-
Is your office really full of divas, or do you just need to recruit better?
In the past few months I’ve had similar conversations – albeit with different specifics – with three business founders. Each of these discussions touched on the instances whereby there is a culture of staff who seemingly resent having to do extra work or push back when the flexibility of their working lives are impacted by…
-
25 Micro-Habits of High Impact Managers
“Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.” – Peter Drucker A while ago, I read an article on leadership habits by Tamnay Vora, who said: “Managers are linchpins who have a big impact in building…
-
Voice notes at work?
Some years ago – before remote working was a standard ‘thing’ – one of my co-workers used to leave voice messages on Slack and Whatsapp. No one really liked it, and it became a bit of a running joke (albeit one she was aware of). But she persisted. As trends go, it’s hard to find…
-
Personal Responsibility vs Leadership Responsibility
“It’s not my responsibility” I spotted a graphic on LinkedIn recently which talked about personal responsibility (it was similar to the first image below). It’s premise was around healthy boundary setting. The problem was that the creator of the graphic had posted it into a LinkedIn group around leadership, and I couldn’t help feel like…
-
Watch: 7 recycled Disney Scenes
Anyone else feel like a bit of their childhood has gone forever? Have you ever watched a Disney scene and got a sense of déjà vu? Well it turns out that isn’t suprising, because Disney has recycled scenes from loads of their movies. Once you’ve seen the sequences side-by-side, you’ll be amazed at just how…
-
Identifying your leadership strengths – an exercise
Whilst working with a newly promoted leader last week he was wondering what type of leader he ‘should’ be. He’d clearly got a solid idea about what leadership is and what ‘good’ looks like, but he wasn’t clear about his own style and where to leverage his strengths. In truth, he’d got himself into a…
-
Who’s on your personal board?
Everyone needs a team of people, a personal board who can provide support throughout their life. These are the people you can call when faced with day-to-day decisions, crossroads and challenges, or just to lend an ear. You might ask for their insight or ideas, their point of view of feedback and encouragement. The members…
-
How do I improve my motivation to exercise? 10 science-backed tips
A few of you responded to my article a few weeks ago in which I wrote about my dwindling motivation towards exercise since completing my half marathon at the end of last year. Since it seems a few of us are in the same boat, I thought I would share these ten tips from Positive…
-
Are you (really) listening? A simple exercise to gauge how good a listener you are…
At the beginning of this year, I held a workshop with 25+ people from the team at JAA, a media agency in London. The workshop was all about inspiring individuals to have more commercially curious conversations in 2023 – challenging them on how they might be able to better serve clients and in turn impact…
-
5 things high performing teams do differently
An interesting piece of research from ignite80 that suggests that the highest-performing teams have found subtle ways of leveraging social connections during the pandemic to fuel their success. The findings offer important clues on ways any organisation can foster greater connectedness — even within a remote or hybrid work setting — to engineer higher-performing teams.…
-
Servant leadership – reasons you should be prioritising humble leadership
“If serving is below you, then leadership is beyond you” – Bishop Dale Bronner I’m forever reiterating to leaders I work with about the benefits of servant leadership. As an article in Harvard business Review pointed out, ‘By focusing too much on control and end goals, and not enough on their people, leaders are making it…
-
Most searched on Google 2022
Which questions were the most Googled in 2022? What trends were we interested in? Which TV series, actors and musicians were top of our search bar criteria? Here’s a summary of Google’s 2022 in search. The video is rousing too, a great two minute watch. Andy
-
Being accountable for accountability (where are you on the ladder?)
I talk about accountability a lot, and enjoyed this image I saw on LinkedIn recently with a homework example applied against the ‘accountability ladder’. Being accountable is one of the most important qualities of leadership, and also of just being a good human being. People with an Accountable mindset take responsibility for their actions, unlike…
-
Forming, storming, norming, performing. The four stages of team development
When teams are formed, they go through predictable stages of development. Recognising, understanding and responding to this development and performance ‘curve’ has the ability to transform good teams into great ones. A commonly used framework for these stages was developed in the mid 1960’s by Bruce W. Tuckman. His descriptions of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing provide…
-
What Does AI Mean for Writers? Be clear on who is holding the AI tool
Writing is easy. Great writing is almost impossible. As Seth Godin said: “If your work isn’t more useful or insightful or urgent than GPT can create in 12 seconds, don’t interrupt people with it. Technology begins by making old work easier, but then it requires that new work be better.” Above is a screen shot…
