Reading Time: 3 minutes I love the distinction that Kim Scott makes in her book ‘Radical Candor‘ [non-affiliate link] between rockstars and superstars. And I think it has huge implications for how we lead, manage, and shape teams in our workplaces. Rockstars vs Superstars – the definitions 🌟 Rockstar: a solid, stable performer on a gradual growth trajectory, or …
Is Your Team Made Up of Rockstars or Superstars? Read More »
Reading Time: 18 minutes My friend Karl Craig-West hosted me on his podcast to talk about how to use your Genius strengths to do more of what you love. We talk about how you can figure out and use your Genius strengths, how to spot and collaborate with other people’s strengths, and how to use your unique strengths to …
Podcast Appearance: How to Use Your Genius Strengths to Do More of What You Love Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes Life tends to serve me up metaphors at every turn – and the last day of 2021 gave me a fantastic object lesson in my attitude towards mistakes. The Great Pizza Disaster of 2021 My lovely partner bought me a pizza stone for Christmas. I already had one, but wanted another so we could cook …
What A Pizza Disaster Can Teach Us About Mistakes Read More »
Reading Time: 2 minutes I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the concept of “wicked problems”. More and more, we’re facing complex and challenging issues as individuals, partners, parents, work teams and as a society. So what should we do when we’re faced with a problem that doesn’t have a simple solution? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as finding …
Reading Time: 5 minutes The old practice of business leadership is to use one approach no matter what the situation is or who is involved. It’s the “if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” style of leadership. A newer style of leadership is situational, where you pick from one of four approaches, based on …
Why You Need To Practice Strategically Flexible Leadership Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutes Since early 2020, all of the focus about flexible work seems to be on what arrangements need to be made for workers to get things done, and not on how they need to be led. That needs to change. Here I introduce an approach I have called Strategically Flexible Leadership, which I believe addresses the …
Why Are We Ignoring The Need For Strategically Flexible Leadership? Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutes Back in my early 20s, I was given a piece of advice, and told that it works in every situation that humans face. I initially couldn’t (or rather, wouldn’t!) accept the idea that it could apply in every context. And I tried really hard to imagine a situation in which it wouldn’t work… but even …
The Best and Wisest Piece of Advice I Ever Received Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes Appreciative Inquiry is a method for solving problems and implementing change by focusing on the positive. It emerged from the work of David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva in the late 1980s, and has since been used by businesses, teams and organisations around the world. The Ai (1) approach is perfectly aligned with the strengths-led approach, …
The Link Between Appreciative Inquiry and Strengths Read More »
Reading Time: 6 minutes An emotion wheel is a great visual aid to help us identify how we’re feeling, and also to expand our emotional vocabulary. Being able to identify emotions is a key building block of emotional intelligence. According to PositivePsychology.com, there are around 34,000 human emotions (I’ve collected about a thousand of them in this post). How …
How to use an emotion wheel to build your emotional intelligence Read More »
Reading Time: 6 minutes As I wrote the title to this article, I wondered how many people would read it and think that I had mis-spelled “business” as “busyness”. After all, a number of problems that we face in society today can be attributed to worshipping business as though it is the only legitimate human pursuit, and the only …
