Diversity and Inclusion
Having interviewed 26 quietly powerful leaders and reflected on what they told me, what struck me was that some were reluctant leaders.
They never thought of themselves as leaders initially. Someone – a mentor, a manager, a senior leader – saw something in them, encouraged and gave them opportunities to step into leadership.
Read more “Reluctant leaders may be your best leaders”
Diversity and Inclusion
Since starting the Quietly Powerful movement just over 2 years ago I have had the pleasure of interviewing 24 Quietly Powerful leaders so far, to understand what makes them quietly powerful and how their natural tendencies have been their leadership strengths (join the Quietly Powerful LinkedIn Group to access the recorded interviews). A few patterns started emerging, which I have been sharing more of in my talks.
Read more “Quietly Powerful Leaders – who are they and why we don’t have enough of them”
Conversation
What started as a little experiment with 15 women for breakfast is growing up – Quietly Powerful is now 2 years old and have now reached thousands of people from around the world. I feel grateful for the memorable moments, inspiration and support from a range of people!
Read more “5 additional insights from 2 years of Quietly Powerful”
Diversity and Inclusion
There have been plenty of discussion and writings about sexism, racism and age-ism. Have you noticed personality-ism, though?
Let me offer a few examples I have personally heard of or experienced…
Read more “Personality-ism”
Diversity and Inclusion
Recently I heard two cases where leaders with track records were unsuccessful for roles they applied for, and they were unsuccessful because the hiring manager was looking for a ‘strong leader’.
One of them wrote to me and said:
“I think they were looking for that [a dominating style of leader] because it is their current workplace culture. They fight, they push each other around…”
Read more “Strong leadership ≠ dominance”
Confidence
Speaking to a senior executive recently, he told me about a change he saw in a team member he ‘inherited’. He described how this team member had shifted from being pretty much mute, with no opinions of their own, waiting for instructions and lacking initiative to being quite feisty, unafraid to express their views and showing passion for their work. Discussing what had happened and exploring our own experiences, we saw a few common things managers do which crush team members’ confidence and ability to speak up and contribute.
Read more “7 ways a manager can crush team members’ confidence and ability to speak up and contribute”
Leadership
Quietly powerful was started as a movement to help quieter professionals to succeed on their own terms rather than having to ‘fix’ themselves (See Fixing people who don’t fit). The bigger intention behind the work was to challenge how we define what good leadership looks like.
Read more “The definition of what good leadership looks like needs an update”
Diversity and Inclusion
I recently had an interesting evening where I went to two unrelated, separate events and came away with the one message.
We keep trying to fix people who don’t fit.
Read more “Fixing people who don’t fit”
Diversity and Inclusion
One of the frustrating things about being more introverted is that you get put into an ‘introvert’ box. Introverts are regularly stereotyped as:
Read more “Stop putting introverts in a box”
Diversity and Inclusion
Time and time again I hear people in organisations say they wished their leaders listened to them more.
How would you feel working for a leader who:
Read more “We all want leaders who listen. So why don’t we have more quieter leaders?”