“Real communication happens when we feel safe” (Ken Blanchard – The Heart of a Leader) Not making time to listen with your heart is a huge barrier to effective communication. To achieve understanding and ultimately oneness, time needs to be invested in any relationship to enable empathic listening. Empathic people learn to see things through…
The current world economic context is dismal, to say the least – financial analysts and the World Bank continue to predict slow growth, volatile markets and the possibility of ongoing disruptive wars and global climate disaster events. Governments are attempting to send the “right messages” internationally to continue attracting investment, and fiscal efficiencies, disciplined spending…
“In a child’s lunchbox are a mother’s thoughts” (Japanese Proverb) On occasion, I also took my turn as a parent preparing lunches for my children when they were in junior school. I was not that creative I guess in what I prepared but was very creative in the way that I cut the sandwiches –…
Emotional expression is part of being human – emotions need to be communicated, shared and debriefed whether they are positive or negative in their origin. All emotions need resolution – joyous news needs to be celebrated together with others; sadness needs empathy and closeness within meaningful relationships. The work environment is no exception as it,…
The ability of the leader to connect emotionally with employees and drive performance does not just stem from the leader’s mood or ability to say the right thing, but also from a number of coordinated activities that comprise particular leadership styles. Daniel Goleman (Primal Leadership) notes: “The best, most effective leaders act according to one…
In our current turbulent business environment, organisations worldwide are finding it necessary to adapt to ever-changing financial circumstances, revisit product offerings for more nuanced customer needs and strive for innovation and creative solutions to stay ahead of the game. The quest for sustainable growth requires the adoption of new technologies, process re-engineering, restructuring, culture change…
In previous and perhaps more stable eras, transformation in business was not that important, or seemingly so. The name of the game was securing a strong market position and retaining it. As John P Kotter notes in “The Heart of Change”, this philosophy underpinning business security was “build a big moat around a castle, keep…
“Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end” (Robin Sharma) Change initiatives and their accompanying strategies need to be communicated effectively so as to create both understanding and gut-level buy-in. In successful change efforts, the “big picture” and strategy are not locked in a room with the leadership team….
Some teams feel uncomfortable making important decisions. The team members rely on the wisdom of the manager to direct them, their goals, and their targets. They wait to be told what to do and don’t plan their approach to tasks that need to be accomplished. The resultant dysfunctionality leads to necessary micro-management from the leader…
“If you are a good leader, people will respect and admire you. If you are a great leader, people will respect and admire themselves” (Unknown) Leaders that resonate with their subordinates with respect to the very essence of being human matters more than anything else along the journey into the future. The old model of…
“I write about broken people who need other people in order to go on. But those are the only kind of people I know to exist. We are all broken” (John Green) Kintsugi, or “golden joinery”, also known as kintsukuroi, or “golden repair”, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or…
“It is unfortunate that for some, kindness is an unwarranted expenditure, compassion an avoidable weakness, and love an unnecessary gamble” (Wayne Gerard Trotman) An orthopaedic surgeon, Bill, finally finished his last surgery well into the evening on that Friday and just wanted to get back home to be with his family, possibly go out for…
