This time we’re in my kitchen…

Wilma’s feeling a bit smug (and we find out why), I’ve been watching the Test match and the conversation meanders around our enjoyment of watching people performing well, the joy of learning and seeing other’s learn, the ‘female’ approach to marketing and promotion and the way that nothing stays the same…

 

 

 

As part of a Leadership Development programme, I’ll often ask people, ‘are leadership and management the same?’  Usually, people are agreed that they are not the same.  When I ask what they see as the difference between leadership and management, it gets very interesting…

I have had the impression recently, that management is falling out of fashion.  Or at least, the term has taken on a different meaning.  To many people, ‘management’ means micro-management.  Younger staff aspire to be leaders but don’t want to be managers.

What???

It’s true, this may just be a reflection of the clients I’ve been working with lately.  But it has really made me think again about how I talk about leadership and management.

As ever, I like to define my terms.  There is a myriad of definitions of both leadership and management, I picked these as being simple and I agree with them:

“Leadership means the ability to guide, inspire, and influence people to work together to achieve a common goal.”

I like this definition because it highlights the social aspect of leadership.  It’s about the impact a leader has on a group of people.  It’s also about working towards a common goal – in the absence of a goal, no leader is needed. It’s easy to see why this appeals since influence is fast becoming a major currency of success.

“Management means the process of planning, organising, and directing the resources of an organisation to achieve its goals.”

This definition works for me because it’s all about the resources of an organisation.  Those resources may include people, but the term also encompasses time, funds, systems and processes, assets, strategy, data and creativity.

So why would that not appeal?

I wonder whether it just sounds too much like hard work.  Good management requires that you keep track of information, you think ahead (and let’s face it, planning really has gone out of fashion!) and make decisions. You are accountable.

In these definitions, Leadership sounds much easier that management, doesn’t it?

In reality, I think it’s much harder to be a good leader that to be a good manager.

 

What does it take to be a good leader?

Good interpersonal skills are top of my list, closely followed by a commitment to your own development.  I often say to clients, ‘if you want to be a better leader then work on yourself’.  People will follow your lead if you are whole-hearted – in NLP terms, congruent – in setting out the goal and the path to achieving it. You need clarity about the goal, a means of tracking activity and progress and the very best leaders also have a commitment to developing their people.

 

What does it take to be a good manager?

I can best sum this up by saying that you need a commitment to quality.  A good manager gets the best out of the available resources. (Again, for all my readers who work in tech and other industries that refer to people as ‘resources’, I’m referring to the entire scope of organisational resources)

A good manager has and creates clear goals, targets and performance indicators.  A good manager keeps promises, turns up on time, plans in advance, spots opportunities to save time, money or effort.  A good manager also communicates well and takes the initiative to achieve their goals. They do a good job of every task.

 

I see both leadership and management as equally important.  I wonder whether management has fallen out of fashion because the L&D profession gravitated towards ‘leadership development’ and dropped ‘management development’ sometime in the late 90s.  Instead of running programmes on Time Management, Decision-making, Performance Management and how to run a meeting, we started offering ‘Authentic Leadership’, ‘High Performance Leadership’ and ‘Team Leadership’.  It sounds a lot more inviting, doesn’t it?

 

And yet…

Leadership without management?

We all know senior people like this.  Lots of inspiration and motivation, guiding and influencing but when someone isn’t responding to your brand of inspiration, what do you do? Yes, work on your interpersonal skills.  But in the meantime?

The leaders who don’t manage are often very well liked but don’t always deliver.  Sometimes they fall into the trap of not addressing problems and assuming that people are ‘empowered’ resolve issues, which can then drag on, wasting time and other valuable resources.

The exception is the leader who is senior enough to have people to manage on their behalf.  The higher up the organisational structure you climb, the more important it is to have good team members who can manage the people, the finance, the systems and processes and so on, leaving you free to focus on the bigger picture and providing inspiration to everyone.

 

Management without leadership?

You probably know a few of these too.   A manager who doesn’t lead can be successful up to a point.  If someone more senior is providing the overall goals and strategy, then the manager’s job is to marshall the people and resources to achieve the goal.   It probably involves some systems or structure processes to make sure that the right things are happening at the right time.  It still needs a lot of communication, probably less inspiration – just clarity of goals and targets. Sometimes clear methods too.

 

If I was a senior executive, which would I rather have?  Leaders who didn’t manage well of managers who didn’t lead well?  It’s a tough question and academic, of course, because the reality is that to succeed in a senior role you have to be able to do both, even if you don’t do both equally well.

What I will say, is that I would be more likely to promote someone to a senior role if I had confidence in their ability to manage.

What would you do?

 

In conclusion, I will also give this advice to anyone looking to advance in their career.  If you haven’t already, learn to manage.  Learn to manage time, to manage systems and processes, to manage decision-making.  Learn to run a meeting efficiently, make an engaging presentation, to give feedback that will be acted upon.  Learn how to do a performance appraisal, to tackle difficult conversations, to accept feedback and learn from it.

In short, if you want to be a better leader, work on yourself and your ability to manage.

 

There is something very satisfying about a wallplanner, isn’t there?  Or is it just me?

I do enjoy planning out the year ahead and getting an overview like this that I can refer to easily.  I know a lot of people don’t do this, and definitely don’t do it in August – which is when I began thinking about 2025.

Of course, one of the reason I started doing this was because I needed to book venues for events a long way in advance, so that I can publish dates with confidence and give everyone plenty of notice to get the dates in their planners.

There is more to it, though.  Running your own business is great if you like a lot of flexibility.  It can also be challenging because of the lack of external structure.  Planning help me keep the right balance for me between structure and flexibility.  Most of what is on the calendar can still be moved, but having a plan is the important part.

Here are some of the benefits:

1)  If you have goals, you need a plan to achieve them.  Being able to see the shape of the year, of each month and each week can make it easier to plan when you’re going to undertake the work that will lead to the achievement of your goals.

2)  Mapping out regular and one-off activities means that you spend time thinking about those activities.  Do they need to be done weekly, monthly?  Is April the right time? And so on.  In other words, you have the opportunity to re-evaluate how you spend your time.

3)  You make sure you get some time off.  It’s all too easy to put off committing to specific holiday dates and think ‘I’ll see how the quarter pans out and then book some time off” or even, “I don’t have time for a holiday”.  Planning now and committing to dates means you will get that much-needed rest.  It also means you can book early and get a good deal on your travel!

4) It’s fun!  Well, I think it is.  Maybe I need to get out more…

I’ll be publishing the dates for 2025 events shortly.

This quote, attributed to Archimedes, the Greek mathematician and physicist, undoubtedly relates to his explanation of the use of levers.

And yet…

Looking at it again this week, it struck me that this is true in a metaphorical sense as well as a scientific one.

When we are faced with changes, especially when we are driving change of our own volition, we need some constants in our lives to keep us steady.

To create change in the world, one needs a strong sense of self.  It enables us to stay focused on the end result and to endure the upheaval in the interim.  Without that strong sense of self, it’s easy to lose the sense of purpose, to feel cast adrift on the tide of change and to scrabble around for something, anything to cling to.

What creates the sense of self?

I think it varies from person to person.  For some it’s a personal mission, an overriding sense of purpose or a problem that must be solved.  For others, it’s the people they love and the commitments they make to those people.

It can be a simple case of daily habits and routines or everyday enjoyment of your home environment, the community where you live or a social group.  Our work, profession or role in life can also provide that ‘firm spot on which to stand’.

I invite you to consider, as you navigate whatever changes are current for you, how to strengthen your own ‘firm spot’ and how to stand there in your full sense of self.

We all love a good book, don’t we?

I first read ‘Lost Connections’ by Johann Hari shortly after it was published in 2018. I’ve revisited it a few time since.

The subtitle reads: “Uncovering the real causes of depression – and the unexpected solutions”. It was the latter part that first caught my attention. I was curious about the ‘unexpected solutions’.

The book charts Hari’s own quest for a better way to deal with his own lifelong struggle with depression. He challenges the idea that depression is simply an imbalance of chemicals in the brain that need treatment with drugs.

His research takes him around the world to a wide variety of people and situations and his conclusion is that depression is caused by disconnection. Specifically, there are nine causes or depression and anxiety:

1. Disconnection from meaningful work
2. Disconnection from other people
3. Disconnection from meaningful values
4. Disconnection from childhood trauma
5. Disconnection from status and respect
6. Disconnection from the natural world
7. Disconnection from a hopeful or secure future
8. Genetic factors
9. Brain changes

Having identified the lost connections, Hari goes on to explore effective means of reconnecting and regaining mental health. It’s a fascinating book and I found it quite uplifting – the realisation that we can treat depression with social solutions as opposed to pharmacological ones has got to be good news, right?

In this episode Wilma and I are talking about what makes it hard – or easy – for people to open up about their vulnerabilities and about some of the differences in the ways men and women experience this challenge.

 

 

I’m not a great fan of tv.  I spend more time reading than watching tv but every now and again something comes along that grabs my attention…

The first series of ‘Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams’ was both enjoyable and moving.  The second series is even better.  If you’ve already watched it you’ll know how totally inspirational it is.  If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat…

Even if you have never watched cricket and have no idea of the significance of Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, this is for you.  If you are a leader, a parent, a coach or teacher it’s worth a few hours of your time to watch the whole series.

Despite his incomplete recovery from the horrific car accident that almost claimed his life, Flintoff takes his team of cricket misfits on tour to India.  They are all – including Flintoff – outside of their comfort zones at times but the boys rally around each other, giving support and finding friendship in the most unlikely situations.  This is real-life leadership in all its messy and complicated glory.

Find it on BBC iPlayer or if you’re outside the UK, there are some great clips on YouTube.  Here’s one…

 

‘More Shakespeare’, I hear you intone.  I see you rolling your eyes.  But you know how much I love The Bard and I’m guessing you wouldn’t be reading my newsletters if you didn’t enjoy my regular references to his work.  Actually, these wise words were not written by William Shakespeare but by Pericles himself.  Yes, he was a real person in Ancient Greece and some of his writings have survived the march of time.

Why this quote, why now?

Firstly, I went to see the current production of ‘Pericles’ directed by Tamara Harvey and starring Alfred Enoch (you might remember him as Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter films).  It is a beautiful production and weaves the disparate parts of the plot together very well.  I loved it.

Secondly, in the past year several of my friends have lost a loved one.  Talking of the deceased ones, people mention their special memories of times spent together, of help given and received, of secrets shared and kept and of warm feelings.  It’s rare that eulogies list academic qualifications or corporate positions held.  I know it’s a cliche, but people remember how you make them feel.

Thirdly, I’ve been doing a lot of leadership training and coaching lately.  A theme that keeps recurring is how leaders can enrich the lives of their people.  Leadership is not just about getting people to do the job they’re paid to do – although in some cases that would be a good start.  Leadership is also about creating an environment in which people want to work, to belong, to contribute and to succeed.  Working from home is now an established feature of many corporate cultures and it’s obvious that it’s brought a drift towards more transactional relationships between employer and employee.  A good leader can reverse that drift and inspire people to create a working community as well as encouraging a healthy balance between personal life and professional life.  In my opinion.

I invite you to consider what you are weaving into the lives of others…

 

 

In this episode Wilma and I are outside in sunny (and breezy) Wales. The conversation roams around the location, my recent trip to Amsterdam, a brilliant example of modern surgical methods and finally settles at the beautiful Graig Ddu, where I coax Wilma to explain the philosophy behind Being a the Cottage and the experience her clients have…

Wilma took the photo of me during the recording, so you can see what a beautiful place it is.  You can also see that I’m wearing an extra jumper, despite it being August!

 

This week I’m working in Amsterdam, a city I have only visited once before, at the age of twelve, on a family holiday.

There is so much to inspire here…

Having visited the Van Gogh Museum, I expected that one of the paintings would be my theme today.  In the event, I was so absorbed in the experience and so clear that I wasn’t going to photograph any of the artwork, that all I can say is that the whole permanent collection is an inspiration.  In any case, I highlighted art as inspiration as few weeks ago with ‘Flaming June’.

It won’t surprise you that I spent a lot of time in the Museum bookshop and almost invested in a book of ‘inspiration’ taken from the letters of Van Gogh (written to his brother, Theo).  One quote that struck me was this:

“I keep on making what I can’t do yet, in order to learn to be able to do it”  Vincent Van Gogh

It surprised me to realise that what we might think of as a prolific creation of art, was to the artist ‘work in progress’ and that every painting was a learning experience rather than a demonstration of skill.

(It also reminded me of that quote from a certain fast bowler that I posted in June!)

So, what is my inspiration of the week?

The cyclists!  Amsterdam is well known as a city where the bicycle is a principle mode of transport and several people warned me to watch out for them – ‘they come at you from all directions!’

A few days in, I’ve got into the (necessary) habit of checking for cyclists at every junction before I even think of crossing the road.  This morning, I was musing on why they feel like such a hazard…

Two things:

1.  They go FAST!

2.  Most don’t indicate.

…and then I thought, in the spirit of recognising that the things we are inclined to criticise in others are often reflections of ourselves, where in my life do I do that?

Not literally, because I actually never learned to ride a bike.

But where in my life do I go quickly and forget to tell other people where I’m going?

I found my answer.  Your turn…