Want to be highly effective as a leader? Be coachable
When moving up the corporate ladder, many leaders lose the ability to be coached. Seniority, both in level and age, impacts the level of coachability negatively. Despite having plenty of experience, this paradox makes it difficult for them to adjust and learn new things. They develop blind spots. And yet coachability is key for any leader, regardless of age or level, to be an effective leader. In fact, research by Zenger and Folkman,...
Time for some new perspective?
Are you lacking in inspiration and motivation? How much time do you spend on actively choosing new perspectives to get new ideas and delivering new innovative solutions? We are all creatures of habit; that's perfectly normal. But we can – if we want – choose to challenge ourselves to break those habits by doing something different, by seeing something different – to trigger new thoughts and ideas and force us to be more innovative and...
5 things generous (=successful) leaders do
Having team members who don’t freely and generously share what they know is a challenge most teams face. And yet, a team can't afford not to share their thoughts, ideas and experience. Sometimes people don’t make the link between lack of generosity and not getting as good a result as they could have. And yet, the link is real. Workplaces need to be generous places. As a leader, you can show the way for what generosity means and what...
STOP chasing perfection
A reporter once asked a very successful businessman:“What is the secret to your success?”The man replied: “Two words”.“And they are?”“Right decisions”“OK, I see—and how do you make the right decisions?”“One word”“And that is?”“Experience”“I see, and how do you get experience?”“Two words”“And what are they?”“Wrong decisions” We love this story. In it the perils of chasing perfection are perfectly described. So many people have...
Conflict and collaboration. A match made in heaven?
Conflict is usually seen as something negative, often as a result of people having experienced conflict and found it to be painful and demotivating and having an unhealthy impact on the work culture and climate. But conflict doesn’t have to be negative at all. It all comes back to how we perceive it. We can either see it as a good thing or a bad thing – or something in between. In fact, conflict is only a difference of opinion, which...
Be a storyteller
The very first book we wrote was a business novel called ‘The Team Formula – A Leadership Tale of a Team Who Found Their Way’. We chose this format because we feel so strongly about the power of storytelling. And the impact was staggering – we have lost count of how many people have told us “you could have been talking about us, I recognised so many of those situations!” And that’s the beauty of stories, they make theories and ideas...
