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Do You Create Space to Think Before Hitting Crisis…

A consistent theme we see in today’s fast-paced, high-pressure work environments, is leaders and teams reacting to challenges rather than proactively anticipating or addressing them.

Even as the year begins, we are hearing concerns about:

  • Surprise departures of key team members
  • People burning out without leaders noticing and realising
  • Individuals feeling alone in bearing heavy responsibilities and expectations
  • Tension within and across teams as heavy workloads and constant change mount
  • Change initiatives slowed down due to conflicting priorities between multiple initiatives
  • Risks not being addressed despite being raised several times
Read more “Do You Create Space to Think Before Hitting Crisis Point?” →
Leadership

What Messages Are People Receiving Through Your Leadership Behaviours?

In my previous article, I shared that ‘Many of us underestimate what we are capable of.’ This talked about As leaders, we often focus on the words we say and the policies we put in place, believing they are sending the right messages needed to guide their teams. While words and policies are important, what many leaders forget is that they are constantly sending messages—24/7—through their behaviours, body language, and implicit actions. And here’s the kicker: it is not the leader who gets to interpret what these messages mean. It is the people around them who decide what story those behaviours tell.

Messages received is what matters.

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Conversation

“Just be yourself” is not helpful

In my previous article, I shared that ‘Many of us underestimate what we are capable of.’ This talked about the ‘competence gap’ and how for many people, their level of confidence is below their level of competence.

Part of the reason why we underestimate ourselves is we often hear the comment: “Just be yourself.”

While this may sound good and helpful, it may hold you back from becoming who you could be. My feedback to people is to be yourself AND who you are becoming.

Read more ““Just be yourself” is not helpful” →
Leadership

Labelling Divides, Listening Builds Bridges

Have you noticed how much and how often we label others?

It is easier to place people in neat categories—labels that we believe define others’ values, intentions, or intelligence. Whether it’s generational terms like “Boomer” and “Gen Z,” political identities like “right-wing” and “woke”, gender, race, personalities, religion, or even viewpoints on contentious topics like vaccines or reproductive rights, labels serve as quick identifiers.

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Conversation

Psychological Safety is not the same as being comfortable

There’s a difference between being safe and being comfortable, whether physical or psychological.

When you’re training to run a marathon, there’s no doubt there will be some discomfort while training. There will be a certain point where, if you overtrain, it becomes unsafe, but it’s further along than the point at which you become uncomfortable.

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Leadership

Leadership emergence is NOT the same as Leadership effectiveness

Have you seen ‘mistaken’ leadership appointments or promotions where people who appeared to have leadership potential did not turn out to be the best leaders?

On the flipside, have you seen people with great leadership capabilities or potential being overlooked, perhaps because they are not as visible or do not fit the ‘prototype’ of who looks, sounds or feels leader-like?

Read more “Leadership emergence is NOT the same as Leadership effectiveness” →
Conversation

Is Your Leadership Team Having Productive Disagreements?

The best leadership teams make the most of diverse expertise, knowledge and perspectives to make informed and considered decisions, particularly in complex situations. All too often, leadership teams are unable make high-quality decisions because they either avoid disagreements or clash due to differences in views. Many fear that disagreement represents conflict and, as such, may be potentially destructive. Some see it as a waste of time and energy. Others opt for a debate and end up creating tension and conflict. The opportunity being missed is ‘productive disagreement’.

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How well do leaders use their quiet superpowers? (hint:…

Leaders of all kinds can access a range of ‘quiet superpowers’ to build relationships, lead their teams and organisations, and deliver results. Over the last few years, I have been gathering data from clients and presentation audiences on how effectively their existing leaders use these superpowers.

Sadly, the ratings people gave for the leaders they know or work with were rather disappointing. For every one of the identified superpowers of calm, listening, thinking and inclusion, the average rating fell firmly within the ‘mediocre’ range of performance.

Read more “How well do leaders use their quiet superpowers? (hint: there’s room for improvement)” →