By David Mason >> In my previous post I started to look back at some of the leadership models, trends and fads that I’ve encountered in the course of my career – both as a practitioner and a consultant. The reason I decided to do this was to try and prove my own hypothesis that they are all connected by one common denominator – communication. Whether they are something we learned on a three-week-long management induction course (ah, those were the days!) ...

By Heather Campbell >> The four words that every leader dreads hearing: “You are a bully”. Tough words to hear. And a tough topic to discuss – talking about bullying is still something of a taboo in many organisations. No one thinks bullying is okay; no one wants to experience it; no one wants to believe they are guilty of it – and too often no one wants to talk about it. Indeed, I’ve started this post and then abandoned it several times ...

By David Mason >> I’ve been taking a walk down memory lane recently and trying to recall some of the leadership models, trends and fads that I’ve come across during my career. And the number of these models/trends/fads either means that I’m getting on more than I realised or that the industry for ‘the latest thing’ has always been in rude health! Seriously, though… there have been many useful ideas, some interesting ones, and others that were just plain weird. My reason ...

By Heather Campbell >> I often write about the things that leaders must start doing to increase employee engagement. But what about the things that you should stop doing? Let’s take a look at my top stops.* 1. Stop losing heart Building employee engagement is a process – it takes time. Our mantra here is to focus on progress, not perfection. First, let me make it clear– we can’t take the credit for this powerful mantra, which has many uses beyond building ...

By Heather Campbell >> The primary purpose of leadership in business is to inspire, engage and motivate people to achieve results. When people are inspired, engaged and motivated, they give their best. They move beyond obligatory effort to discretionary effort, innovation and creativity increase, and performance builds. This improves leaders’ performance too – they can focus on the right things, with far less time spent resolving energy-draining conflicts and managing pointless politics. Business results rocket. Easy to write, but so challenging in ...

By Heather Campbell >> Engaged employees give discretionary effort and are more productive, boosting organisational performance as a result. They enjoy their work more and make their manager’s job easier too. And the great thing is – employees want to be engaged and feel good about themselves and their jobs when they are. This is great news for business leaders wondering how to achieve more with (apparently) less – you have lots of untapped, valuable resource at your fingertips. All you have ...