Most of us will feel we have little time for contemplation or at best it’s done on the run. The dictionary offers several layers of definition of ‘contemplation’ ranging from ‘deep reflective thought’ to ‘seeking to pass beyond mental images and concepts to a direct experience of the divine’. Whilst from a leadership perspective, in...
Euro 2024 recently threw up a moment of hen’s teeth rarity when Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo, a player known for his single-mindedness and ruthless goalscoring, passed to a colleague in a slightly better position to take the shot. His actions shifted the outcome from likely to certain as the goal was duly scored. In football...
If we are honest with ourselves, each of us have aspects of our personality that we’d like to ‘soften’, aspects which we know can sometimes bring unhelpful impacts to ourselves and others. One of mine is impatience. This can take many forms from the mundane impatience with inefficiency and ineffectiveness, to the loftier and even...
When asked to describe the qualities and practices of leadership ‘leading by example’ is a phrase that will be often repeated. But does that cut it? We are in a time of election, not just here in the UK but across the world. European elections are taking place. India has recently completed its polls and...
Running a ‘Leadership Lab’ last week with 30 people was a truly inspiring moment. It was building on two international conferences where we are exploring the principles of ‘new’ Leadership. In the Leadership Lab participants spoke of how they had stepped forward, across an internal threshold to assume an even greater level of presence, visibility...
It’s a question many employees may ask themselves from time to time. In March the latest Gallup poll suggested a concerning drop off in engagement over the four years since the start of the Pandemic especially among young and middle-age workers. Older millennials actively engaged in their work has fallen from 39 to 32% with...
“Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgiving, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” How often do you stop and really express your gratitude? It is so easy to get caught up in the many things that may be creating challenges in your day, your week, your life that the wonderful...
The current news agenda is awash with stories of deficit in ethical behaviour among leaders – the Vietnamese businesswoman convicted this week of siphoning £billions from a bank she owns 90% of, multiple fraud cases against an ex and wannabe again US president, and the Post Office scandal rumbles loudly on. Ethics and morals can...
On the whole, most leaders either love the generally fast pace of corporate life or, if they don’t, have learnt how to work within it without being mown down by it. It can be exhilarating and full of passion and true creativity but more often than not it tends to result in an almost robotic...
We could be forgiven for thinking big talk describes the kind of boastful and often unsubstantiated, self-aggrandising, other-blaming claims broadcast by leaders in the public eye. Let’s face it there’s a lot of this about and a particularly consistent example across the Pond. However, big talk is about something much deeper and higher and a...