Blog

Why Great Leaders Say No

We seem to be living through a time when elected leaders at least, have succeeded by telling people what they want to hear.

Is this really leadership? We’d say it’s not. True leadership requires the courage and wisdom to say out loud, the truths that people don’t want to hear. It’s not fun, it upsets people and makes the leader unpopular. In the short term for sure and often, for much longer.

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2 Steps to Overcoming the Time Poor Trap

More than ever it seems that increasing numbers of us are overwhelmed by an ever-growing and never-ending to-do list.

Just as we seem to get some time to catch up, urgent requests pings into our inbox and yet another well-intentioned day is high-jacked. For many of us, this has become our normal state, thereby creating more urgent requests as critical tasks slip through, only to pop up again a few days later as urgent priorities.

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An Unlikely Leadership Truth

Way back in March 2016 we wrote about the appeal of maverick leaders. At that time Barak Obama was US president, David Cameron was UK Prime Minister and the Zika virus was striking fear into travellers.

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Space for Adventure

Ranulph Fiennes, Ben Fogle and Dervla Murphy live lives filled with adventure. Whilst the closest many of us get is a visit to Cotswold Outdoors, during our lunch hour.

We have every intention of adding another adventure to our existence, yet we rarely seem to find the time, weather and suitable location to wear the Goretex we bought during that optimistic lunch break. Acquiring the kit is the easy bit, the greater challenge is finding a few days to escape to the wild.

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Don’t just slow down this bank holiday, stop.

A Bank Holiday with the chance of having a 3 or 4 day weekend to recharge is something that every looks forward to. These enforced Bank Holidays should result in a more rested and energised work force but it seems most of us are using these long weekends to keep working and catch up on the backlog.

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Should managers encourage workplace friendships?

In business, there is always a risk when it comes to forming friendships with colleagues, with an added distance making it easier to have those tough conversations if one colleague holds a more senior role. Yet there’s a body of research which suggests that the stronger the bonds are between colleagues the more successful the organisation.

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Stop Working, Start Storytelling

Movies, plays, novels, even jokes are forms of storytelling and EVERYONE loves them. There were two brothers, one adored opera, his brother loved pantomime. Different genres, both with stories at their core, there’s not a person alive who doesn’t enjoy a good story, though we may differ in our preferred style of storytelling.

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Is Your Job Pointless?

In his recently published book anthropologist David Graeber suggests that up to 40% of jobs have little meaning and purpose. His theory is backed by a 2015 YouGov survey which found that 37% of respondents believe that their jobs make no “meaningful contribution to the world”.

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How You Feel on Monday Morning Could Indicate Your Life Expectancy

Ikigai, pronounced ee-key-guy, an unfamiliar word to me, is very familiar to the Japanese, although there’s no direct translation in English. The definition isn’t complex though. Ken Mogi, a neuroscientist and author of Awakening Your Ikigai defines it as “your reason to get up in the morning”.

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Is it Time to Rethink Intelligence?

If you’ve considered buying a new car recently you’ll have been offered features such as lane assist, self-parking and satellite navigation. Cars have become cleverer with fully automated vehicles on the near horizon. At the same time, Google now predicts our searches, Apple can recognise our faces and Facebook seems to know everything about us!…