Are you listening to me? Listening is the ability to receive and interpret messages in a communication process. Without being able to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood and communication breaks down. Various studies demonstrate that many of us spend 70% to 80% of our waking hours in some form of communication. During that time…
It’s hard to be a leader in the best of times, but the Covid-19 pandemic crisis has suddenly and dramatically upended the working world as we know it, creating unanticipated business and leadership challenges that were unthinkable 18 months ago. Leaders must now dig deep into their skill sets to meet the challenges of a…
Inspiring Leadership Stories Inspiring leadership stories comes not just from decision making and strategy, it comes from risk taking, going against the grain, often when you’re driven by a higher cause, a deep care for others or a complete conviction that you’re acting for the greater good. Here we weigh up some of the successes…
In early 2020, I left my house in the suburbs to give a talk to a group of formidable women in the heart of Dublin city centre. As was normal then, the morning traffic was building on the streets, although the day had quite broken. Buses, bikes, and those amazing people who run to work…
Whilst East Asia has been praised for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic faster and better than most of the West, it’s not been without its challenges, and with no end in sight, it continues to be a work in progress. As every country struggles with the economic impact of the pandemic, every leader has at…
What is your organisation’s story? Who wrote it? Who is telling it? If you’re in a leading position in your organisation and are puzzled by these questions, you may have a problem. That’s because if you don’t know your story, you’ve almost certainly lost control of it. Let me tell you a story. A year…
Do you trust your team? Remember a moment when you were working in a team and could express yourself comfortably, without boundaries, assumptions or, fear? Were you able to express your best ideas? Did you feel like creativity was bursting through your body and mind? That could be a momentum of psychological safety built in…
I do not know of a single organisation at the moment that is not going through change and adapting quickly to the COVID crisis. Much of the change is forced by the circumstances we face. Few organisations three or five year strategic plans had factored in a global pandemic. So it is no wonder that…
Regardless of the reason; a new year, a change in circumstance, feeling stifled or unfulfilled, a desire for something new, a mid-career change can be an exciting but daunting prospect. While taking a socially distanced walk with a friend in our local park, he shared that he was considering a career change after 25 years…
Why is leadership resilience so important? The global pandemic we are all experiencing is showing us that in our increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, leadership needs to enable agility, change, constant adaptation and collaborative innovation. More than that, it needs to also provide for the support and the trust many are currently missing: we…
In an ever more multi polar world our concepts of culture are evolving. In progress now is a shift, away from pre-eminently western ways of understanding the world towards worldviews that include diverse eastern and southern perspectives. In this world, the ability to ‘read’, see and sense these varied perspectives and respond to them, and…
I am of that generation (just) that assumed they’d have fairly simple career path. A directionless school career followed by a less than vocational degree, a few short-term jobs and a slew of post-graduate degrees finally landed me in a university lectureship. And that was going to be it, as I thought, until retirement. A…
