Resilience (Page 2)

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: 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

In: Lead, Resilience

Synopsis of an article from LeadChange by Dave Coffaro, Published 27th July 2020 Resilient cultures survive, new threats are constant and constantly changing. “Thriving and resilient cultures endure through good times and bad”. Dave suggests five practices to raise your strategic resilience as a leader. Acknowledge current reality ‘Own the tone’ as a leader you need to communicate with your team, recognise the current situation and acknowledge that this isn’t easy, it is uncomfortable but you need to lead through. Re-connect with the vision and values Having a clarity of your organisation’s vision, mission, purpose and strategy and values will help connect your team to ‘why’ (see The Motivation Secret That Works for Everyone) vision (where the organisation wants to be) mission (what the organisation is going to do) purpose (why the organisation does what it does) strategy (how to achieve the mission) values (how your organisation does what it does) “EveryContinue Reading

Self Sabotage

In: Burn Out, Career Development, Resilience

Synopsis of an article from Fast Company, by Evelyn Marinoff, Published 7th July 2020 Evelyn explores why that even when we have worked so hard to achieve a goal, we self sabotage our own attempts. There are so many ways we do this for example – watching Netflix not working on an important presentation, not going to the dentist for regular checkups, ordering takeaway when you are on a diet, the list goes on. “Self-sabotage is the action we take to thwart our own best intentions and goals. We do it because we want something, and then we fear that we may actually get it, that we won’t be able to handle it, and so we ruin everything—be it getting a promotion, finding the perfect relationship, or starting a business. So why not save ourselves from the pain, the embarrassment, the disappointment if we mess up and kill all theContinue Reading

How to recover from burn out

In: Burn Out, Resilience

Synopsis of an article on Thought Leaders by Jon Wortmann published 24th June 2020. In this article Jon explains how work pressure and feeling tired can lead to burn out and exhaustion. The symptoms of burn out at work have three clear symptoms that all leaders must watch out for in ourselves and in others: chronic metal or emotional fatigue, cynicism and dissatisfaction. “Are you consistently exhausted, irritated with the people around you, bothered by issues that used to roll off your back?” Are you consistently exhausted, irritated with the people around you, bothered by issues that used to roll off your back? “Do you find yourself more critical than normal, judging and picking apart people and situations with an edge that isn’t who are or want to be?“ Do you find yourself more critical than normal, judging and picking apart people and situations with an edge that isn’t whoContinue Reading

In: Culture, Effective Communication, Leadership, Resilience, Values

Synopsis of an article in HBR by Michael Beer, Published 22nd June 2020 Michael explains that most organisations today are dealing with massive strategic challenges that require a redefinition of purpose, identity, strategy, business model and even structure. Many if not most of these will fail and not because the strategy if flawed but rather the organisation does not have the ability to execute. He explains that he has seen six common interrelated reason for failures, referred to as ‘hidden barriers’ which make organisations ineffective. Hidden barrier #1: Unclear values and conflicting priorities Often, the underlying problem is not this or that strategy, but rather the process by which the strategy was formed — or the lack of any such process. In these cases, strategy is often developed by the leader along with the chief strategy or marketing executive and only then communicated to the rest of the senior teamContinue 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

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

Master Change

In: Change, Resilience

Synopsis of an article in Psychology Today by Bruce Feller, Published 23rd April 2020 Bruce Feller is author of six consecutive New York Times best sellers, his latest book is Life in Transitions: Master Change at Any Age. The article published in Psychology Today is an abbreviation from the book. Bruce identified three takeways about life. “First, the linear life is dead. The once-routine idea that our lives pass through a uniform set of stages, phases, or “passages,” with predictable crises on birthdays that end in zero, is hopelessly outdated. The notion that we’ll have only one job, one relationship, one sexuality, one spirituality is dead. Second, today we live nonlinear lives. My data show that each of us will experience three dozen disruptors in our lives—one every 12 to 18 months. Most of these we get through with relative ease, but one in 10—or three to five in our adult life—become majorContinue Reading