Blogs
Why does feedback fail?
Too many leaders conclude feedback has failed when they do not see immediate change in the person they give the feedback to. This conclusion has one serious flaw – feedback should never be delivered with the intent of creating change in someone else. When leaders see...
Do you REALLY know why feedback is necessary?
Too many leaders have associated feedback with saving up stuff to talk about in the annual appraisal where they tell people in their team reporting directly to them how to “fix themselves” if they want to progress in the company. Such leaders miss the essence of...
Why it’s easier to build a toxic culture
It's confounding why so many leaders find it easier to build a toxic culture - where people attack each other with mean, highly personal and nasty language; where people are allowed and even encouraged to talk about things behind others backs; where people are judged...
Refresh and renew for leadership
I regularly read blogs and articles about the importance of renewal to refresh yourself - and with recommendations you join a network, surround yourself with a tribe of people, book yourself into a retreat, participate in a development program, read some books and so...
How disengaged employees poison those who are engaged
I continue to be amazed at how leaders receive comfort from engagement survey benchmarks - that somehow comparing themselves to the global benchmark for best practice makes it OK to have a 60% engagement rate? This means 40% of their workforce are disengaged and left...
Transform individually and interdependently change the business
More and more leaders are recognising the importance of enabling and encouraging each leader to transform individually if they want to change the business so it disrupts the status quo within its current marketplace. The CEO can "announce" that change is critical and...
Courage without CARE won’t work
I am germinating another idea for a book and welcome your public or private feedback. I've been working with leaders for nearly 15 years, inspiring them to be courageous in the way they lead themselves, others and the business. While doing this I have come to...
Navigate the gap between designing and buying
To navigate the gap between designing and buying takes courageous leadership whether you are: * a technical professional designing service solutions (for example: accounting, legal) * a digital specialist designing a new media solution, support platform and the myriad...
Teams, tribes and performance
I find it fascinating to explore what team size works more easily and promotes high performance with greater engagement, ease and speed. It is a topic I plan to invest more thinking into and welcome feedback and ideas from everyone who reads this post. Narrative from...
Leading Change
We've talked about leading change effectively and the importance of "endings" in a previous post. Discussing this concept in a leadership program I was running recently, the topic of endings in leading change came up again. I shared it on LinkedIn's Pulse and invite...
Wrestle with your values
Reading INSEAD research I loved how the article presented the importance of "wrestling with your values". I think this is critical as it means you keep your values current and real and know how they are playing out every day in the way you behave with each other. The...
Political Game Playing in your Organisation
An on going message from leaders is their lack of time to spend with people to engage them constructively in the pursuit of high performance. Yet astoundingly too many of these same leaders magically find time and invest the energy to engage in politics to protect and...
Making decisions and your orientation
Exploring processes for making decisions in business has me reflecting on the importance of investigating the context, the frame or the orientation. I have been referring participants in our leadership development program to the OODA Loop as a highly practical and...
Letting go of controlling others and their tasks
Letting go of controlling others is one of the hardest things to do as a manager and leader within a business. After all you ARE still completely accountable for the outcome and what is actually achieved - so if that is the case then doesn't it make perfect sense that...
What’s VUCA and how does it affect leadership?
You may have heard people talking about VUCA, the challenges it poses to leadership and importantly the way we develop our current and future leaders. VUCA is described in Wikipedia as: "an acronym used to describe or reflect on the volatility, uncertainty, complexity...
Calling out bad behaviour in the workplace
More on calling out bad behaviour in the workplace... I find it fascinating to hear the reticence people have to calling out bad behaviour in front of others when the person exhibiting the bad behaviour chose to do so in front of these same "others". People seem to...
Performance Management or Bullying
Performance Management or Bullying - people skills make all the difference and there is nothing soft about them! Recently I've been engaged in few conversations with various people about the wrath of the Fair Work Commission and how carefully and fearfully many now...
Caritas Australia and Church Resources Creating Change
I recently attended an event I was invited to by one of our fabulous clients who was a major sponsor. It was the Caritas Australia 'Women for the World' fundraising lunch - a brilliant luncheon for deeply a humanitarian purpose. We learned about what Caritas are doing...
Innovation and collaboration – be aware of the connectivity
Innovation and collaboration - it's hard to have one without the other. Innovation needs people to courageously share their thinking and collaboration enables the divergent thinking from innovation to converge into a single decision about the what, how and when of the...