Thoughts

Before you check out for the year (at least in the southern hemisphere, where summer holidays beckon!), now’s a good time to reflect on what you’ve learned in the past 12 months. You’ve come a long way since January. What has living another year taught you? Here are three things I’ve learned this year: Experiment […]

I’ve just spent the past week meeting with a range of leaders to debrief their 360-degree feedback. They work for the same organisation, which is going through a sustained period of huge turbulence and change (sound familiar?) As the week unfolded, I noticed an interesting theme emerging: the leaders who were rated the most effective […]

Last week, I was invited, along with a number of others, to a lunch meeting to help out a colleague who was looking for fresh ideas on where to take her career. The conversation was lively and engaging, and my colleague came away with a plethora of new ideas – in fact, way more than […]

Lessons from the Bush #2 In my last post, I wrote about my family’s experience of taking a circuit breaker: three months of living simply and adventuring in the Western Australian outback. Here’s another insight about living and leading from that amazing trip. We’d been travelling two months, and were happy, tanned and scruffy. We’d […]

Lessons from the Bush* #1 I’ve recently returned from an amazing three-month trip with my family in the wilds of the Kimberley region in Western Australia. After being back into the ‘real’ world (as some would say) for a few weeks, some interesting and useful insights about leadership and life have bubbled to the surface. […]

Busy? Sure! Getting stuff done? You bet. Learning? Hmmm… For most of us, the days can fly by, largely shaped by to-do lists, back-to-back tasks, and meetings. Business activities. Busyness activities. I assume the idea behind all of this is that if we get through all of the activities, we’ve done a good day’s work. […]

  A man sits down at a piano and prepares to play. When he starts, it’s not what you might expect. Take a few moments to go on this musical and emotional journey with Eric Lewis. You don’t need to watch the whole thing if you don’t have time – just a few minutes will […]

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 […]