Leading Change Blog
Leading Change Blog (119)
Friday, 19 July 2013 10:22
Integrity: Managing our inner Diva – Kylie in Dubai
What a gig! Australia’s own Kylie Minogue was the feature artist for a new 7-star Dubai Atlantis hotel opening last weekend. All for a cool $4.4m. Now that’s how you earn a bit of extra Christmas cash. While the gig made the headlines here in Australia, what was even more interesting was what happened to Kylie after the event. After an exhausting show, she changed from her uncomfortable performance outfits into a tracksuit and headed back into the same hotel for the after party bash. A funny thing happened. The doorman didn’t recognise her and didn’t approve of the tracksuit and so wouldn’t let her in! What did the exhausted Kylie do with this outrage? Not what you would typically…
Friday, 19 July 2013 10:21
Leadership and Integrity – Unravelling the red carpet
I had occasion to drive past the aftermath of the red carpet premier of the movie Australia in George Street Sydney last night and I couldn’t believe my eyes at the size of the red carpet. It was at least as wide as 3 lanes and who knows how far its length extended into the distance. Just goes to show how many big budget movie premiers I’ve been to, but I always thought they were about the size of a hall runner in a very long house. I guess the bigger the carpet, the more important the event, the leader, the dignitary or the celebrity walking on it. The red carpet phenomenon also applies to what you look like when…
Friday, 19 July 2013 10:18
Change Management – “Yes we can…change starts today” Barack Obama
I exchanged some emails with My US publisher the other day, after the frenzy of Obama’s decisive election win. My publisher was fascinated about the rest of the world’s interest in how the race unfolded over the last few months. I’m reminded of the words of Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman and his recent book – Hot Flat and Crowded, when he describes how the US cannot help but export both its greatest hopes as well as its greatest fears into the world. The world responded fearfully to 9/11 and similarly to the world economic crisis which can be traced back to the US subprime mortgage fiasco and housing crisis. While these are the exports of fear and despair, Obama’s…
Friday, 19 July 2013 10:17
Performance Management – Why don’t we play to our strengths?
If we were being really honest with ourselves, we’re probably not fantastic at every part of our job. If we were even more honest, we’ve probably learned to fake it a little – or a lot. It’s quite odd that we willingly subject ourselves to the stress of exerting constant effort to either fix, divert attention from or hide some part of our job performance we feel insecure about. This is instead of celebrating and growing the parts of our job that we’re really good at. In fact, we are so concerned that we will be busted for doing something wrong in an area we either don’t like or are weak in, that research by author Marcus Buckingham shows that…
Friday, 19 July 2013 10:12
Personal Responsibility : Waiter – is that “poo” in my icecream?
It’s a sad day when “poo” (or if you’re the sensitive type, excreta or faeces) becomes the central news unfolding around the country. For me the story is less about “poo” and more about personal responsibility. But let’s first go over some of the finer details of how this story unfolded. A couple of weeks ago, a Sydney family accused a hotel bistro of planting “poo” in their ice-cream after the family had lodged various previous complaints about service. The offending item wasn’t placed into the ice-cream dish in an obvious fashion. It was so discretely placed that it apparently appeared to be an inconspicuous chocolate scoop nestled innocently amongst several other flavours. The item was so well camouflaged, that…
Thursday, 18 July 2013 09:41
Accountability – The Blame Game
Traditional methods of motivation apply the familiar reward versus punishment scenario. Do the right thing and you are rewarded through compensation, bonuses and other rewards; do the wrong thing, make a mistake and you’ll be punished. The ever-present fear of punishment fuels the blame game and discourages employees from stepping up and taking responsibility, let alone take risks (Accountability Leadership 2013). Accepting greater responsibility and accountability requires a degree of emotional maturity. How can we nurture such characteristics in employees while our organisations hang on to outmoded notions of motivation that encourage the exact opposite? To understand why blame is so prevalent in organisations, we need look no further than the lessons of childhood. A significant part of childhood is…
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Wednesday, 17 July 2013 16:33
Leaders: Bullies or Big-shots?
It’s not that successful leaders have an absence of fear. Rather, successful leaders find the courage to move through the fear and take calculated risks; potentially inspiring great innovation and creativity. However, leaders will be unable to truly unleash this potential within their organisations, if they unwittingly crush employee contributions with control and negative consequences. Unfortunately in many corporate cultures, risk taking behaviour is difficult for most individuals who fear the repercussions of mistakes and failure and choose a path that minimises potential undesirable consequences. Unlike leaders, whose power and position affords a level of manoeuvring that can bounce back from mistakes, for employees, there is potentially more at stake, and failure can mean a demotion or termination. How can…
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