Crispin (Page 14)

In: Career, Effective Communication, Resilience, Time Management

There are lots of reasons where a meeting or group session that once might have been important and highly relevant stops being your top priority. When that happens you have to choose to be fully engaged or to break up with your commitments! It could be a regular social engagement, or a working group where you were included for ‘your perspective’, or maybe it is a voluntary activity that is no longer top of your list of priorities. We all have them, those meetings or events in our diaries that we are not really engaged in anymore, maybe you show up, but don’t really engage, other times we ghost the meeting by not showing up but not dropping off the invite list or admitting we were no longer attending. In this article Saunders explains why you should make a formal break and provides you with four steps to go aboutContinue Reading

In: Effective Communication, Leadership, Motivation

Synopsis of an article from Forbes by Jeremy Pollack, Published 28th July 2020 Significant bodies of research have confirmed that employee happiness is more likely to drive organisational success and as this article points out “job satisfaction is not only a sound business decision, but also an ethical and moral one”. So how do you know if your employees are happy and fully engaged in your organisation? Here are six questions that can help you find out. Is there anything that you need from the organisation to be more successful in your role? Is there anything you need from me (as your leader), or anything that I could be doing differently to be helpful to you? Is there anything that you find unclear in your role? or any clarity or direction that I can help you with. Do you have a vision for how this role will help you getContinue Reading

In: Relationships

Synopsis of an article from Inc. by JESSICA STILLMAN published 31st July 2020 This article is a summary of an article which it turns out is a summary of an article… Inc Magazine Jessica Stillman references an article published by The Profile (an online magazine hosted by Substack). The original article was written by Polina Marinova who seven days after her wedding, sought to crowdsource advice to what makes a good marriage, she got a lot of valuable advice but the critical one applies to all of our most important relationships. “The difference between happy and unhappy couples is the balance between positive and negative interactions during conflict. There is a very specific ratio that makes love last. That “magic ratio” is 5 to 1. This means that for every negative interaction during conflict, a stable and happy marriage has five (or more) positive interactions.“ https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-magic-relationship-ratio-according-science/ Working on your professionalContinue Reading

In: Female Leadership, Leadership, Resilience

Synopsis of an article from CEO Magazine, by Susan Armstrong, Published 24th July 2020. Four years ago I was on a plane from the USA returning into Melbourne as I walked through customs and immigration Julia Gillard was in front of me, on her own navigating the hordes of people and collecting her own luggage from the carousel. Not that this surprised me she is a remarkable individual but what brought this into sharp relief was the actress Charlise Theron was also navigating the airport at the same time, she had an enormous amount of personal security and minders who whisked her through, there was no queuing or waiting for the movie star. So I was very interested to read this article from CEO magazine. Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard has a new book on the lessons of Women and Leadership, in this article the author Susan Armstrong interviews Gillard.Continue Reading

gravitas

In: Lead

Article by Crispin Blackall, Image Credit August de Richelieu (Pexels) The word gravitas goes back to the ancient Romans and derives from the Latin gravitas, meaning weight, and from gravis heavy. It implies sound judgement, clarity of purpose, ability to yield influence and having organisational power. “In the world of corporate advancement, headhunters, talent managers, and HR professionals always ask themselves whether a person has the gravitas required of a role? Does the person have the necessary presence, speaking skills, and the ability to read an audience or situation? Does he or she have the emotional intelligence that enables him or her to easily influence others? ‘Finding Gravitas’ Kets de Vries 2015, INSEAD Knowledge What do you think of when you hear the term ‘gravitas’ personally my first thought is often of (the TV show) Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Captain Holt when he says “do you know what gravitas sounds like…” (and if youContinue Reading

How to Hand Over

In: Career Development, Leadership, Networking

By Crispin Blackall It is one of those tasks that can really make a difference in how people see you, done well it has potential to make a lasting impression on your personal brand for the successor, for the staff and for the former manager.   So how do you focus on getting it right and not getting it wrong! Whether you have identified a successor and grooming them to replace you.  Or you have been promoted in the business, potentially you are leaving the company for a new opportunity, maybe you are retiring or even being made redundant, this is how you will be remembered by those who stay (and these people may turn out be your referees in the future), so protect your personal brand and do a good job at the hand over. The cost of poor leadership transition is potentially significant, a poor transition can leadContinue Reading

In: Crisis Management, Culture, Leadership, Resilience, Trust

Synopsis of an article from Kellogg Insight by Timothy Feddersen, published 2nd April 2020 The COVID19 pandemic is providing business leaders around the world with a crash course in crisis management. The immediate critical challenges of supporting customers, protecting employees and stabilising the companies revenue and security is a brand new experience for most leaders. An excellent example of a CEO demonstrating leadership right now is Arne Sorenson of Marriott. Timothy Feddersen (professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Kellogg School) teaches a course on Crisis Management and he uses Sorenson as a model of excellence in leadership refering to the contents of a recent video message made for employees. “Sorenson starts by offering compassion for the employees who have COVID-19 or have family members who are sick and for those in quarantine. Then, Feddersen explains that Sorenson speaks “with an incredible level of transparency to explain to everybodyContinue Reading

In: Culture, Leadership, Resilience, Teams, Trust

Synopsis of an article published in Root by Jim Haudan on June 22, 2020 Global communications firm Edelman produce a regular report on Trust in Institutions, Edelman Trust Barometer. The Spring 2020 update, shared results of a survey taken by people in 11 countries from April 15‒23. What is interesting is that the survey was conducted during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and government trust rose 11% to 65% (this is an all time high in the 20 years the study has been run). But only 38% of people believe business is doing well or very well at putting people before profits and only 39% believe that business is doing well or very well at protecting employees financial wellbeing. Only 29% believed that CEOs were doing an outstanding job dealing with the pandemic. So Jim Haudan asks how do you build that trust in a crisis? Re-prioritize and liveContinue Reading

In: Leadership

Synopsis of an article from Chief Executive By Alain Hunkins, Published June 19, 2020 Alain uses situational leadership learnings from multi-billion dollar fitness brand CrossFit and the resignation of its CEO (and founder) Greg Glassman after he failed to act in an appropriate way in responding to racism and the black lives matter protests that followed the death of George Floyd. How bad did it get? Well Glassman had made some tweets and discussed the issue on a Zoom call with affiliate gym owners and the executive leadership team. The content may be considered by many as not racist of massively offensive, however it clearly lacked any empathy and it showed he was way out of touch with his sponsors, partners, customers, and staff. Shortly before he resigned the companies biggest sponsor (Reebok) cancelled their support and hundreds of affiliate gyms announced they would no longer be working with CrossFit.Continue Reading

Manage Anxiety

In: Leadership, Resilience

A Synopsis of an article by Lolly Daskal taken from her book The Leadership Gap. Many leaders suffer from anxiety to some degree and its important to recognise that and consider appropriate tools that can help to manage it. Lolly suggests techniques to help manage anxiety as a leader: Acknowledge your anxiety without denying itseek to understand why its come up and enable yourself to better address and manage it. Accept your anxiety without attachmentThe best way to deal with it is to accept it, don’t try to fight or control it, instead accept it and you are already making progress in moving through it. Surf the wave without getting swallowed up by the currentRecognise that you might not be in top form until things settle down. The goal is to learn to surf the waves and harness their power without being overwhelmed. Watch for patterns and label your feelings“ItContinue Reading