We wanted to invigorate a leadership development programme, and had some ideas about how we might blaze a trail for our people to be “thought leaders”. How that situation came about was recounted in our last post. When we tried to figure out what it was we needed to introduce, the words that hit home most were “Creative Leadership”. Here, we want to say a little more about the thinking we engaged in to come up with a sequence of five elements for our programme and what those were. And we hope these may be helpful to you, as a template that can be applied and experimented with in different ways. Continue reading »
You know what they say: “It’s been a journey”. I say it glibly, with my tongue firmly placed in my cheek. This saying, (familiar to most for all the wrong reasons) has become very clichéd since the likes of X Factor and other similar Saturday night TV talent shows have claimed it for their own. Never one to want to run with the crowd, I hold my breath and say instead: “Maybe, I have grown – no that’s not it…hmmm – I think I have learnt a lot!”
Let me set the scene. It is mid-May 2013. Imagine if you will, my thought processes. I am trying to bring to life an idea that has been germinating in my mind for more than a year, about how to invigorate the core Leadership programme for developing the managers of our organisation. There seemed to be something missing from our development mix, some skills these people needed that we hadn’t covered, but I couldn’t put my finger on what these were. Continue reading »
As a leadership trainer, I am always interested in current thinking on how to be an effective leader. The age old conundrum of “are leaders born or made” confounds me daily. With the resignation of Sir Alex Ferguson and the recent death of Margaret Thatcher, I am utterly spellbound by the success of our most high profile leaders. Continue reading »