Each year, All TEC Day challenges hundreds of CEOs around the country to reflect on the future of leadership. Two of the themes for this year really stood out to me, especially as the full range of their impacts remains to be seen. The first concerns the idea of leading with authenticity. We've all seen the damage - reputational and otherwise...
Why does your organisation exist? Harvard Professor Dr Rosabeth Moss Kanter wrote that "great companies identify something larger than transactions to provide purpose and meaning" and went onto suggest that every organisation needs to be able to explain or justify its place in society. This is a wonderful challenge when undertaking strategic effort of any sort. One social enterprise organisation I chair has...
When it comes to goal setting, people are more likely to have business goals rather than personal ones. My approach is to ensure leaders are able to recognise and manage the inevitable imbalance between achieving both work and life goals. People use popular frameworks such as SMART or Objective Key Results (OKR), often missing an important step, which is the why. Whether your aim is business or...
Leadership fundamentally involves three main elements: people, change and risk, as well as the preparedness to fail whilst trying for greatness. However, of all the changes currently affecting the business environment, it could be the leader's approach to risk that is changing the most. An Ernst & Young (EY) survey from late last year found this change is especially prevalent...
Recent commentary around the change of pace in business suggested 18 months is the new "long term". Whether you agree with that or not, the reality is that transformational trends spread quickly and leaders of organisations need to have their own "speed agenda" on hand, a blueprint for sensing and responding effectively to the forces of change that can see...
Best selling author Simon Sinek has challenged us to imagine a world where people wake up every day inspired to go to work, free from the negative thoughts that dominate much of the discussion about corporations' impacts on the world. The truth is that there are a number of organisations out there whose workers safely return home at the end of the day...
I have heard it said that if serving is below you then leadership is beyond you, so I believe that one should want to serve others. You could think of it as a calling to put others before the self. It's a mindset best described by Ghandi, as he believed the best way to find your purpose was to lose yourself...
A wise person once said, "speak in such a way that others love to listen to you, listen in such a way that others love to speak to you". It's a lesson that is particularly valuable for the current generation of leaders, especially as there are more distractions than ever that get in the way of listening correctly. Arguably, leadership finds...
Leaders are spending more and more time defining the purpose of their organisation. It's a concept that's gained significant attention in recent years, especially as the world begins to place increased demands on businesses and institutions to justify their place in our society. However, it's not just an organisation as a whole that needs a purpose, the person in charge does...
"Leaders are generally inadequate" - Sir Bob Geldof. Those powerful words came from an address Geldof gave earlier this year at an awards dinner hosted by Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. Sir Bob went further, stating that the very idea of leadership is overblown and he's sick of hearing about it. It was perfect timing for me as I sat down...