as managers and leaders we don’t always act naturally, but we should always act authentically. One of the ways in which I help leaders to do this is through using your strength, not just those things you are good at, but which energise and fulfill you. This is the key difference between strengths and skills (your ability to do something well). If you are using your strengths you will be ‘going with the grain’ – by working with what comes naturally to you, you will be authentic.

    You might ask what does this mean in practice? If I have strengths of Perspective, Hope or Prudence, how is that going to get me through a team meeting, or performance review? In his recent interview with me for People and Purpose – the Positive Leadership Journal, Ryan Niemiec of the VIA institute described how you can look at each task you have to complete from the position of your top five signature strengths, and planning out how you could actively use your strengths as you complete your tasks. Here’s a very basic example of using Curiosity and Kindness strengths:

    The great thing about using strengths is for those situations where you are less confident, where you have to step outside of your comfort zone. Sit down and plan ahead – how can I use what I’m good at to help me in this situation. This means that you will be authentic even if you are having to ‘play a role’ of manager.

    The other thing you can do is work with the strengths of your team. If you’re getting them to align what they do with their strengths, then they will experience that sense of fulfillment for themselves. So not just increasing productivity, but reducing the likelihood that you’ll come in one day and find they’ve used a stuffed anteater…

     

    Here’s some further things you can do:

     

    Watch

    See Ryan Niemiec’s interview in People and Purpose – the Positive Leadership Journal for more about how you can harness strengths.

    There’s a video and we’ve also written up a summary to help you.

     

     

     

    Read

    For practical information and guidance about helping your team find and harness their strengths, we’d recommend the Strength-Focused Guide to Leadership by Mike Roarty and Kathy Toogood.

    You can read the summary of the key ideas on our website to see if you’d like it.

     

     

    Investigate

    If you want help in finding your strengths, there are a number of different tools available, which use a series of questions to identify your relative strengths.

    To simplify thing, we’ve summarised five of these tools: Investigate strengths models

     

     

     

     

    If you’d like more articles like this:

  • 5 of the best… Strengths Tools

    5 of the best… Strengths Tools

    If you want to find out your strengths, your best bet is to use one of these five strength assessment tools. They differ greatly in the number/categories of strengths, what you get for your money, and options for follow-up work, such as bespoke development programmes. We think that each assessment has value and can appeal to a different audience, so spend some time on their websites to make sure you choose the right one for your needs.

    Information is accurate at time of press (summer 2018), but the models and the reports offered continue to be refined.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Finding your strengths is the first step to accessing the enhanced performance, motivation, engagement and commitment that comes when you are harnessing your strengths in your work and life. At Formium Development we can help you with all aspects of finding and harnessing your strengths, through training, coaching and assistance. If you’d like our help, please get in touch.

     

     

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  • Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach

    Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach

    Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach

    Do you want to help your team members improve their performance? Do your one-to-one meetings often end up with you giving all the answers and telling them what to do? Do you want your team to be more self-sufficient and empowered?

    If the answer to any of the above is yes, then I suggest you learn how to coach. Increasingly seen as an essential management tool, coaching supports people to give their very best regardless of their current performance level. Coaching is focussed on helping them find solutions themselves, rather than the manager providing direction or advice. As a coach, and a trainer of coaches, I’m going to share with you some of my key ideas on why all managers and leaders should be coaching.

     coacHing_cmi1. Coaching myths

    We’ll cover aspects of how to coach later, but first, let’s look at some of the reasons why managers don’t coach, and debunk these myths.

    Myth 1: “It takes too long; it takes less time if I just tell them the answer or what to do.”

    You may worry that coaching is too time consuming, but it takes no more time overall than many other management practices. Crucially coaching builds capacity in your team to resolve their own issues – or to come to you with solutions, rather than questions. This saves you time in the medium to long run

    Myth 2: “I’m not a professional coach, surely an external person needs to do this work?”

    While there is real value in independent coaching, anyone can add a coaching approach to their management toolkit. I’ve trained hundreds in coaching skills, and you’d be surprised how quickly people can take it on board. David Rock defines coaching as ‘the art and science of facilitating positive change’ – and if you think about it, that’s what good managers are all about. The aim of coaching, and the skills you need, are aligned with being a positive and supportive manager: meeting people where they are, then helping them build on their skills, strengths and experiences, addressing shortcomings, finding solutions and identifying strategies to meet agreed targets.

    Myth 3: “I’m the manager, I have the right answers, I should always share them.”

    You should if there is only one right answer. But allowing your colleagues to maintain ownership, think issues through and work out their own solutions helps to get the best from your people. If you focus on goals and outcomes, your team can be more creative. Sir John Whitmore argues that coaching encourages acceptance of responsibility, which results in a commitment, in turn optimising employees’ performance.

    A coaching approach helps establish boundaries around their responsibility for delivering outcomes and resolving issues. Your role is to work with people not for them – helping them work towards solutions rather than micro-managing. It helps when people own their goals.

    Telling people the right answers isn’t always effective. Think about training sessions: a significant U.S. study found that the application of learning following a training course was around 22%. The majority simply didn’t put anything into practice. But when training was combined with coaching or some sort of a follow-up, it really helped people put their learning into practise. Suddenly, application went up to 90% – so with an approach of coaching rather than telling you could generate a much better return on your time investment.

    2. When to use a coaching approach

    PWC’s Global Coaching Study for the International Coach Federation found that coaching creates improvements in areas such as self-confidence, relationships, communication skills, work-life balance, work performance, business management and team effectiveness.

    So, is there any occasion when you would not want your team to have those benefits? I’d encourage you to make coaching part of your daily management skills – but especially when there are high stakes pieces of work, big projects, or issues where you’re carrying an awful lot of responsibility.

    Coaching can be delivered just in time; you can talk about a project just as it arises. Coaching is targeted, it can be specific to your organisation and the type of work or individual that you are talking to. It can build on their experience, knowledge, and skills while addressing their specific challenges.

    By adding a coaching approach to your practice you can look forward to reaping its many personal and organisational benefits.

    3. What a coaching approach looks like

    Now we’re going to consider how you would start coaching. You can coach anytime, anywhere. Your coaching conversations don’t need to be formal or take more than a few minutes. It is however distinguished from other management activity by two key points:

    • it is solution-focussed
    • it leaves ownership and accountability with the staff member or coachee.

    To achieve this, coaching involves asking insightful questions and providing reflection without giving advice or direction.

    3.1 Start with the outcome

    Start conversations with ‘what do we want to achieve?’, ‘what do you need?’. Encourage your staff member to articulate where they are aspiring to be or what an ideal outcome would look like.

    Then you look at the current situation: ‘This is our goal, and this is where we are at the moment. Let’s talk about how we bridge that gap.’

    Next, encourage the coachee to come up with potential solutions or options. Rather than providing advice, ask questions to help them work issues out for themselves: ‘What options do you have?’ ‘What do we need to do to make this project a success?’ ‘How are you going to marshal your skills, experience, and resources to achieve it?’ and the magic coaching question: ‘What else?’ Aim for as many options as they can gather – I often find that the really innovative solutions only emerge once I’ve exhausted all the obvious ideas.

    Ensure that there is a specific set of outcomes or actions from the coaching conversation. The coachee needs to choose and commit to their own next step to draw real benefit from this approach.

    This basic process I’ve described has been worked up into a number of coaching models. There’s not much difference between them beyond which acronym you prefer.

    3.2 It is not about you – ownership and accountability belong with the coachee

    In coaching the question is always, ‘what are you going to do’, and then ‘what support might you need to succeed’? Accountability and ownership rests with the coachee or individual whose job or project you are discussing.

    Your role is to facilitate their thinking, not to solve the team member’s issues, or do their job for them. Understanding this distinction is remarkably freeing and allows for better quality conversations. It will be tough at first, but try hard not to be directive.

    Listen to the other person, rather than your thoughts about how you might respond. What is really important to them? What are their challenges? What opportunities are they seeing? What next steps do they want to take?

    When encouraged to come up with our own solutions, we maintain ownership and accountability, and feel much more motivated to follow through than when we are told what to do.

    3.3 Provide support and challenge

    Provide support and help where it is needed. Ask your team member to articulate what they see as the main challenge in a particular project and how you can support them in overcoming it.

    Encourage them to identify the resources available to them; or similar situations or tasks where they have previously been successful.

    Praise people for difficulties they’ve chosen to tackle, for taking ownership and accountability or for doing a great job of resolving their own issues.

    Also provide constructive challenge. If you hear ‘We can never do that because…’ ask them, ‘Are you sure? Can you tell me what it would take for us to actually be able to do it? Could we do something differently to enable us to achieve this?’ Challenging is often a crucial part of coaching conversations.

    4. Coaching is a crucial management skill that you should have

    So you can see that coaching has wide-ranging benefits for your team and you – and is a great return on your time invested.

    There’s no reason why you can’t go ahead and put into practice the ideas I’ve shown you in your next one-to-one or team meeting. If you’re interested, and would like some support in how to coach effectively, then I’d suggest two options. You could learn by being coached yourself, or you could find some training on coaching skills.

    If you want to get the most from your people, if you want to help them develop, then coaching is a great skill to use – as after all, personal growth takes place at the intersection of ownership, accountability, support and challenge – and that is what a good coach provides.

     

    Eszter Molnar Mills is a highly experienced and qualified leadership coach, and has taught coaching skills to hundreds of managers. Eszter and her team at Formium Development provide training and support to managers so they can get the best out of themselves, their teams and their organisations.

    How we can help you

    Coaching: if you’re looking for someone to help you to find solutions for your goals, we have a number of coaches available for phone/video conference coaching. Click here for more details.

    Training: if you want more help on using a coaching approach as part of your management toolkit, then get in touch about our in-house workshops on Coaching Skills for Managers.

    Webinar: People who join up to our newsletter get access to a bunch of helpful information and resources. This includes periodic access to our webinar on Coaching.

     

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  • 7 questions for impactful leadership

    7 questions for impactful leadership

    Review of the Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier

    Your team sometimes just need a bit of support to shine. You can provide this support through changing your leadership approach to coaching.

    Helping people to find their own solutions is more impactful than giving advice, providing rules or direction. You can coach anytime, anywhere, and with the 7 simple questions that Michael Bungay Stanier suggests for supporting your team, your session will be both easy and effective.

    The Coaching Habit is a lean, inspiring and practical book. In the first few chapters you can learn about habit building and change in order to make the move from the directive habit of a lifetime. The book then outlines the benefits of coaching before you get the tools, the questions and ways of putting them into practice.

    The following seven chapters are about the seven essential question you should ask in order to help your colleague to identify and solve their own difficulties. Bungay Stanier added exercises between the questions to help leaders master asking them effectively.

    Michael Bungay Stanier’s book is a practical, engaging read encouraging immediate application. It is packed with useful resources and exercises, and should have a place on every leaders’ bookshelf.

    We had the privilege of interviewing Michael on the coaching habit, so you can also hear him talk about the habit changing process and how to do more great work.

    The Coaching Habit is available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

  • Impactful women leaders

    Worldwide, at the lower levels of organisations over half of the staff members are female but if you look higher the number of women shrinks. Therefore, we’d like to share with you list of 5 impactful leaders who just happen to be female.

    Sheryl Sandberg – The COO of Facebook and founder of the Lean In Foundation. The non-profit organisation is part of a movement to develop a more equal world – as detailed in her book, Lean In ­– and supports women in the workplace and through empowerment groups.
    Ann Francke – Author of the FT Guide to Management and CEO of the Chartered Management Institute, a non-profit organisation aiming to create better led and managed organisations, through creating more qualified managers and establishing management as a true profession.
    Meg Whitman – Business executive, currently the President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and also the Chairwoman of HP Inc. A former manager at Disney and Hasbro, she is still best known for leading the online auction site, eBay.
    Tamara Box – The chair of the Financial Industry Group and the head of Structured Finance at Reed Smith, and worldwide acknowledged expert in strategic financial advice. Tamara is passionate about engaging millennials and women in the professional world. Also, she is one of our autumn interviewees.
    Carolyn McCall – The CEO of EasyJet is one of the business leaders who has been asked to join the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group – the body that advises the PM and the Government on business difficulties.

  • #Girlboss review

    #Girlboss review

    Sophia Amoruso is an interesting and inspiring millennial. She is the founder of one of the fastest-growing retailers on the planet, Nasty Gal and the author of #Girlboss, a book about her and the company’s story. The business began with selling off vintage clothing and accessories on eBay, currently she is the leader of internationally recognised brand and business.
    #Girlboss isn’t a typical self-help personal development handbook; it’s more like a good peptalk given by a person who transformed her hobby into an outstanding company and shares her real life experiences through the pages.

    “A #GIRLBOSS is someone who’s in charge of her own life. She gets what she wants because she works for it. As a #GIRLBOSS, you take control and accept responsibility.” – says Amoruso at the beginning of the publication.
    This book is far better as a story than as a business guide – which is probably why Netflix is turning it into a TV show.

    #Girlboss is a combination of a memoir, a manifesto and a business book. It won’t explain to the reader how to reach success but it can give a few ideas and it’s definitely a great reading experience. Amoruso’s book could inspire young people who are thinking about setting up a business.
    The book is available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

  • Where does the courage come in?

    Where does the courage come in?

    I fairly recently went to an event on Women’s Leadership Careers organised by the Chartered Management Institute’s (CMI) Women in Management (WiM) Network. The keynoter was none other than CMI’s CEO Ann Francke, an remarkably dynamic and engaging speaker.

    Ann shared her wealth of knowledge and experience about progressing in the ranks of organisations as a female member of staff. Among the many things she referred to was the 3 C’s: Competence, Confidence and Connections – the important components in order to get noticed and to ensure your mark in your field. She recommends keeping a list of your competencies and your accomplishments. Have confidence in yourself – avoid the tiara syndrome, i.e. waiting for someone to notice you, and the sorry skirts, connoting apologising for yourself. And the ever important C – connections – reach out to people. Look for colleagues and managers who can guide you, advise you and “sponsor” you.

    As I was taking all this in, words of Sir Winston Churchill rang so true: “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities . . . because it is the quality which guarantees all others.” I add ‘courage’ as the 4th C to Ann’s list.

    Courage could be the stepping stone to acknowledging your competencies, to speak up to the person at the office, who you want to connect with. And the courage to leave when you know something is not working – it could be a job that does not nurture your capacities, a relationship that does not support you in achieving your targets. It takes courage to review a past project and to be honest with yourself about what went great and what could have been done better.

    It requires courage to lead a team, to disband a team and to implement change when it is needed. However, courage is not about being abrasive. It is very much about being gently assertive with yourself and taking that one extra step – making your competencies list or drawing on your confidence to connect with a colleague. After all, Churchill also purported that “courage is what it requires to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

    Reetu Kansal

  • Celebrating women in leadership

    Celebrating women in leadership

    Against the backdrop of Theresa May taking office as the UK’s second ever female Prime Minister and Hillary Clinton potentially becoming the first female President, women at work are still paid significantly less than men and there are fewer of them the higher up the management ranks you look.

    Yet there are some shining examples of women at the helm of corporations, their own companies and communities.

    As an increasing number of female leaders find their way to the top of organisations and find their voice, one thing is clear: enabling women in leadership benefits all.

    It is not a binary or a win-lose issue. Female leaders do not succeed against their male counterparts, they succeed alongside them and with men. Women’s progression benefits all, including male employees as gender balanced organisations are more inclusive, better places to work as well as being more successful.  

    I also strongly feel that the way forward for women is not be more like men, but to add a different, complementary voice to the conversation. Where everyone is emboldened to be his or her authentic best self, the organisation truly benefits from culmination of all talents within. Over the coming weeks, we will showcase some exceptional female leaders on this blog. You can also access the Women in Leadership issue of People & Purpose the Positive Leadership Journal: http://peopleandpurposejournal.com/issues

  • The best LinkedIn Influencers

    The best LinkedIn Influencers

    LinkedIn is the most known professional social networking platform; it encourages the world’s leading thinkers and innovators to be Influencers. As “leaders in their industries and geographies”, they explore news and trending topics. We recommend to follow these 7:

    Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite
    Hootsuite is a social media management resource, and its CEO is an excellent Influencer to follow. He often publishes interesting and colourful pieces on leadership, management, success, career and other topics.

    Gretchen Rubin
    A best-selling author who also has a fantastic podcast on habits and happiness. In her various posts on LinkedIn, she gives tips, tricks and ideas to shape habits and ‘boost the happy factor’.

    Daniel Goleman
    Psychologist, prize-winning author and science journalist, he regularly posts insightful writings on the topics of emotional intelligence and leadership; on how to be a more effective leader and self-aware.

    Bernard Marr
    Best-selling author, keynote speaker and leading business and data expert, Marr publishes posts mostly on leadership and Big Data. He reflects on popular topics and connects them with his fields of expertise; who knew that Big Data and Valentine’s day can work together in a post.

    Jeff Haden
    Business and leadership ghost-writer, speaker, contributing editor at Inc. Magazine. He publishes pieces on hiring, success, leadership and various business topics.

    Liz Ryan, CEO of Human Workplace
    The founder and CEO of the publishing, career coaching and consulting firm has an engaging and inspiring writing style. Ryan writes about job hunting, toxic workplaces, careers and much more.

    Bruce Kasanoff
    The career coach and social media ghost-writer posts about how can people achieve success, how to be a great leader and bring out the strengths of our people, how to find talent and more. His articles are not only interesting but humorous too.

    Who influences you the most on LinkedIn?
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