Thinking on leadership, culture, and the conversations that matter.
Written by Jo Andrews. No frameworks for the sake of it. No theory without application. Just honest thinking about what it actually takes to lead well, and what gets in the way.
Hands up if you enjoy having tricky conversations…. Yeah, thought not. Telling someone that their performance isn’t good enough, or that they didn’t get the job, or that there’s been a client complaint against them and so on, isn’t usually at the top of our ‘want to do’ list. And if you’ve got some Dog traits (go here if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about) then you may have a tendency to skim over the uncomfortable bits and focus on the good news. Why? Because we don’t want to upset the other person, or we don’t want an argument or we feel bad or….. What we tend to forget is that if the boot were on the other foot, … Read more
Values – yay or nay? I think absolutely, with some caveats. After all, if you’ve got the right values in place for your company and your culture, they really can be a game changer and provide a framework for building trust throughout the organisation. What I often find is that when a company leader approaches me about leadership training because performance/results/growth isn’t where it needs to be, s/he is surprised at how much focus I put on getting the right values in place. After a big of digging, it often transpires that yes, company values exist but in reality they are little more than words on a website; a tick box exercise. Values are only really effective when there is … Read more
This is probably the question I get asked the most often (after ‘can you hear me, am I on mute?’) It’s a great question and it won’t surprise you to hear that it’s not a straightforward answer. If you’d have asked me in the 80’s, (which you wouldn’t have done, because I’d have been at school….) then I would confidently say that the majority of corporate leaders would have had Lion as their top influencer; being ‘the boss’, barking instructions, intimidating staff and defaulting to a controlling position. Thankfully, we now see that as old fashioned leadership. Don’t get me wrong, embracing your Lion traits at the right moment is not wrong. With Lion as my second influencer, I’m absolutely … Read more
I ended the first half of 2022 with a day I won’t forget in a hurry. I was doing a lunchtime webinar on turning tricky conversations into collaborations – great! In the morning, my website was hacked and went offline – not great! So just as a load of people were trying to take the TRAIT test, they couldn’t access it. But you know how lovely people are, they were patient and kind (actually, they were on mute, so there wasn’t much they could say…!) Now there’s always a positive when we’re faced with negatives and the clear positive here is that I’ve managed (with the help of my amazing husband) to get a brand new website up within 24 … Read more
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