Recently in Leadership Category

As always the New Year brings about the opportunity to re-energise, refresh and re-frame our way of thinking and being. It's something about renewal and closure that though the opportunity is open to us all year round, the start of a new year acts as a catalyst.

So what are your challenges for the 2009? As a leader within your business, what are your thoughts, planing to do more of the same, ramp it up? Whatever your thoughts, the work of Kouzes & Posner will go along way to helping guide your thoughts.

The brightest and the best leaders often fail, strangely (for them) not because of a technical inability but because of behavours that detract from their capacity to deliver.

Timothy Gallwey author of the 'innergame of work' came up with a simple equation P=p-i (Performance=Potential-Interference) and it this interference that often dilutes a leaders capacity to succeed.

Welcome policy makers, journalists, influencers, opinion formers....in short, everyone that the City of Birmingham has always wanted to get to see our city........and love it.

Well here they are, thousands and thousands of them. The Conservative Conference is indeed causing excitement.

And I know that Birmingham will not let itself down. And here is a countdown of some of the greatest things about this city which they will love:

1. The bill will not arrive before you have finished your coffee after dinner

2. The ICC is actually a world class venue

3. Authentic Baltis

4. If you ask someone for directions, people will be happy to help

Ok over to you, what else will they love?

Debating the big issues is never easy. Perhaps that's why we elect our leaders, choosing people capable of seeing and delivering a vision (?).

I've seen important staff meetings called to give employees a voice in the future structure of an organisation dissolve into small-minded debates about the tea and coffee fund - because people can't grasp or don't want to face up to the bigger issue.

What's more important? The future shape of public transport, or the colour of the trams? The development strategy for a town centre, or the colour of the lampposts? Both these are based on a true stories.

So the Birmingham Post report of a city council debate on climate change makes very depressing reading.

Why should use an experienced consultant to help with change?

Mario Andretti said,

So it feels right to many Business Drivers to create change, to shake things up or at the very least to enable change that facilitates results. Can't really argue with that.

20 years ago 'stability' was the by-word of the shareholder and the markets, as without stability you are playing games with someone else's pension fund, back then markets were closed or undeveloped, which meant you either refined you organization or grew it......simple, safe and satisfying.

But hey times they are a changing. Not at the rate the doom mongers would have us believe but subtlety, slowly. Consider petrol used to be under a pound and then it switched from gallons to litres, it's now nearly £5 and you are used to it. They changed the pound note to a pound coin and you spend it that much easier, because you are not breaking into a note and you are used to it. They leak the fact that a tax will be £100, then when it comes out its £50, but that's so much less than you'd got used to it being, it feels like a sale even though originally you'd have been annoyed at £20 and you are used to it.

I'm going to tell you a story about a new manager; he's 34 years old, a dedicated and highly intelligent individual, used to succeeding in life through a high work ethic and a strong line of sight on the end goal.

Promoted to a senior role in a high brand recognition business, he deserved it and started to prove that the promotion was valid and pave the way for even greater opportunities. This showed itself in the way he didn't delegate and I'd go so far as to say in the way that he wouldn't delegate.

As each task came in this chap took it on himself and his workload increased, never mind what this was doing to his team, the belief started to be that they just weren't trusted and people became disaffected and they then started to complain to his line manager (a senior partner in the business). The Senior Partner reacted in a very measured way, first of all he gathered the team together and telling them he'd listened very seriously to what they had to say he asked them a simple question, "Do you trust me?"