We speak of communities of practice, and some organisations will have a group or communities dedicated to people related themes such as diversity, LBGTQ+ or faith and yet we rarely think about community as the backbone of the organism. Yes, there will potentially be share of mind dedicated to the culture and yet even that...
Generosity. It may seem a little old fashioned, out of kilter with the pace of our world, the attention needed to get things done. Yet it is a quality and an energy that is transformative. Being generous with our time and attention elevates not only the quality and openness of our conversations but also the...
‘If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same’ (from Rudyard Kipling’s If) When one of the world’s leading female tennis players lost a major championship recently, she very publicly attributed the loss to her poor play rather than the winner’s skill. Only on reflection did she realise...
The current trend to create our own ‘mini-me’ doll image through AI will undoubtedly pass as something else captures our imagination. Of course, it’s a bit of fun and probably light relief in turbulent times but it is also a helpful reminder of where we might usefully put our focus. How good could our leadership...
In our interactions with others we can often assume that we are all having the same experience, viewing the situation similarly and extracting the same data. The reality is we are having entirely different experiences, picking up on very different things, seeing, and hearing, with different (literally) eyes and ears. If we imagine this in...
I’ve attended a few online sessions in the past couple of weeks. All of them promised learning (even in the fine print) yet turned out to be sales webinars aimed at getting people signed up for a range of support services or development programmes. Scanning the meeting Chat showed others were also feeling less than...
Skilful communication is one of the pre-requisites of leadership yet a few conversations in the past week have come as a reminder of how hard we can find it to get this right and how often neglected it is in race to deliver targets. Perhaps the problem is that we see it as a given....
When things go wrong it is, perhaps, human nature to seek the source of the fault, to lay blame, to want to know why it happened and who or what was responsible. It’s an all too easy road in organisational life, especially with the pressure to deliver results. Yet, it’s a road that can make...
Mostly our world seems geared to receive mode. The amount of information we’re deluged with daily is testament to how little we have to do to get information. Or is it? We face a number of challenges here. With so much data coming at us we may become a little lazier, try less to access...
Work is probably the only place we are forced into relationship with others rather than having the freedom to choose. From day one in any role, at whatever level, there are people we need to relate to well to enable our contribution, to get things done, to create a culture where people feel valued, and...