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Leadership

Download free articles

Download these discussion papers and "start here" tips for your own initiatives or to motivate others.

Authored by members of the EncourageMentors Group, these articles present and discuss concepts, reviews, tips, references and useful "start here" ideas to support your own initiatives. Use them too, to interest and motivate others or to help generate discussion.

We are continually developing new materials for this service. To receive updates, register as a subscriber to our complimentary ezine, Encouraging Progress.

Each article may be downloaded free. We ask that you respect the copyright and always acknowledge the author and original source.

Doing the Wrong Things, Better

I’ve been setting up a new website to provide access to more of our services online, because so many people are too busy to get off the treadmill long enough to use them in their current form. Their every week is wall-to- wall frenetic busyness and they spend four to 12 hours trying to catch up or mop-up on the weekend .

They're too swamped to respond to emails or stop for lunch. Even telephone discussions must be booked days in advance.

They report a growing sense that things are out of control, and that the organisational response is to introduce additional tasks, complexity and doubling- up of effort, that create further stress. What's causing this and what, if anything can be done to limit it?.

Time to Talk

Let's face it, some conversations with staff can be really challenging. Although we realise we should address the issues, we often procrastinate or hope they will go away before a discussion becomes an absolute necessity. When a team member's off-target performance, for example or a staff member's lengthy sick leave must be addressed before business results suffer. You'll be pleased to hear that help is at hand! Read more, download free.

Check Your Feedback practices - and Your Confidence

Risky, damaging and expensive crises often arise in the workplace through unwisely improvisational approaches to letting people know what is required and how their behaviours affect others or impact on organisational performance.

In the desire to encourage independence and growth, managers, especially senior managers are often caught in a bind of their own making. Read more, download free.

Check Your Expectations of Your Organisation

What you find challenging about your leaders, managers or colleagues may be a direct result of and reveal more about the organisational structure, systems, processes and culture than anything else. If so, this may help you appreciate that sometimes, we are all in this together, experiencing different facets of the same problem: we are getting the behaviours our organisations designed and perpetuate.

Addressing the challenges from this perspective can lead to useful insights and considerate, constructive actions. Read more, download free.

Practise Self-responsibility

Most of us have barely scratched the surface of our own capacity for everyday effectiveness, partly because we expect, want or wait for others to change first. We make their unwelcome behaviours the focus of our unfocused and ineffective change efforts rather than realising our own potential for greater effectiveness or more direct influence.

Important, far-reaching change is often more possible than it seems. Read more, download free.

Foresight from Hindsight and Insight

Five business leaders I met during January and February thought they had "just survived" or "barely scraped through" extremely challenging times in the previous year. They were nonetheless prepared, on reflection some months later, to play down the pain and desperation of those times.

They were also inclined to abandon resolutions (Old Year, not New Year) they had made to prevent recurrences through improving their own practices. Better priority-management and planning, leadership, relationship-management, crisis and conflict management were some of the main needs they'd identified at the time.

It's OK, they reassured me, things would never be as bad again. Yeah, right.

Disruptions, confusion and chaos in organisations (to paraphrase Margaret Wheatley in Leadership and the New Science) are necessary to awaken creativity. But unless our creative juices are also transformed into practical improvement, we run the risk of repeating ourselves. Have we had X years of experience or the same experience X times?

Most of us will face challenges this year, ranging in severity from mildly stressful to overwhelming - it goes with the territories called Being Human and Working in Organisations. Whether these become destructive occasions or explosions of inspiration, creativity and growth, depends largely on how well we prepare ourselves to respond. Staff, colleagues and others we support will face difficulties too, and we should prepare them to improve their responses.

Preparedness depends on our ability to learn from experience.

How can we do that and cope with our current workloads? Where should we begin? What's the likely ROI? Read the full article . . .

Checklist and planning guide

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to read PDF files

Designed to assist group managers and leaders develop individual and collective capacity for an organisation’s Primary Purpose (or Primary Task). Helps you identify and focus on achieving three critical development themes for each of three aspects of broad responsibilities. Includes an action-planning template, our Plan and Manage the Plan and Problem-Solving graphics, and references to useful resources (discussion papers, conceptual frameworks and notes) within our website.

Download free (PDF file, 182 kilobytes)

Current Trends, Hard Simplicity

Every year academics, authors, consultants and popular gurus produce new approaches to developing organisations and people. Given the extent of research into these topics and the plethora of publications, it's surprising how many organisations, relationships and individuals within them, function pretty much as they did 5, 10 or 35 years ago: they survive rather than thrive.

Where should you look this year, for inspiration and support? Which of the popular gurus and thought-leaders are currently relevant? Which approach is right? Who has found the truth . . . really? Read more, download free.

Leadership with Integrity and Soul

(References and Resources)

We receive many inquiries about "leading with integrity" and "leadership with soul", especially from clients who are new to the leadership role.

In this webpage we list (and will continually add to) references and resources on these topics: those we know about, either through reading or trusted recommendation. Read more, download free.

Group and Team Effectiveness

Senior managers and leaders sometimes wonder aloud with us if they've done enough to move to another challenge in some other organisation. Their sense of responsibility to their colleagues (or anxiety about their reputation) is such that they want reference- points for establishing, "Is this group in sufficiently sound health to now 'tick-along' without me?"

Whether or not a group, team or organisation is likely to "tick-along" successfully with or without a particular leader, depends on the presence of some fairly simple, common-sense things which are very often insufficiently attended to.

When they are sufficiently present, the group is resilient, fully-functioning, adaptable and ready-for-anything, even a new leader. In other words, in good health.

We've prepared a short list of generic Characteristics of Group and Team Wellbeing. Check it out. Contact us if you need help to establish your group's strengths and deal with whatever gaps exist between these ideals and reality. Read more, download free.

Exuberance, enthusiasm and leadership

Have you enough exuberance in your life and in your work with others? How might you get more of it? Who are the naturally exuberant? Can you help others become more exuberant?

Kay Redfield Jamison has answered those questions in a recent book. She suggests that exuberance and the capacity to fire infectious enthusiasm are fundamental qualities of leadership. Read more, download free.

Common approaches to imperiling organisational frogs

Every day, thousands of organisational frogs move on to The Big Swamp in the Sky because it's alarmingly easy to kill them.

When placed in water already too warm, a frog will leave immediately but if placed in cold water it accommodates gradually increasing heat (smiling all the while) until it dies, because the rising discomfort is almost imperceptible.

It's a good analogy for many workplace crises and challenges: you may not know you're in difficulty until it's too late. The realisation that something is very wrong came, people often claim, as a total surprise. Well, yes and no . . .

The very good news . . ? No matter how many frogs you've already dispatched and whatever number you're currently warming, there are very simple things you can do to reduce or eliminate the phenomenon. Provided you know where you're heading and have a clear picture of where you are right now, you can start immediately to make the difference that makes the difference. Read more, download free.

Balance task and process to tap and direct the reservoir of talent

Tapping, facilitating and directing the flow from the reservoir of talent represented within any group of people, is what leadership and people-management is for. The purpose is to bring out the best and best-directed efforts in everyone. Unfortunately, conventional practices for drawing on this reservoir do not always help, and frequently obstruct the flow. The result is a thin trickle of energy for which it is usual to blame individuals or various aspects of "the system".

The wastage may be unnoticed or regarded as inevitable and unchangeable. In times of rapid change or under high pressure, it can be extreme. Improvement efforts often degenerate into arguments about conflicting solutions.

Incremental improvements can be made immediately, once the problem and some of its causes are understood. Immediate benefits can be realised from incremental change. Where you can start. Read more, download free.

Heart Centred Leadership

At its heart, leadership is about who we are: our beliefs, values, motivations, attitudes, integrity and other personal qualities. Although a competent leader requires knowledge, understanding and skill, it is a leader's character to which others largely and primarily respond.

Building character involves consciously developing practical, challenging and compassionate leadership over ourselves, in order to be the best we are capable of becoming. This is achieved largely by:

Understanding how our personal beliefs, values, motivations, assumptions, attitudes and everyday practices affect our relationships; and
Refining these, to improve those relationships and ourselves.

The greater the degree of self-leadership, the greater is the likelihood of effective, inspiring and compassionate leadership of others. Like so many other aspects of life, we cannot give what we don't possess and practise. Read more, download free.

Productivity, Interpersonal Competence and Constructive Relationships

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Select and contact a Mentor to discuss your interest in this option.

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