Leadership

Posts about Leadership of business, people and thought

Focus 3
Reading Time: 4 minutesBill Gates achieved monumental success with Microsoft, and attributes “focus” as the key to his success. He stated “maintaining focus is a key to success. You should understand your circle of competence and spend your time and energy there…I’ve learned that only through focus can you do world-class things, no [...]

Focus on Focus

Milestones 2
Reading Time: 7 minutesThere are many theories on implemnting change effectively. Many originate with leadership and change management guru, John Kotter. A professor at Harvard Business School and world-renowned change expert, Kotter introduced his eight-step change process in his 1995 book, “Leading Change” with a follow-up work “Our Iceberg is Melting” in 2006. Step [...]

Implementing Change Effectively

Dodo
Reading Time: 4 minutesWith today’s rapidly evolving technology and business markets in their most challenging time for decades, companies rise and fall faster than ever before. Leaders must constantly anticipate the market and their customer needs and that sometimes means you need to make changes – be that processes, products, organisational structure, or even the [...]

Dead as a Dodo…..Why Teams Don’t / Won’t Change

The Collaborator 3
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn the world of social media and ‘crowd-sourcing’, surely The Collaborator is the best leadership style for our times? The Collaborator is a very open and collective leader in running a team. Ideas move freely amongst the group and are discussed openly. Everyone is given a seat at the table, [...]

The Collaborator – Leadership Styles ~ Part 4

The Oracle 2
Reading Time: 3 minutesWelcome to Part 3 of Leadership Styles: The Oracle The late, great and inspirational Steve Jobs made a statement that neatly introduces The Oracle leadership style: ‘Leaders are fascinated by the future, you are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply [...]

The Oracle – Leadership Styles – Part 3

Coaching Team 3
Reading Time: 4 minutesWelcome to Part 2 of Leadership Styles: The Coach Author, educator, and motivational speaker, Dr. William Arthur Ward wrote a phrase that I try to remember. It gives me personal strength to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing – ‘The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. [...]

The Coach ~ Leadership Styles – Part 2

Leader Terminator 7
Reading Time: 3 minutesLeadership style is something I’ve been pondering for a while now. I’ve been lucky to have met and worked with many great leaders over my career and I’ve also met and worked for some that, shall we say, could have done with some development and coaching. I don’t like putting people into [...]

The Terminator ~ Leadership Styles – Part 1

Word Cloud - Elephant in the Room 3
Reading Time: 7 minutesI see two distinct types of ‘Elephant’ in my line of work…and two ways of tackling them. The Management Elephant and the Leadership Elephant. This blog focusses on the latter. If you missed Part 1 – An Elephant in the Room: Management breakthroughs, and are wondering what on earth I’m [...]

An Elephant in the Room Part 2 – Leadership Breakthroughs

Listen to your People
Reading Time: 3 minutesFor a while now I’ve worked with developing my direct team into being more… More focused, more passionate, delivering more and being more commercially and customer focused. And to a large degree we’ve succeeded. I’m really proud of them and what we’ve achieved so far. But to really succeed and make a step change in our [...]

Stop listening …. and give up!

Mark Conway 1
Reading Time: 5 minutesThanks to those of you who took the time to complete the recent Top Leadership Challenges poll. The top 3 challenges as voted for by Think Oak! readers are: 1. Creating a high performance culture How leaders believe things should get done is a key driver of culture. Leaders establish [...]

Top Leadership Challenges – The Results

, Tree, Mark Conway, Oak Consult 3
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn my experience, over performance in business can’t happen consistently without building powerful relationships. Similarly, if you look at underperformance in your team, you will often find that it is the lack of powerful relationships or broken relationships that are the cause. There is no quick fix….sorry. BUT, if you invest time, honesty, passion and [...]

10 ways for building powerful relationships

1
Reading Time: 3 minutesI’m not sure who came up with the phrase – ‘There’s no ‘I’ in team’, and I’m sure it was meant with good intentions – focussing everyone on team work and collective goals and not individual egos. I’ve always used the hugely clever and witty repost whenever anyone has said [...]

There’s no I in Team…but there is an ‘M’ and ...

Reading Time: 2 minutesBusiness people are often very poor at thinking about who would take their place, their successor, should the worst happen to them. Who should you be starting to coach to be your second in command? Well, here are some thoughts on the kind of individual you’re looking  for (not in any particular [...]

15 Ways To Find Your Successor

Reading Time: 2 minutesMost people on earth with a TV have watched Star Wars. In ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, Yoda, the iconic Jedi Master says one line that has stuck with me ever since… “Do or do not. There is no try.” Those with passion, confidence and belief – Do; those without passion, [...]

Yoda said: ‘Do or do not. There is no try!’

Reading Time: 2 minutesThanks to all of you that contributed to my recent poll on Leadership Qualities. The results are in and the top 3 qualities of a leader as voted for by Think Oak! followers are: 1. Great Communicator Great leaders know how to deliver their message in a way that will create a [...]

Top 3 Qualities of a Leader

13
Reading Time: 3 minutesI’ve just got back from a few days away with the family at Center Parcs in Nottinghamshire (UK). We had a great time…and whilst Center Parcs is not everyone’s thing, we love it there – It’s very relaxing and there’s something to do for most people with most budgets. I’ve [...]

Customer Service ~ Basil Fawlty or Walt Disney

Reading Time: 2 minutesI’ve had the pleasure over the last few weeks to come into contact with a number of people who have really inspired me. Some have been inspiring me for a number of years, some I’ve only just met. But what is it that makes someone inspirational? I’ve come up with a [...]

What makes someone inspirational?