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A BRAVE NEW LEAD

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The future is here but what should we do with it, asks Martin Harder. A re-imagined leadership for the digital age is one which draws on a coaching style   A new era demands a new style of leadership. Today’s workplace is very different to that of 20, or even 10, years ago. Technological advances have brought companies much closer to their clients. With this, comes the need for re-skilling around how we live and work in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and the coming augmented reality. Adaptation to this disruption translates into how we think about work, leadership […]

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TROUBLESHOOTER – SUCCESS ON A BUDGET

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A company has set up leadership teams across Europe which must be bedded in – but on a budget. How can its HR director deliver while keeping costs down?   THE ISSUE Ann is HR director in a global manufacturing organisation. Five new leadership teams with different functions and line managers have recently been set up across five locations in Europe. With new products, ways of working and potential changes in legislation, Ann wants to provide individual support for these leaders over the next 12 months as they ‘bed in’ to their new roles. She also wants them to grow […]

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PULL TOGETHER

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‘Pairs coaching’ may be just what’s needed to support executive leaders to navigate and enhance relationships within extreme uncertainty and complexity, argue Baz Hartnell and Lucy Ball     Today’s senior leaders increasingly make huge decisions collectively about complex problems with no known answers. This requires a deeper understanding of relationships with peers and subordinates and how to enhance them. Augmenting existing one-to-one coaching programmes with ‘pairs coaching’ offers a powerful way to do this.   The challenges As individuals, organisational leaders may be super intelligent and have highly developed expert knowledge in their respective functional areas which has served them […]

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IT’S A FUNNY OLD WORLD

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In this column, we provoke fresh thinking and round up some of the weird, wonderful, quirky, surprising – and shocking – stories out there   Don’t bother rewinding Immediately re-watching lecture videos is a poor strategy for learning, just as is re-reading, suggests research published in Experimental Psychology. Re-reading is known to be a poor strategy as it’s too passive and lends itself to mind wandering – it’s better to test yourself on what you’ve read or explain it to yourself or someone else. And it’s the same with lecture videos, according to researcher Leonardo Martin and his team, in […]

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THREE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT: UNDO YOUR LIMITING BELIEFS

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Take a moment to think about ‘Leader’. What comes to mind? A heroic leader leading a charge into battle? A thought leader launching new ideas and new connections between ideas? A spiritual leader bringing their sense of life, community wisdom, meaning, connection to ‘the greater’? Maybe a business leader, or political leader or community leader or…? What do all these people have in common? There are endless books on leaders and theories on leadership, so fill this space with your favourite. Common themes include, for example, by comparing ‘leader’ and ‘manager’ archetypes, that a leader is creating a future different […]

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WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE – A PROFILE OF HEATHER COOPER

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To develop a business you must also develop its employees, says Heather Cooper, chief people officer of financial services giant Hargreaves Lansdown. As an executive coach she is bringing new thinking to this vital role. Interview by Liz Hall Heather Cooper is possibly the first female executive coach in the UK to be made a director in a FTSE 100 company. In November 2015, Cooper was appointed to the new role of chief people officer at Bristol-based financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown (HL). She was made a director last February (2017), joining the ranks of the 29% or so women […]

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TROUBLESHOOTER: EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE

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Two members of a leadership team are concerned about the stuckness of their organisation. So why is their CEO continually shutting down their concerns? The Issue Stephen and Jane are well-respected members of the leadership team of a public sector organisation in the UK. They’re in agreement that their organisation, while generally regarded as operating well, has stopped ‘moving forward’. In particular, they feel the management group at both senior and middle levels needs further investment in their leadership skills, and support in becoming more adaptive, for example. The chief executive (Karen) is someone they both respect deeply. However, their […]

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REFLECTIONS: IN THE SWIM OF THINGS

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Leadership is like standing in a fast-flowing stream. Either you’re anchored or you’re buffeted by currents. Coaching enables us to discover our truth By Lindsay Wittenberg Leaders I coach are, in a sense, standing in a stream that is the flow of their life at work – the living of their organisational culture. The water flows around some of them in eddies and currents in which they stand anchored and balanced. However, for many others the currents jostle them this way and that, challenging them to stay stable and upright on what they experience as a slippery and uneven surface […]

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STURGEON WILL MENTOR YOUNG WOMAN FOR A YEAR

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Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has launched a competition to find a woman between 18 and 23 years old to mentor for a year. She’s also called on women in leadership roles to follow her example and become mentors too. “I’m determined to play my personal part by becoming a mentor and I would urge other women in leadership roles to do the same. Together, we can be female role models for the next generation and encourage and empower young women to discover their own leadership potential,” she said. “It is not acceptable in 2017 for women to be under-represented in […]

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FIRST PERSON: NATIONAL GRID CASE STUDY

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Coaching is boosting performance and employee engagement at National Grid. Craig Rollason reports My first awareness of coaching was some 20 years ago, when my employer at that time introduced “coaching for excellence”, a two-day course based on the GROW model run by internally trained coaches. I really liked the concept – introducing a different type of conversation to normal struck a chord with me. At that time, coaching didn’t gain traction and despite the investment, it didn’t hold. On reflection, neither the organisation nor I was ready for it. As part of the course, I received a handy small […]

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