Know Where You Stand – Emotional Pain and Leadership

Discovering you were closer to someone in your team than they were with you can hurt deeply. This hurts even more when you realise that others knew this before you did. When information within informal networks of interpersonal relationships overrides formal structures, trust is broken. Emotions run high as the true structure of relationships are revealed. You know where you stand, and how close or distant others are in relation to you. Remember Carlos Ghosen, Chair of Nissan, Japan and...

Quit the Blame Game – Glitches and Roadblocks are Normal

Hindsight, and reflection: Insights into Learning Hindsight; I find unhelpful. Reflection, I rate. What is the difference? Hindsight leaves me feeling inadequate, and with a sense of failure, that my effort was not good enough. Hindsight encourages fault finding, blame and criticism. Each is entirely unhelpful in any learning process. Reflection enables me to identify causes, helps me reset a vision of what is possible, identify what I want to learn, and apply. Why is reflection valuable? Setting out to...

Leading Exceptional Online Meetings

“How do you stop meetings from being boring?” This question dominated my recent free zoom session on leading exceptional online meetings. I had asked participants to submit their top two questions, and everyone had asked that question, or a version of it. It is a great question, and too few leaders recognise their meetings are boring or irrelevant to participants. If your own meetings don’t excite you, and you aren’t looking forward to getting together with those in the meeting,...