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I read this article tonight.
Possibly the most common situation at any level of leadership : Overloaded leaders because half their time is spent solving problems that aren’t theirs to solve. Resulting in teams who don’t believe they’re capable because every time the leader solves for them it tells the team they can’t.
Jon was a confident leader. Passionate about his business and his products and had a clear vision of the kind of culture he wanted to create: famous in the market for creating a workplace that people look forward to getting to every day and which got talked about as the place to be, all of which meant his teams consistently exceeded what customers expected.
Simon Heath shared this the other day…..
I’d been thinking that same day about this very topic. It was something that came up on my Team Coaching course last year where we agreed that this supposedly soft stuff is really the hard stuff.
I have a hypothesis that, eons ago at the beginning of business time, men realised this stuff was hard – because it requires you to accept feedback, to be introspective and vulnerable, to look into yourself, accept your imperfections and still like yourself, and to embrace the real-world truth that you have opportunities to develop. Whether so confident that they really believed themselves perfect, or so enshrined in imposter syndrome that they feared being found out, these business “leaders” put the people stuff in a box over there.
A couple of weeks ago it was CIPD NAP – an amazing event on the CIPD calendar! All organised from start to finish by volunteers, all of whom have a huge passion for making work better, and created for a community of generous, friendly, positive and helpfully curious delegates. But no event is perfect. Nothing in life is. And something which wasn’t so perfect on the Friday night prompted a connection for me back into work and a challenge I often hear from leaders…….
After a slight delay because of the fabulous #CIPDNAP17 last Friday and Saturday, here’s a peak at what we did at Learn > Connect > Do on Thursday 8th June.
We had a small and perfectly formed group on the day – a great mix of in-house and freelance people, and it was fantastic to have Olivia from Twenty:Twenty there – her first event since we began our partnership this year, and which resulted in some opportunities for Twenty:Twenty to get involved with delegates’ businesses, supporting disadvantaged young people into work 🙂 – hooray!
The CIPD Northern Area Partnership Event is back on 9th and 10th June with a focus this year on Enhancing the Employee Experience. The thing I love most about NAP is the sense of community it creates, and so the purpose of this post is, yes, to tell you about what I’m up to at NAP this year, and it’s also to tell you about all the many, many ways you can connect with the fantastic HR and L&D community both online and in real life to extend your learning.
Last week at the CIPD L&D Show I – not surprisingly – was drawn to a number of sessions that were talking about coaching cultures and developing leaders as coaches. After day 1 Simon Heath posted his reflections from what he’d heard – and then drawn – and which I shared with this thought…..
Final session of the show! It’s been a ball!!
This one is with Sandra Nixon of QVC and Rhonda Howarth from Nestle who are talking about how to develop line managers to have effective coaching conversations. A coaching leadership style is essential to operate effectively in today’s world and for a line manager it can’t always be about sitting for hours having in-depth coaching sessions but about making it a fluid part of your everyday way of working. I’m interested to see what QVC’s and Nestle’s takes are on it.
Session by Susan Kahn from The School of Life.
Susan says she constantly comes across the burden of self on others and the need for commitment and courage to look to yourself to uncover your strengths and weaknesses so that you can learn how to be your best to have your intended impact on others. This is especially true for leaders who have a proportionately greater impact through how they behave.
Session 1 of Day 2 at the L&D Show and I’m in a session about Decision Making Under Pressure with Prof Vincent Walsh (@vinwalsh) of UCL. Nice that he’s also given his email for contact vin.walsh@gmail.com.
Health warning – As you read further there are men vs women statements. These are shown in research to be the broadly consistent behaviours observed across the genders. And they aren’t exclusively true. Please don’t believe these are “rules” which apply to all the men or women all the time, they do however apply to most people most of the time.