“What catapults a company from merely good to truly great? A five-year research project searched for the answer to that question, and its discoveries ought to change the way we think about leadership. The most powerfully transformative executives possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility and professional will. They are timid and ferocious. Shy and
Tag: Virtual Leadership
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Transparency and confidentiality
Your people want to know what is going on in the business. It helps them to do their work, if they understand the full picture. That’s a no-brainer. But sometimes, you might be privy to information that could have a bearing on their careers, for example, that you have been told not to share. I
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Lack of certainty and consistency/predictability
We saw in my last post about risk that we are working in a really uncertain world. That poses a threat to us as humans as we like certainty (see David Rock’s SCARF model). We prefer to avoid uncertainty. And yet uncertainty is part of life and work these days. We cannot avoid it. We
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Risk taking and caution
Have you noticed the differences over the past 18 months in the way people take risks or not? It’s right there in front of us in the decisions that our governments have made in whether they have blocked their borders for example, or at what point they have opened up out of lockdowns. The risks
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Deep business acumen and deep personal acumen
Can you be good at business and good at personal relationships at the same time? If you want to be a great (or even a good) leader, this is another Yin and Yang that you need to factor into your way of working. What is business acumen? How would you describe it? Let’s look at
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual Leadership): Self-confidence and confidence in others
As a leader, we need self-confidence. I work with a lot of leaders who lack inner self-confidence, although they put a brave face on it. Some might call it imposter syndrome – thinking you will be found out sooner or later. But much of the time, we are simply facing situations that we have never
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Strategy and Operations
As leaders, we need time to think, to plan, to visualise the future, to strategise. If we have delegated to our people and keep them accountable then we should have ample time to focus on the future. Steven Covey would identify this as a quadrant 2 activity – not urgent, but vitally important. If we don’t get
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Flexible schedule and Structured schedule
This yin and yang of flexible schedule and structured schedule seems to have become more obvious over the past year. People have had so much to contend with, so many other things outside of work to juggle, that the flexible schedule has become more of a thing. We had flexible work policies before, but this
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Unified Team and Diverse Individuals
This yin and yang of leadership calls on you to get better at choosing diverse people for your team when you recruit. There are so many variables to diversity that bring so many unique experiences to decision-making. The more diverse your customer base (or should I say your desired customer base), the more diverse your
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Informal communication and Formal communication
Informal and formal communication gets a little more tricky when we live and work in a virtual world. But it’s by no means insurmountable. When we book meetings into a person’s calendar, it feels more formal. We wouldn’t book a five-minute quick question into the diary, so meetings tend to be longer and tend to
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual) Leadership: Give and receive
In my yoga practice the other day, my teacher encouraged us to hold our palms in a cup shape and to imagine that we were giving from that cup and receiving into it. You had to be there to really feel the impact of that, but it set me up for a wonderful day of
The Yin and Yang of (virtual) leadership: Vulnerability and Strength
For some reason, there seems to be a myth that as leaders, we have to be strong. We have to be on top of things at all times. We have to hide our flaws from others so they don’t think us weak. We must look calm all of the time, even if we are paddling
Your role as a (virtual) leader
Whether you lead virtually or face-to-face, your role is simple: To create value through others. Ok, so it’s simple to say, not so simple in practice. Why is it not simple? Because you are so used to doing things yourself. This is the first mindset shift of a leader: I am no longer an individual
