Creative people must be open to new ideas. Chasing a new objective can be exciting for the leader but also damaging or even harmful for their team… A leader’s job is to keep the team on track, by discerning what to chase and what to ignore. Often by not chasing…
45. “Keep your Friends close, and your Enemies even closer…”
Staying close to your enemies is not an easy or natural thing to do. Enemies are dangerous. Our subconscious wants to avoid them, so we feel better when we can’t see them. Leaders need to understand that urge and actively resist it. When we understand that our objectives have enemies…
44. What are you hungry for?
Are you and your team hungry for the same thing? It seems an obvious question. Sadly, it’s surprisingly common for leaders to have different objectives from their team members.. It’s useful to think of targets as prey. Something you want to catch. Something you’re hungry for. An effective team works…
43. Friend or Enemy…?
A key testing point for leaders is when their team fails to deliver. One way to look at failure is to see it as a defeat by an enemy. If your team are pigeons, one of them just got eaten by a cat. Another way to see it is as…
42. Know your enemy..
It’s dangerous to think of yourself as just a hunter. No matter what you’re trying to achieve as a team, there are forces which will align against you. You need to assume you’re being hunted. A leader’s job isn’t just to set targets but to know where the team’s enemies…
41. Eat but don’t get eaten
When a bird is hunting an insect to eat, it must watch out at the same time that it’s not being hunted. That’s why bird’s brains, (& our brains too) are divided into 2 hemispheres. Humans (and all sentient beings) have survived and prospered because our brains can do 2…
40. Are you Helping?
There’s a lot to be said for Active Leadership. In fact, an awful lot is said, with constant emphasis on action, energy, boldness & courage, especially in western business culture, where these attributes are highly valued in business and rewarded by recruiters and senior managers alike. Good leaders in any…
39. Can you handle the Truth?
It’s said that history is written by the victors. So too a lot of leadership stories are written by the successful, and therefore miss half the truth. Looking at our failures is important too. Performance measurement can be misunderstood – it’s not a neutral activity. What performance we measure can…
38. Where are we going?
There’s no excuse for a leader not sharing clear objectives with their team, unless the leader doesn’t trust their team or doesn’t know where they’re going. There are 2 ways of helping a team achieve an objective. Have them follow your directions all the way, or share the objective and…
37. What do you have to lose?
Leaders have to understand “Risks” but what they first need to understand and manage is our reaction to Danger. Humans are experts at detecting and assessing danger. Most people don’t even realize they have this “6th sense”. We are hard wired in our primeval brains to sense danger instantly –…