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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!
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.
My second session of the day is with Jeremy Snape from Sporting Edge @thesportingedge – ex England cricketer and now a sports psychologist – and holds the world record for the slowest bowler!
The CIPD use some of Jeremy’s models and approaches in their L&D qualification.
Jeremy’s big failure on the cricket pitch raised the question for him about what it is that means people thrive or fall in those situations when the pressure’s on. This led him to study sports psychology at Loughborough Uni (great university! #biased!). Reminds me of Kim Morgan’s piece for the #blogcarnival about the conditions needed for learning to occur. In addition to psychology he’s spoken to neuroscientists to get a rounded view.
In a couple of months, on 10th and 11th May, the Olympia in London will become home to the CIPD Learning & Development Show.
It’s a fantastic learning event – whether you go to the Conference sessions, spend your time on the Exhibition floor and in the taster sessions, or talking to fellow delegates – there’s something for everyone!
A week ago on 9th March was the latest Learn > Connect > Do : an event held quarterly in Leicester which is for people professionals who care about making work better through doing great people stuff. These are also people who care about giving back while they learn and I’m delighted that we raised a fantastic £130 for Twenty:Twenty through ticket sales. This will enable a young person to get support with transport costs to get to their local centre to learn, or to go for a day out to celebrate their learning successes! And even more than that, with the professional backgrounds we have there are so many other ways delegates can get involved and support these young people into jobs they might never have considered an option before.