Category: General Leadership

The Role of a Leader: Performance & Engagement
Communicating with Impact
Cultural Interpersonal Effectiveness

COVID-19: the sequel

The curse of the virus

“May you live in interesting times,” states the Chinese curse.  Courtesy of a global pandemic that arose in Wuhan in the Chinese province of Hubei, we certainly are.  (Conspiracy theorists may counter that America introduced the virus covertly into China, see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/12/conspiracy-theory-that-coronavirus-originated-in-us-gaining-traction-in-china.)  The world is in lockdown.  Even President Trump has had to backtrack from saying it was a non-event and all would be sorted by Easter to saying things are going to get far worse.  The picture of the huge US navy hospital ship, USNS Comfort, entering New York harbour is deeply dispiriting.

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Quick Coaching Tools – Remote Coaching

Don’t stop coaching because you are working from home. Remote Coaching will be more important than ever during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Remote Coaching is one of my Quick Coaching Tools. They are exactly what the title suggests. Short snippets of coaching tips, tools and ideas for you to use on a just-in-time basis. Use them as an update and to refresh your coaching practice and professionalism. You could call it coaching in a hurry!

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Tell your story, we want to hear it…

A recipe for understanding people’s stories.

I have been fortunate enough to be part of a company that keeps transforming constantly at a pace that keeps everyone embracing change as a normal part of evolution.  During this evolution I have been surrounded at all levels by brilliant and energetic colleagues who have contributed to my growth in so many ways.   

I have never been good at embracing my story, but when I lost my mother, I started reflecting on my time with her and how she influenced me.  By looking back at these memories, I encountered a feeling of passion for what I do and how relevant I can be for the stories of those around me.

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Make Pace, Not War

Leaders Battle with Time

Having spent the last week training with senior leaders in a professional services firm, one of the clearest things they lack is time. Keeping the group focussed on our work while they tend to the needs of their clients and teams can be a frustrating challenge but there simply aren’t enough minutes in the hour for them to do their job. I sympathise with them because after an intensive nine-hour day in the training room, they then have hours of work to catch up on before joining us again the following morning.

It’s an impossible equation. How can leaders make enough time for all of the elements of their life, personal and professional, without feeling like they are failing in one or the other? In my experience, work always wins.

This most recent programme ended with presentations and vision statements for the future. One of the starkest things to emerge from this, though, was when they took more time, the message they were trying to deliver landed more powerfully and more clearly. Further than that, the sense of ownership they had over the message was far more keenly felt by the audience. For many of the group, this was a revelation.

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Leadership and the role of aligning organisational and personal values

Defining and agreeing on ‘values’ in strategic planning and subsequent behaviours in daily routines.

Two recent events in working with clients have been an interesting reminder of the need for defining and agreeing on organisational values in strategic planning and subsequent behaviours in daily routines. 

Both businesses are in engineering, with similar sizes of staff levels. Both were overhauling and re-writing strategic plans.

Company ‘A’ was writing the plan because, amongst other things, of an imminent customer – and industry approval – audits. On a different tack, company ‘B’s reason was it wanted to set the ‘True North’ direction of the business for the next three years – and beyond.

A key point here is that values are both current ‘the way we act do now’ and future, or espoused values and ‘the way we will act in the future’. Or the collective behaviours in pursuit of the strategic goals.

The process and outcome of the respective ‘Values Alignment’ for company ‘A’ and ‘B’ could not have been further apart…

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It’s not what you’ve got…

Leading is a privilege. It’s not what you’ve got … it’s what you do with it. All about getting a grip of your leadership coaching role.

As the person responsible for our approach to fairness in the organisation I am often struck with a sense of imposter syndrome, because the fact is, I’m a middle-aged white dude with a decent education who comes from a stable, supportive, nuclear family. Privilege you might say.

I have a great job, in a well-established, well respected business, that affords me the means to live in a nice house, drive a nice car and keep rabbits! How middle class could I be? Not to mention the fact that – for anyone that missed it – I referred to myself as a dude in the paragraph above!

So, when I’m asked to talk about our efforts in the area of equality or fairness, whilst I’m happy to do so, I often feel like a fraud. Let’s face it – what would I know about how it feels to face inequality?

Yet the portfolio remains mine and I continue to work hard to educate myself and push the agenda as part of all the work that we do – despite the niggle…

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Lent Leadership Lament: Top 5 things to give up for Lent

What are the negative leadership traits you will give up for Lent? Maybe the ‘luxuries’ of error, laziness and omission. I’ve found five, inspired by recent articles by Guest Authors on this Blog. What are your top 5?

Today is Shrove Tuesday. It is the traditional feast day before the start of Lent. Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter. This was traditionally a period of fasting and on Shrove Tuesday, Anglo-Saxon Christians went to confession and were ‘Shriven’ (absolved from their sins). Lent is also a time when people commit to giving up certain luxuries – hence the question “What are you giving up for Lent?” As you can see, I know today’s feast day as ‘Pancake Day’. And my plan is to give up pancakes for a year – until Shrove Tuesday comes around again in 2021.

Once again I have to remind myself this is a leadership blog, not a culinary one. So what can leaders give up for Lent? Maybe the ‘luxuries’ of error, laziness and omission. For inspiration I looked back at recent articles from our merry band of Guest Authors and came up with five negative traits leaders might consider giving up for Lent.

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Making Coaching Stick

As business leaders, Learning and Development professionals, coach trainers and educators, what can we do to help make coaching training really stick?

The case for sticky coaching

Many businesses expect to increase their spending on coaching in the coming years, both on external coaches and on developing their own internal coaches. It’s no surprise then to find that conversations are increasingly turning to how we can make sure that coach training, whether as a formal, ‘pre-contracted’ activity or as a more ad hoc approach to unlocking potential and improving performance, ‘sticks’. At NG Bailey we’re no different. Over recent years we’ve taken four steps that are starting to make a real difference in our quest for sticky coaching; I’d like to share them with you.

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My First Article in 2020: My Wish For You As A Leader

I want my first article of 2020 to be about what I wish for you as a leader.

There is a huge amount of experience and knowledge written on this web site. This article is about what I wish for you as a leader.

There is a lot of sharing and also learnings not only for those who read but for those who write these articles.

Rather than sharing my knowledge and experience once more, I’ve decided that today on my birthday (50 years old!), a day where before we blow out the candles on the cake we close our eyes and make a wish,  I want my first article of the year to be about what I wish for you as a leader.

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Listening Leadership: Getting Down on the Shop Floor

Leaders – get down on the shop floor. Walk and talk and listen. You’ll be surprised what everyone can learn.

There seems to be no shortage of books, articles, advice and wisdom on leadership styles and the characteristics of good leaders. Yet it seems that one small, but valuable, behaviour is often missing – or at best limited in practise. Particularly during organisational change and development. Getting down on the shop floor.

In using an analogy : when our son was small he often demanded that at playtime we, his family, ‘get down on the floor’ and join him on the family-room carpet in whatever he was playing with at that moment: making castles from wooden bricks, building Lego or Brio trains or simply drawing… 

Of course a small child’s world operates at that level and that we, as grown-ups, in encouraging play, fun and learning engaged with our son in his world, at his level.

Is there a parallel to ‘getting down on the floor’ with staff in the workplace? From experiences over the years it seems there is. Its getting down on the shop floor!

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