The world needs better leadership. Australia needs better leadership. Our institutions like the banking industry and the Catholic Church need better leadership. Our organisations needs better leadership. I reckon it’s a safe bet that you wish you had better leadership at your work. Am I right? Most people I know want to be better leaders, …
As leaders, many of us have power. Power to make decisions, power to make things happen, power to give people feedback. In most cases, having power is not a bad thing, as long as we use it for good and not evil. With power comes responsibility. An important consideration when using power is thinking about how …
Not to put too fine a point on it, but could you be a Crap Boss (CB)? 1. A CB is unclear what they want from their people. They are ambiguous about their expectations. It is likely that they are not sure what they want from their people but they still expect them to know what to …
As the leader, are you owning the result? I like keeping things simple. Look at the results you are getting as the leader. They could be operational issues like productivity or safety, they may be financial like gross profit or net profit, or they may be people measures like absenteeism or levels of engagement. …
There was a time a while back when people used to boast about their long work hours and how little sleep they needed. Some wore it as a badge of honour. There is strong research that shows sleep deprivation inhibits good decision making and therefore good leading. In fact, suffering from lack of sleep can be …
Hands up if you have ever said this? Most of us aren’t good at delegating. We are time poor and have trouble letting go. Trying to do everything leaves us feeling frustrated. There is a better way. Effective delegation is, almost universally in my experience, a key to helping leaders to become more effective. Here are the …
I’ve been banging on recently about how we should stop trying to be perfect (because it ain’t going to happen) and just focus on becoming incrementally better. If we tried, each day, to just be a little better than we were the day before, and we did it for long enough, our leadership effectiveness would …
Driving change is one of the most important responsibilities of a leader. Yet, in my view, most organisations do change really poorly. Many are confronted by and even scared of change, and as a result fail to plan and implement it well. The result is, well, failed changed and the cynicism and mistrust that follows. …
A hot topic at the moment is ‘employee engagement’. What is it and how important is it? When two people become engaged it means they are making a commitment to each other. It means that they intend to be loyal and loving into the future. It means that they care, deeply, about each other. How …
A recent survey of leaders that I am working with revealed two important facts. 1. They are time poor. 2. They have trouble letting go. Trying to do everything, in turn, leaves them with less time and they end up feeling even more frustrated and inadequate as leaders. Effective delegation is, almost universally in my …