The Keynote Season Part 2: The Leadership Contribution Leadership isn’t about position, title, or privilege – although many organizations operate as if it is. Leadership is best seen as a form of contribution. In this episode, we unpack exactly what makes up that contribution.  Insights include: -What is Leadership? -Ask the Audience – we all know great leadership -Organisations are awful at developing leadership -Why the Peter Principle is alive and well in corporate life Related...

The Keynote Season Part 3: Create Clarity In times of ambiguity and uncertainty, people look intensely to their leaders. As that leader, if you can be nothing else, be clear. This episode explains why and how.  Insights include: -Why people don’t do what they’re supposed to…and what to do about it -Why Ambiguity is Enemy No1 for High Performance -Leadership’s 2 Clarity Traps -How we judge Ourselves Vs How Others judge us Related Episodes Episode 57 – Keep Your Focus – Avoid...

The Keynote Season Part 4: Inspire Commitment “The more digital the world becomes, the more we must emphasise what makes us most human” – Jack Ma This episode unveils the 4 Emotionally Intelligent “Cards” that – played right – help build connection and commitment: Humanity’s trump card in an increasingly digital deck.  Insights include: -Leadership is a contact sport -Quality of Interaction = Quality of Commitment -Why Trust is harder – and more critical – during Uncertainty -The 4...

The Keynote Season Part 1: Chaos? Always! “Events, dear boy, events” was Harold Macmillan’s succinct reply when asked about the greatest challenge for a statesman.  Well, so too with this humble Podcaster who – through force of “events” - has been absent from the podcast platform for exactly one year today.  The absence, however, hasn’t been wasted and, on this the very anniversary of my previous episode, I am rebooting with an omnibus quadruple-decker edition entitled the Keynote...

“The most scarce resource in the world today is attention” – Yuval Noah Harari    The only 2 industries that refer to customers as “users” are Big Tech and drug cartels. We live in an increasingly technology-fuelled Garden of Eden – an attention economy where the most sophisticated dark forces are constantly, covertly intent at work to distract you. If time is your most precious asset as a leader, then saving and spending it wisely becomes paramount. Your old biological defences are hardly...

“Imagination is more important than Knowledge – Albert Einstein”   What has Art got to do with Leadership? Throughout nearly 30 years of working with leaders and leadership, the very best leaders I’ve encountered all have had one thing in common irrespective of geography or industry: the sensibility of an artist. This was reinforced to me recently when attending a screening of a documentary produced by Maria Doyle Kennedy about the life and work of Irish artist Patrick Scott. After all,...

Whilst not obligatory that you “love” your people at work - in the amorous sense! - people at least need to know you, as the leader, have got their best interests at heart. On this Valentine’s Day, it is worth remembering that your connection to those that matter makes an enormous contribution to your leadership impact and results.  Here’s one of my favourite episodes “From the Archive”: A timely reminder of why and how to … In this episode I explain: What Star Wars has to do with building...

I started the Flow(group) business exactly 25 years ago this month - in January 1998.   I can’t brag, because Google started up the same month.    For context, it was the year Apple unveiled the iMac; the Bill Clinton/ Monica Lewinsky scandal; the FDA approved the Viagra pill (not related); and the NI Good Friday Agreement (definitely not related).    During the time, in addition to the quotidian demands for change, our clients and our business has had to navigate 3 major Global Economic...

“It’s only when the tide goes out you see who’s been swimming in the nude” – Warren Buffett   As a leader the decision to let people go is never easy, but sometimes necessary. Nonetheless, it is often in these Moments that Matter where leaders show what stuff they are really made of. The current high-profile Tech lay-offs provide a unique test for leaders in a sector that has enjoyed rock-star growth throughout the last 2 decades. Twitter and Stripe announced their news at almost exactly the...

“Useless. Shambles. Incompetent. CHAOS” These were the dominant words of a GB News Peoples’ Poll Wordcloud last week as the Tory party unravelled amidst a sequence of bizarre and barely credible events. But what role did Leadership have to play in the absurdist drama and what was it Liz Truss did or didn’t do to contribute to her own ultimate downfall? This episode unpicks the very clear failures of the leader and the obvious cause-and-effect lessons in the whole sorry piece.   Insights...

To be human is to procrastinate. The Greeks even had a special word for it – akrasia – such was its acknowledgement. However, it’s not a great device for leadership effectiveness when keeping focus is critical. The tendency towards Procrastination, and it’s full-sister Distraction, is becoming increasingly a topic of conversation with leaders (I’m engaged with), together with media and public discourse. Why does it happen? Why is it increasingly emerging now? And what can we do to combat its...

Normal service is resumed as I return to the Manifesto and explore how to preserve and protect the biggest asset any team has – you as the leader. Often ignoring their own needs and deprived in the service of others, the book title “Leaders Eat Last” promotes the idea of servant leadership (which I applaud by the way) ….however….Leaders Gotta Eat! How does a leader effectively balance doing the best for their people and their enterprise without doing the worst for themselves? Feast...

I am interrupting normal service for a newsflash! Such has been the demand recently out there for a succinct summary of what it means to be a leader now we are starting The Great Reset for society, work and life, that I have composed a triple-decker episode that roughly mirrors a keynote I’m delivering to address the question. Many of my previous themes are peppered throughout, along with a few new nuggets for the latest version of the New World (Dis)Order.    Normal service – and a return to...

I am interrupting normal service for a newsflash! Such has been the demand recently out there for a succinct summary of what it means to be a leader now we are starting The Great Reset for society, work and life, that I have composed a triple-decker episode that roughly mirrors a keynote I’m delivering to address the question. Many of my previous themes are peppered throughout, along with a few new nuggets for the latest version of the New World (Dis)Order.    Normal service – and a return to...

I am interrupting normal service for a newsflash! Such has been the demand recently out there for a succinct summary of what it means to be a leader now we are starting The Great Reset for society, work and life, that I have composed a triple-decker episode that roughly mirrors a keynote I’m delivering to address the question. Many of my previous themes are peppered throughout, along with a few new nuggets for the latest version of the New World (Dis)Order.    Normal service – and a return to...

We often do our best thinking when we are not thinking. From Archimedes to Newton, great breakthrough discovery examples “away from the job” are rife in science, technology and the arts. It appears that it is often through a break that we really break through Leadership is fundamentally about setting the right direction and making the right choices. Those choices, however, are only as good as the perspectives they are based on. In this episode, I explain how our “factory setting” as a species...

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed. it’s the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead   It’s almost 2 years to the day since I began this podcast and 50 episodes later, I wanted to pause and momentarily to Zoom Out and reflect.   It was Friday 13th (the clue was in the date?!) when I sat in the Cheltenham racecourse car park on a 1hr call with my international Flow partners from 4 continents sharing perspectives of what was...

“In every situation there is a space between the situation and how you respond”. Viktor Frankl     Think about this : The quality and situation of your life right now is the aggregate total of every decision you have ever made. Luck certainly plays a part - and there have been many “sliding doors” moments I’m sure, but ultimately, it is not what happened in those moments, but rather how you responded to what happened in those moments that made the difference.    No leader sets out to be a bad...

“There is no way to Happiness. Happiness is the way.” Thich Nhat Hanh   In response to the reaction from the “Leadership Manifesto – 22 Principles for ‘22” episode, I have been persuaded to build out the Manifesto into a season, with each episode delving into the principles one by one, and in greater detail. Starting with #22 we will work backwards principle-by-principle until we arrive an #1. That way, instead of just chapter headings with some brief elaboration, by the end of the season you...

Frank Capra’s seasonal classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” turned 75 years last year and, like many, once again I watched the movie during the holiday period. This time around, however, coloured no doubt by our present environment, I saw something different. I saw it primarily as a treatise on the fragility and uncertainty of life.    George Bailey has big dreams of adventure way beyond small-town Bedford Falls but his aspirations are thwarted at every turn and, just when he thought he had scaled...

The popularised phrase “New Normal” is at best lazy, and at worst destructively misleading for leadership in every dimension – language, expectation and mindset. Yet people continue to strive for and promote it. For 30 years, the most popular remark I’ve consistently heard from leaders going through change is “I can’t wait until this is over and we can return to normal”. Funny thing is, it never happened. Ever. What happens when leaders realise and accept the Chaos is constant – always was –...

COP26 represented the world’s greatest “strategy off-site” in Glasgow recently, featuring the not insignificant, high-stakes leadership quest of safe-guarding our planet. Whilst our own leadership challenges are, by definition, less lofty and smaller in scale, the same conundrums of clarity of vision & purpose; stakeholders buy-in; sustaining commitment and much more, still very much apply.  In Episode 46 I explore the lessons and parallels we can extract from the 2 week summit and how...

Last month saw the passing of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow – the seminal work that describes the human state of happiness, optimal experience and high performance. The book (and his research) has subsequently influenced everything from office design, to how to train soldiers, website and video game design amongst everything else. In this episode, I commemorate the author by synthesizing the essence of his work (in less than 15 minutes!) and describing how the Flow state is an...

According to Peter Drucker – if management is about doing things right, then leadership is doing the right things. I took a break from the Podcast for some Zooming Out time during summer but, since my return, have found it a very big challenge to return to the discipline of the broadcast because of competing pressures. This episode uses this most typical challenge to ask (and answer!) the question : “How do you get to do the things you need to do but just can’t find the time?”   Insights...