Insights, updates and news

Its a potentially expensive process and one that many of us have had trouble getting right.  Using all of our experience, intuition and due-diligence measures, we still go into staff appointments with limited knowledge of how the new appointee will behave, or more importantly, how they will behave relative to the requirements of the role they’re being appointed to. There are of course generic or stereotypical behaviour sets that we require and expect of our appointee, e.g.: Accountants – meticulous and conscientious; Sales Executives – determined and dynamic; Personal Carers – empathic and kind… Whilst these stereotypes (as most stereotypes) give a ‘vibe’...

Perhaps you’ve seen this recent statement in business news? “CEO’s face skills worry”. The latest PwC annual CEO Survey of 1379 CEOs from 79 countries show a huge 77% of them are concerned about skills shortages in their workplaces. Specifically, Creativity and Innovation ,Leadership and Emotional Intelligence were the most sought after skills. We at Leadership At Work share the CEO’s concerns. In addition we are concerned about the skill levels in these critical areas amongst the CEOs themselves and their  Executive teams! For some time now we have conducted a tailored Leadership At The Top Workshop designed to equip...

Tony Abbot recently opined that Donald Trump didn’t have to be liked and didn’t have to be a Role Model – he had to be a leader. Tony Abbot was wrong!! Although leaders don’t always have to be liked, most research suggests that it does help.   As for being a Role Model, we know that that is an intrinsic element of effective leadership. Having conducted Leadership and Management Development Programs for thirty years we emphasise the essential difference between leadership and management: Leadership gives people a sense of why they get out of bed in the morning to go to work....

Organisations and Leaders throughout Australia are adopting the ideology of critical or 360 degree feedback methodology to build trust, accountability and shared power within teams in the name of performance improvement and sustainability. It is important to recognise that the process of critical feedback is as valuable as the content; when mistakes are made, the proposition of effective organisational culture can spin into an ugly tangle of mistrust, conflict and under-performance.  The critical feedback mechanism can become a forum of criticism and bullying, the direct opposite of the intention. The key determinant to whether we maintain effective critical feedback or step...