Building Better Leaders

Everyone keeps talking about where they want to work, how they'd prefer to work, yet employers often have a different view; the media have dubbed it "The Great Return," so for those of you with Zoom fatigue, or perhaps people who are reluctant to be in the workplace John & Rachael thought it was worth talking about.

With more questions and answers they look at the dilemma from both employer and employees points of view:

In the second podcast on 2023 we chat with David Harper, Career Coach. David is an ex CIO for a major UK insurance company with extensive experience of leading people in a £4bn business. In 2015 David was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer, initiating his own career move into coaching.

David’s true purpose is helping people achieve. We talk to him about how he enjoys helping younger people start their careers, the sort of questions he asks them, and how the value of truly listening to people is in very short supply.

We discuss the sort of questions that employers should be asking themselves when it comes to employing people in their late forties and early fifties and beyond. The value of employing people based on outcomes and results, rather than just paying someone a salary based on a number of hours.

David’s Leadership Essentials

 David can be contacted at https://harper360.com

In the first episode of 2023 John & Rachael are joined by Business Coach and entrepreneurJonathan Mills.

Jonathan started this career as a footballer for Cambridge Untied but at age 18 fell into a franchise business model that would pave the way for him to own and lead not one but four businesses.

Jonathan shares his habits on effective time management, task privatisation and journalling to increase self awareness. He shares his thoughts on the importance of trust in leadership and how any leaders first job is to set clear expectations and hold their team members to account.

This is a fantastic conversation for anyone in a leadership role who finds themselves time poor, over worked and not being able to prioritise their own development. 

If you loved this conversation and would like to get in touch with Jonathan you can find him on Instagram @Jonathan_ascend360 the Ascend360 website is https://www.ascend360.co.uk/ if business coaching groups are of interest. And his football coaching franchises are with https://www.premier-education.com/

Jonathan's Leadership Essentials: (58 minutes)

1. Self awareness - knowing your strengths and weakness and surrounding yourself with people who are better than you

2. Integrity is key 

3. Seeing the bigger picture and being able to see opportunities disguised as challenges
4. Ultimately doing your best and knowing that, that is enough. Letting go and surrendering to what the outcome will be. This is especially important if you are a perfectionist. 

In this weeks episode John & Rachael are joined by Executive Coach, Sue Baker. Sue has been working as a coach working with leaders at board level in large corporations since the 1990's.

Sue talks about how coaching has changed over the last couple of decades and how organisation and leaders requirements of coaching are changing as the challenges they face are change. Most importantly we talk about what is next in coaching. What new trends we are seeing in coaching? And what are some of the issues that senior leaders come to coaching looking to work on?

This is a fantastic conversation for anyone thinking about getting an executive coach or wondering what very senior leaders in organisations do in coaching sessions. 

Sue shares her personal story of what she's learned in her coaching journey and how she's leaned more about herself as she's gained more experience as a female coach working with incredibly senior leaders in large corporates.

If you loved this conversation and would like to get in touch with Sue you can find her on LinkedIn or email her on: [email protected] 

Sue's Leadership Essentials: (57:18)

1. Humility. Is an underrated leadership quality. Its time for the people with humility who ask for help can be the most powerful leaders

2. The ability connect. This is a mindset and a learned skill. When it's authentic it's really powerful to be in a great leaders sunshine. Being able to connect on a human level.

3. The courage to say we got this wrong. 

In this episode Rach & John visit the subject of Difficult Conversations, a topic which they cover in depth on their Building Better Leaders Programme.
“Good intentions don’t always result in good impact.” Often with the best of intentions things can go wrong, and the impact you intend is never the one you had in mind. 
They tackle the subject from a “miscommunication” angle and take a look at three different areas of a conversation?
We learn from our ability to catch ourselves and become more self-aware of what we are contributing in any conversation, so understanding the anatomy of conversation can help us when we consider:

They discuss, various areas of a conversation and how we can better prepare and plan for a successful outcome.
The books referenced in the podcast which inspired their approach are: 

“Difficult Conversations.” Patton, Stone & Heen.  

“Atlas of the Heart.” - Brene Brown

For more information on the Building Better Leaders Programme

In this weeks episode Rachael & John are joined by Lee Warren to understand how using the Alexander Technique can help us communicate and perform better when under stress?
The way that you think affects the way you perform, and vice-versa; the way you perform affects the way you think
Remembering that stress is very uncreative, Lee take a little step back and asks us to think about focussing on our awareness.
He asks: Do you sometimes make the mistake of focussing on yourself when presenting, when you should be focussing on what the audience are expecting from the presentation?
Instead of thinking how am I doing? Turn your awareness to focussing on the audiences thinking:
-What’s in this for me?-What am I going to get out of this?-How will this help me?-Will I make any money?-Is this a good use of my time?
What does the audience expect to hear?What des the audience need to hear?
Lee also shares some really valuable tips on how we can network more effectively.

You can contact Lee at: leewarrenspeaker.com

In this weeks podcast Rachael & John cover four different leadership styles. 

How do you like to be led? Is it always the same for every aspect of your role?

When you're leading you team do you always use the same approach?

They differentiate between Directing, Coaching, Supporting and Delegating leadership styles explaining when and where you can effectively use each and how you might adapt your approach.

On the podcast this week, in Leadership 101 a bitesized approach to:

In the Coaching approach we ask which leader(s) have influenced you, what kind of leader are you? and what other leadership possibilities might be open to you? 

Our bite-sized sessions are brought to you using content from our Inter-Active Building Better Leaders Webinar programme.

In this weeks podcast we speak to Andrew Robshaw who after a life changing Parkinson’s diagnosis decided to pursue a question that had plagued him most of his working life. 
What is the true meaning of value? And how can businesses better measure value in real time by looking beyond traditional accounting and economic processes we currently use.
Some of the questions we cover:

Thankonomics is the exploration of "Value" in terms of appreciation, and how we can look beyond economics and the law of diminishing marginal returns. To instead looking at how appreciation of products and services changes over time and the customers state of "need." 
Andrew's Leadership Essentials
1. Appreciation
2. Passion
3. Remember your people are here to help you solve your problem, support them, rather than give orders.

Andrew also shares his personal story on getting diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and the life changing treatment he has received to enable him to write this book and continue to live and work.

Andrew's Book Thankonomics

We celebrate this episode by summarising the past year, sharing a little of our personal histories and reviewing the year spent with our wonderful guests.

We chat about our school age experiences and what shaped us as youngsters, and how & when our careers started. What did we see and hear at work, reflecting on the great leaders, and the not so great leaders? We discuss what led us to work together, and what was so alluring about coaching?

We each approach our guests Leadership Essentials in a different way; discussing what we have learnt about ourselves in the process.

A big thank you goes to all our Guests in 2021.

Kurt Lindley Drew Povey Jan Iceton Matt Lock Céline Williams Kevin Urrutia Philip Grant Dr. Josie McLean Dr. Pam Wells Katherine Whitton Tom Manning Andy Thomas Adrian Hawley Melanie Weller Simon Town Clare Pooley Jonathan Hemus Michael Lawrence Graham Keen Peter Pritchard Brian Bachand Colin Hunter Andy Copsey Gert Jan Hofstede