Thoughts

Stories. When you think about it, they’re all around us, and inside our heads. All day, every day. In fact, psychologist Robin Dunbar’s research suggests we are telling stories 65% of the time (a lot of the time, it’s gossip, but they are still stories). We all seem to use stories to communicate and connect […]

I’ve been working with a lot of clients lately who all seem to be in a similar space. Work is just crazy, and won’t let up. It’s not merely ‘busy’ – it’s something more. It’s not just a volume problem, it’s a complexity problem, and navigating a way forward is harder than ever. As someone […]

Whenever I’m working with leaders on their development, I find it useful to get a sense of where they are on the ‘career curve’. This helps us make sense of their context, and identify the most effective strategies that will help them keep moving forward. Here’s how I think about it:     This is […]

Here’s a simple thought experiment that I was kicking around with a client the other day. Imagine you go into work tomorrow and the volume’s turned down to zero. Stuff’s happening as it usually would, you just can’t hear anything. What activities would you see people doing? If it’s your standard white collar workplace, it’ll […]

“I’ve really been out of my comfort zone these past two weeks. It felt like I was learning a new job from day one. But I’ve learned and grown so much!” So said a client of mine on a coaching call earlier this week. She’d just finished a secondment on a high-profile project in an […]

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some talented managers in both London and Shanghai. They’re all facing a major business change in the form of a system implementation which will significantly alter their core business processes and keep them competitive. Think of it like when banks moved to online […]

Recently I hosted a breakfast session where the guest speaker was a well-respected senior leader. He’s regarded as a future CEO and has an impressive track record of delivering results, working across boundaries in gnarly situations, and developing people. And he’s never done any formal leadership training. The focus of his presentation was his own […]

Ever wondered what the actual role of a manager is? Last week, I was facilitating a leadership workshop with a group of mid-level managers. During the course of our discussions, one participant commented that they’d recently come across a team in their organisation that seemed to have achieved some sort of performance nirvana: they were […]

Last week a client said to me “leadership programmes are dying”. I disagree. Instead, I think they’re morphing. Leadership programmes of old were set-in-stone, prescribed, thou-shalt-follow-this-course style programes. They were created and rolled out in a context of command-and-control style organisational leadership. HR and L&D functions were positioned as the central point from which all […]

I came across this TED talk a couple of days ago. The first couple of minutes really grabbed me. In essence, he’s saying we overcook what leadership is all about. We fall into the trap of making it something special for special people. Opportunity lost, right there. I read an article some years ago that […]