Lead

In: Lead, Leadership

Even the most experienced leader starting a new leadership role, who walks into a new organisation has to consider how they are going to hit the ground running. There are high expectations on you from the hiring manager, from the peers and stakeholders around the organisation and from the staff that will report to you in the role. A number of books and articles have been written about preparing for a new role, establishing a 30, 60 or 90 day plan but that is just the beginning. A successful transition takes into account preparation before you commence, establishing and building your team and laying out a clear plan. Preparation Before You Commence A New Leadership Role Connect with peers to get a strong sense of what is going on in the organisation, what challenges are you going to face on day one. Do you know who is going to immediatelyContinue Reading

Do something purposeful

In: Corporate Social Responsibility, Lead, Leadership, Purpose

Purposeful leadership motivates individuals, empowers teams to achieve their greatest potential, provides clarity to organisational priorities and goals and connects everyone to broader societal goals. Purposeful leadership starts with clarity about your own purpose, and that can be difficult to get clear (at least at first). Pan Pan (founder of Swiss advisory firm Pantera Ventures) suggests that leaders wanting to identity their true purpose, need to start by considering the end of their careers. Consider the “end game”, where do you personally hope to be and what does success look like to you? Think about career achievements, what do you hope to have accomplished? What kind of impact will you make? What legacy, however small, would you like to leave behind? Leadership coach and author Mitchell Simon explains that one important aspect of being purposeful in leadership is to continually seek out feedback. Enabling the leader to better reflect ifContinue Reading

Decisions

In: Lead, Leadership

Every leader faces numerous decisions every day. Some of them are small and can be decided based on a simple framework, others however need different kinds of responses. These situations need a different toolset to inform the decision making process. Effective Delegation Sometimes the very smartest decision a leader can make is to delegate that decision to someone else. Victoria Medvec (Kellogg Insight, 2017) suggests that while every decision is made somewhere along a risk continuum, before deciding if you should be the one making the call, you should first consider the following: Who is involved in making the decision?Sometimes a low risk decision gets pushed up to the leadership team rather than being dealt with locally, there are risks that when this happens not only is it wasting executive time on what should be routine decisions, but also the executive may not be as well informed and has potentialContinue Reading

In: Lead

Of course everyone knows that ‘leadership talent does not grow on trees’. So how do you go about building a team with significant potential to lead and fill the needs of the organisation. The planning for growing your talent is not just for what your organisation needs today but importantly for what the organisation is going to need in the next 3 to 5 years. In this long read Crispin Blackall has researched what a range of thought leaders, subject matter experts, consultants, business journalists and human resources professionals have to say on how an organisation should build a sustainable talent pipeline. You have heard about the war for talent, but on the other hand you know that there is a pandemic going on, which has led to a global recession and this has meant that lots of great talent is currently looking for work. So as a savvy andContinue Reading

In: Lead, Leadership, Motivation

Synopsis of an article from Inc. by Carmine Gallo, Published 29th July 2020 In this short article author and executive coach Carmine Gallo explains that your people (your team, partners and customers) are looking to you for guidance during the crisis, and they are looking for you to show your humanity. Gallo has two questions that help to ‘uncover your motivation to lead’ and they are: What makes your heart sing? Tell me something about your company that is meaningful to you personally? He links the first question to a comment by Steve Jobs who said that the intersection of technology and liberal arts made his heart sing. The second question often gets executives to open up with stories that are often not public. The importance of these questions is they lead to personal, meaningful and human stories. In the article Gallo uses some examples on how leaders have builtContinue 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

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