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 100
THINGS SUCCESSFUL LEADERS
DO

LITTLE LESSONS IN
LEADERSHIP

NIGEL CUMBERLAND

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 How to use this eBook
Look out for linked text (which is in blue) throughout the ebook that you
can select to help you navigate between notes and main text.

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This book is dedicated to my son, Zeb, my step-daughter, Yasmine, and to
all those wishing to become outstanding leaders. May each of you find
your own unique paths to leadership success.

‘If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and
become more, you are a leader.’

- John Quincy Adams

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 Contents

About the author

Introduction
1 Understand your motivations
2 Know yourself
3 Discover the art of self-leadership
4 Don’t wait for the job title
5 Use your influence, not authority
6 Be visionary with purpose
7 Walk the talk
8 Succeed from day one
9 It’s not a popularity contest
10 Listen well
11 Demand excellence
12 Hold firm to what you believe
13 Master office politics
14 Think about context
15 Grasp the bigger picture
16 You can’t rush becoming an expert
17 Leaders are servants
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18 Watch out for biased thinking
19 Put trust at the top of your list
20 Interview like a professional
21 Keep up in a fast-changing world
22 Try an executive coach
23 Project passionate positivity
24 What are you ready to sacrifice?
25 Don’t say ‘yes’ if you mean ‘no’
26 Seek and embrace feedback
27 Deal with resistance to change
28 Embrace failures
29 Don’t rely upon past victories
30 Learn, unlearn, relearn
31 Proactively seek out challenges
32 Expect the odd storm in your team
33 Put yourself in other’s shoes
34 Know when to shut up
35 Play to your strengths
36 Trust your intuition
37 Don’t neglect presentations
38 Own up when you’re wrong
39 Empower your team
40 Don’t neglect the small talk
41 Delegate well
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42 Indulge your child-like curiosity
43 Get your hands dirty
44 Develop your successors
45 Drive for results
46 Put the right people in the right roles
47 Coach your team carefully
48 Persist when others give up
49 Control yourself
50 Keep your values centre stage
51 Optimise everything
52 Sense-check before you act
53 Walk tall
54 Give others the spotlight
55 Wisely step in to micro-manage
56 Spread optimism
57 Pick people up when they fall
58 No bullshit allowed
59 Don’t forget your health
60 Be bold and daring
61 Look way beyond the bottom line
62 Be an excellent mentor
63 Break rules
64 Accept you may be lonely
65 Make the right calls
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66 Play peacemaker
67 Spell out responsibility
68 Be entrepreneurial
69 Think globally
70 Cope with the unexpected
71 Peer into the future
72 Choose your role models carefully
73 Get off your high horse
74 Stand tall during storms
75 Value diversity and inclusivity
76 Lead with your body language
77 Leave your door open
78 Become culturally intelligent
79 The customer always comes first
80 Choose your words carefully
81 Motivate to retain your talent
82 Always understand the numbers
83 Embrace technology
84 Negotiate your way to success
85 Resign for your beliefs… if necessary
86 Smash through ceilings
87 Don’t ignore that elephant in the room
88 Let go of things you no longer need
89 There’s no time for delay
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90 Prepare for the impossible
91 Lead remote teams carefully
92 Age is just a number
93 Manage your boss
94 Never blatantly show off
95 Create an amazing working culture
96 Be the real authentic you
97 Step down before being pushed
98 Hand over the baton
99 Keep leading
100 Leave a sustainable legacy
And finally…
References

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 About the author

Nigel Cumberland is the co-founder of The Silk Road Partnership, a

leading global provider of executive coaching and leadership training
solutions to some of the world’s leading organizations. He has lived and
worked in locations as diverse as Hong Kong, Glasgow, Budapest,
Santiago, Guatemala City, Kuala Lumpur, London and Shanghai, gaining
experiences and wisdom that have helped teach him what it takes to
succeed in life.
Previously, Nigel worked as a multinational finance director with Coats
plc, as well as for some of the world’s leading recruitment firms including
Adecco. He is a Fellow of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Management
Accountants. He co-created an award-winning recruitment firm based in
Hong Kong and China, which he later sold to Hays plc. Educated at
Cambridge University, UK, Nigel is an extensively qualified executive
coach and leadership training professional.
He is the author of a large number of self-help and leadership books,
among the most recent of which are: 100 Things Millionaires Do: Little
Lessons in Creating Wealth (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2019), The
Ultimate Management Book (John Murray Learning, 2018), 100 Things
Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (John Murray
Learning, 2016), Secrets of Success at Work: 50 Techniques to Excel
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2014), Finding and Hiring Talent in a Week (John
Murray Learning, 2016) and Leading Teams in a Week (John Murray
Learning, 2016).
Nigel is married to a wonderful woman named Evelyn, who spends her
time as an artist. He has two inspiring children – a son, Zeb, and a
stepdaughter, Yasmine.

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 Introduction

‘Everything you have thought, done and said in your life has prepared
you to become the leader you are today.’

Are you ready to kick-start your leadership journey? Well done, you have
picked up the perfect book to serve as your guide. This book will help you
master the key habits, skills and behaviours to enable you to excel in
whatever types of leadership roles you take on.
Leadership comes in all shapes and sizes from leading a voluntary group in
the evenings, managing a children’s sports team at weekends, or heading a
large and busy family, to taking on a managerial or supervisory role for the
first time, launching your own start-up business with only yourself to
manage, or as CEO of one of the world’s largest corporations.
It doesn’t matter how little or large, how trivial or important. Leadership is
leadership. The art of inspiring, organizing and motivating your kids at
home is not a million miles away from successfully being a Board
Chairperson of one of the largest listed groups in the world.
It’s so fantastic that you’re reading this book and that you want to
strengthen your leadership knowledge and capabilities. The world is
awaiting you to turn into the most amazing leader you’re capable of.
The need for better leadership is everywhere:

• Governments struggle to find focus, to lead not just their communities

and countries, but also themselves. So many political leaders struggle
to even complete their full terms of office.
• Companies of all sizes are facing so much disruption, complexity and
competition that their management teams are stretched to perform well.

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• Sports teams struggle to find consistency, with so many teams churning
through coaches and trainers.
• Public sectors are challenged in part by a lack of funds to cope with
issues such as weak schooling systems and hospitals at breaking point.
• Scandals remind us of weak leadership in our own communities – from
the church in crisis through to family units breaking up.

When you think of a successful leader, who comes

to mind?
Perhaps it’s those in very visible, formal and often very large leadership
roles such as Sir Richard Branson or Donald Trump. Perhaps you’re
inspired by those in smaller but still crucial roles such as your boss, former
headteacher, head of your local council, your MP or congresswoman, your
business partner or spouse. The 100 lessons in this book are designed to
turn you into the type of leader that others will admire and want to learn
from too.
I’ve coached hundreds of leaders working in organizations as diverse as
the United Nations, World Bank Group, global banks and multinationals
through to local tech start-ups, governments, schools and NGOs such as
Teach for India. I’ve heard every leadership aspiration and dream you can
imagine. I’ve listened to all the challenges and difficulties you’ll likely
face when taking on a leadership role.
The main lesson I have picked up is a simple one - too many people fail to
work on all aspects of their leadership toolbox leaving them with
underutilized skills and strengths, while hanging onto weaknesses which
hold them back. Not you… working through this book is your opportunity
to sit down and think about yourself, giving you time to ask yourself how
you want to develop and grow as a leader, to create followers and future
leaders, and to explore how you want to remembered by those you have
led.
Treat this book as your trusted companion. Through 100 short chapters,
you’ll learn to make sense of the pieces you need to slot together to
achieve your leadership ambitions. You’ll explore what leadership means

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to you through topics including:

• Self-leadership
• Your motivations
• Leadership styles
• Leadership mindsets and behaviours
• Thinking and communicating as a leader
• Motivating and inspiring followers
• Dealing with leadership challenges
• Leading through change
• Creating leaders and handing over.

How to use this book

Every chapter in this book features a new idea that will help you get closer
to your goals. In each chapter, the ideas are introduced and explained on
the first page and the second page features exercises and activities, some
small and some large, for you to start doing today.
Don’t overlook the activities. The tasks you’ve been set have been
specifically designed to give you the optimal mindset, habits, skills,
relationships and behaviours needed to maximize your chances of
leadership success. Some of them will surprise you, some will challenge
you, others will seem simple and obvious. All of them are important in
building the portfolio of skills you need to become a talented leader.
Completing them will set you on the path to developing a leadership
mindset and a leader-focused ’to do’ list. These things aren’t easy to
achieve and few people are willing to invest the required time and effort.
Successful leaders do.

Who am I to talk about successful leaders?

This book draws on the wisdom I have gained from coaching and
mentoring leaders from all over the world for the past 20 years. From

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global CEOs to struggling entrepreneurs, through to leaders in the public
sector and charities to first-time managers just starting out on their
leadership careers, all of them have something to share about the journey
of becoming an outstanding leader. Their experiences combine with my
own wisdom gained through some incredibly personal leadership highs
and lows.

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 1 UNDERSTAND YOUR
MOTIVATIONS

‘Some people spend their entire lives looking to be leaders. For others,
leadership is thrust on them even when it’s the last thing they’re
looking for.’

Think about a time you’ve accepted leadership responsibility. What made

you agree to it and would you be willing to take on that responsibility
again? Chances are you accepted the role because of a combination of
reasons, some of which come from within you, pushing you to put your
hand up to lead, some of which come from external factors, like the
situations you face or pressure from other people, pulling you to take
charge.
When coaching experienced leaders, I ask them why they became leaders
and many of their replies will resonate with you:

Reasons pushing you Reasons pulling you

• I like to take charge. • Nobody else was leading the project,

• I hate passively doing so I stepped in.
nothing. • My senior colleagues pleaded with
• I don’t enjoy being led by me to apply for the vacant
management position.
others.
• Somebody had to do it. • As a woman, I was encouraged to
take on the role as part of a gender
• I wanted a higher salary, so diversity drive.
accepted the leadership
opportunity.
• I was under a lot of peer pressure.

• As an eldest sibling, I have •

I had no choice as I was the only
suitable person.
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 always been a leader. • I wanted to say ‘no’ but was afraid to
• I can’t stand taking orders. turn down the promotion.
• I love helping other people.
• I want to make changes and
felt this was possible
through leading.

To be a successful leader, you have to understand why you’ve taken on

leadership responsibilities. You may not like the reasons, it might have
been all pull and no push, but by properly understanding your motivations,
you can more successfully decide how you’ll take on and excel in a
leadership role.

Put it into action

Are you a natural leader or follower? Either way, you may need to adjust
your natural instincts to get the best out of yourself.

Control the obsessive need to lead

The things that push you to want to lead are your internal drivers made up
of your personality, ego, motivations and inner needs. If you always feel
compelled to take the lead, it can indicate that you’re an ambitious person
who will always step up when the opportunity arises, but it’s not always a
good thing. This impulse can lead you to take on leadership
responsibilities before you’re ready or capable. You risk failing simply
because you weren’t willing to wait until you had more experience.

Overcome the reluctance to lead

You may face the opposite problem and have no wish to lead and no
inclination to stand out. That’s fine as long as you manage to avoid
leadership roles, but a big problem when you have responsibility thrust on
you. It’s never a good idea to wait until you’ve been pushed into the

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swimming pool before learning to swim, so take the opportunity to read up
on topics that you’re not so comfortable with in advance, and make a
mental decision to be more assertive in overcoming your worries.

Don’t be bullied into accepting roles

Even the best leaders say no to new tasks and responsibilities now and
again. For sure, there can be persuasive pull factors involved, but never be
afraid to upset other people who are pushing you. Decide whether you feel
ready and whether you want the additional responsibilities and
accompanying recognition before accepting anything.

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 2 KNOW YOURSELF

‘It can be uncomfortable looking deeply at yourself in the mirror,

reflecting and acting on what’s staring back at you.’

Understanding who you are is the first step to being able to lead others.
This connection between knowing yourself and leading others is based
upon what I refer to as four truths:
1. To truly understand another human being, you must first know yourself.
2. To successfully lead someone, you must understand who they are and
what drives them.
3. Leadership ability is built on a foundation of being able to lead yourself.
4. Successful self-leadership is only possible when you understand
yourself.
These four connections are shown visually below.

This chapter focuses on the first of these, with later chapters exploring the
other three. We all think we know ourselves well, but few people truly do.
I work with many people and rarely meet anyone who fully understands all
of their own strengths, weaknesses, habits, needs, drivers, desires,
motivations and values or their personality traits, feelings, emotions,
biases, patterns of behaviour and thinking.
Some people have no desire to acknowledge, let alone understand, why
they become angry, jealous, impatient, or are scared to speak up and this
failing to understand what makes you tick is dangerous. If you don’t
understand yourself, you risk misjudging other people, jumping to the
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wrong conclusions, being too harsh about others’ weaknesses. If you think
you’re perfect, you’re likely to blame other people when things don’t work
out as planned. Acting like this will make you an appalling leader.

Put it into action

Face your blind spots, no matter how dark
No one’s asking you to share all of your weaknesses and bad habits
openly. Just be honest with yourself and acknowledge your own mix of
useful and unhelpful patterns and behaviours.
The first step to doing this is to observe yourself with an open mind. Try
keeping a written journal, and go online and take one of the many free
personality tests that are available such as MBTI and DISC. Another way
is to ask your friends, family and close colleagues. Explain to them that
you want to improve yourself and that they can help you understand some
of your strengths and weaknesses. It’s important that they’re honest with
their answers, so make sure that they know you want the truth, even if they
fear it may upset you. If you’re not sure what questions to ask, pick some
from the list below. Ask yourself these questions too and note your
answers in your journal. Compare your responses to those of your
colleagues, family and friends.

• When I fail to get my way, how do I respond?

• What seems to make me angry, moody or act negative?
• When stressed or upset, how do I tend to act and behave?
• What makes me jealous and envious, and how do I show it?
• How do I treat other people when I am in a good mood, and when in a
bad mood?
• What do you most love and admire about me?
• What most annoys you about the way I am?
• What one habit or behaviour should I change to become a better
person?

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 3 DISCOVER THE ART OF
SELF-LEADERSHIP

‘To successfully lead others, first get your own house in order.’

The hardest person in the world you’ll ever have to lead and manage is
yourself. Washing the dishes every day is the perfect analogy for what it
means to lead yourself well. It’s not hard to do, but do you get it done or
do you just leave it for someone else?
As a leader, it can be easier to instruct other people to do the things you
don’t want to do. When you’re dealing with other people you can employ
all sorts of leadership styles and tools, from motivating and encouraging,
through to forcing and threatening. When it’s just you, all you’ve got is the
self-talk in your own head, and your success depends on your willpower,
drive and self-commitment. If you’ve set your alarm to get an early start
on a busy day, do you spring out of bed as planned, or do you just hit
snooze on repeat?
Self-leadership is the first level of leadership, and if you struggle to lead
yourself it doesn’t bode well for your ability to perform well at the other
types of leadership shown below. You’ll never successfully and
consistently lead other people, lead leaders or lead an entire organization
when you can’t even lead yourself. That’s why now is the time to get your
own house in order.

Put it into action

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Make a self-leadership plan
Self-leadership involves managing how you act, behave, communicate and
use your time. It covers every aspect of how you speak to, instruct,
criticize and work with yourself. As a minimum, you need to:

• Make sure that you remember any goals and to do lists you set for
yourself, and that you work towards achieving what you say you’ll do.
• Maintain your healthy and good habits, while working to eliminate any
unhealthy ones.
• Motivate yourself by trying to do things you enjoy that you’ll find
fulfilment in completing.
• Learn to say ‘no’, when needed, to requests from other people.
• Control your own emotions and how you communicate with other
people.
• Be consistent in how you lead yourself and in how you lead others. As
an example, if you want your team to be more creative, open-minded or
punctual, you must also exhibit these same qualities.
• Be kind, compassionate and positive to yourself. You’ll always have
days when you make mistakes, forget to complete a task or say the
wrong thing, and when this happens don’t be over-critical and beat
yourself up.
Find someone who will hold you accountable for working on and
improving your own self-leadership abilities. Share with a close friend or
trusted colleague your goals and actions for how you want to improve and
ask them to observe, encourage and challenge you to stick to your plan.

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 4 DON’T WAIT FOR THE JOB
TITLE

‘True leadership doesn’t start with a nice job title, corner office,
company car or exclusive club membership.’

If you only start being a leader when you’re given a leadership job title,
you’ll have waited too long and missed a golden opportunity to develop
and practice your skills earlier on in your life and career. The sooner you
can start practising, the sooner you can master being a leader.
In the many job roles and positions you hold before becoming a formal
manager, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to exhibit leadership. These
come in all shapes and sizes and can be found in your home, school,
college and community, as well as at your workplace. Leadership happens
when you:

• Tackle an issue that others in your family are avoiding

• Organize client meetings when your boss is on holiday
• Take an informal lead on a project team when there’s no appointed
leader
• Make all the arrangements for your next family vacation
• Organize a sports tournament for university clubs and societies.

These are just a selection of ways you might lead without having formal
authority, and all will give you hands-on leadership experiences. Informal
leadership can even be practised with smaller tasks, such as organising a
financial collection for a colleague or booking a team night out to unwind
after completing a stressful project.
Successful leaders know that practice really does make perfect and that the
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practice should start as early as possible through informal leadership
opportunities. Without doubt, this will lead eventually towards an official
supervisory or management position.

Put it into action

Overcome your reluctance to lead informally
Always step forward when the opportunity to lead presents itself and you
know it’s appropriate for you. Being nervous and reluctant is
understandable and common – your mind will be rehearsing any number
of possible reasons why it’s best not to step up. Classic examples include:

• Thinking you’ll be told off or ridiculed

• Feeling it’s not your responsibility or place to act
• Sensing you’re not capable and will fail
• Being concerned about seeming too keen or visible
• Fearing that your boss or senior colleague will be offended
• Worrying that your colleagues may become envious and jealous.

Think objectively and honestly about any concerns you may have, by
asking yourself if they’re simply excuses because you feel uncomfortable
about doing something for the first time or that seems out of character, or
if the concern is valid and you’re right to be cautious.

Informal leadership gets you noticed

Act at work as if you’re in a leadership assessment centre, where potential
new hires or high potential staff are tested and assessed for their leadership
potential and given exercises in which observers look at who takes an
informal lead when no formal leadership roles are handed out. The most
impressive individuals are those who understand the situation they’re in
and take an appropriate lead of the activity, discussion, project or task.
These people will receive the highest scores and be more likely to be hired
or promoted. That’s exactly how you must act in your workplace. As well
as getting you noticed and giving you leadership practice, it will help you
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decide if you actually want a formal leadership role in the future.

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 5 USE YOUR INFLUENCE, NOT
AUTHORITY

‘You know when you’ve influenced someone well – it’s when they
convince others to follow your lead.’

Which is most important, influence or authority? Inexperienced leaders

often think that being a leader means that you no longer need to exert
influence because you can get your way by using authority. That’s
dangerous for two reasons:

• Your own staff might appear to accept your demands but if they’re not
happy and inspired, they’re unlikely to be truly motivated and engaged.
• You’re likely to be working alongside other leaders with teams of their
own that you have no authority over. You can’t simply instruct and
order people who don’t report directly to you – they don’t have to listen
to you, no matter how senior your job title.
Your typical working day will be filled with the constant need to influence
and win people over, to get their agreement, buy-in or alignment on things
that are important to you. Using authority is never the way to get people
to:

• Accept your plans, goals, points of view, ideas or opinions

• Follow your vision
• Say, do or act in a certain way.

Successful leaders understand this and never rely on their job title to force
their view. They understand that they have to convince and persuade
through influence, to encourage people to positively carry out their
requests and to believe in their ideas and directions. Quiet influence, not

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authority, is how to win people over to your way of thinking.

Put it into action

There are a few key skills needed to master the art of influencing:

• Openly communicate
If you want someone to do something they may not be keen on, don’t
simply email them – speak to them. Explain the importance of the work
and why they‘re being asked to do it – and acknowledge the downsides of
the task.

• Be genuinely inspiring and visionary

When asking someone to do something, it helps to show the impact of the
requested task and how it fits into the bigger picture, overall plan or vision.
By doing so, you’ll more successfully inspire and motivate them.

• Be likable and empathic

It’s human nature for a person to be more easily persuaded by someone
they like and admire and is kind and nice. Become such a person by
showing that you care by trying to understand the other person, for
example, by understanding how busy they may be or why they may be
reluctant to accept a task.

• Leading by example
It’s very hard to convince someone to do, say or think something when
you might be doing the opposite. The natural reaction in that situation is to
think, ‘Why should I listen to you’. The ideal is always to role-model and
emulate what you’re asking other people to do.

• Giving and taking

Reciprocity is key to successful interactions. Always try to offer
something in return when asking someone to do something for you. For
example, if you’re asking them to work over the weekend on an urgent

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client project, offer them a day off in lieu.

• Providing tools and support

People will more readily be persuaded to do something when they have the
necessary help and support from you. Always ensure that they have the
necessary tools and resources to complete the tasks assigned to them.

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 6 BE VISIONARY WITH
PURPOSE

‘We are inspired to follow leaders who have found their true north.’

Which leaders do you most admire? No matter whether it’s your current or
ex-boss, or a globally recognized figure like Barack Obama, Richard
Branson or Mark Zuckerberg, chances are you’re impressed by the clarity
of where they’re heading and with what they aspire to create. It’s their
vision and sense of purpose that attracts you to them.
Individuals rarely write down their vision or purpose, but organizations do
it all the time in the form of vision statements. You might have read some:

• Oxfam: ‘A just world without poverty.’

• Amazon: ‘Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company;
to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything
they might want to buy online.’
• Ikea: ‘To create a better every day life for the many people.’
• Google: ‘To organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful.’
• TED: ‘Spread ideas.’

Leadership teams create these statements to outline where that

organization is heading and what they want to become. They’re normally a
mix of big dreams, audacious goals, aspirations and values.
Successful leaders know that without clear goals you might go around in
circles being pulled in different directions which can be both demotivating
and energy-sapping. To avoid this, they work with their team to develop a
vision statement to give themselves a clear understanding of where they’re
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heading and of what they want to achieve.
By creating a vision statement, you’ll stand out because very few leaders
give their teams such clarity. A 2018 Gallup survey in the US found that
only 22 per cent of employees surveyed strongly agreed with the statement
that their bosses had any kind of clear direction, suggesting that four-fifths
of all bosses have no idea where they’re heading, or at least never think to
tell their staff.

Put it into action

Create your own compelling vision
Create a vision statement as if it were the opening lines of a job advert for
a vacancy in your team. It should clearly explain the team’s focus and
what it’s aiming to achieve, and it should describe what people can expect
when joining your team. The wording should be compelling and exciting
enough to motivate and attract people to want to work with you and never
want to leave!
To help you draft the ideal wording, take a blank piece of paper and write
down your thoughts:

• Outline the vision of what you want to create and achieve with your
team (over the next three, five or 10 years).
• Explain how you would like the team members to be led by you, work
with you and also with each other to ensure that your vision will be
realized.

Keep it simple
Summarize your wording into a key phrase or slogan which you can use to
sell and get buy in to your overall vision. As an example, Boris Johnson
and team did this to great effect by creating the line ‘Get Brexit Done’
during the UK’s 2019 General Election. Share your overall vision with
your team, asking them for their opinions and suggested edits so that you
can create a final version which you’re all willing to sign up to and work
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towards achieving. To serve as an inspirational reminder, create wallet-
sized cards with the vision statement printed on and give each of your staff
a copy for them to carry around or place at their workstation. You might
also create vision posters which you can place throughout your office.

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 7 WALK THE TALK

‘Make sure everything you do is aligned. Don’t think one thing, say
another, while doing something else entirely.’

You’ll quickly have no one to lead if you ask your team to act in one way
while you do the opposite. It doesn’t matter if it’s intentional or accidental,
behaving like this destroys your credibility and the trust people have in
you. No one likes working with a boss who:

• Encourages staff to be open and share, while regularly withholding

information
• Insists that colleagues be on time for meetings, while always being late
• Persuades team members to support a company-wide initiative, while
quietly undermining it
• Becomes angry when direct reports don’t check their work for errors,
while putting out mistakes themselves
• Comes down hard on someone for cheating on their travel expenses,
while padding out expense claims.
If it’s not obvious that this is unacceptable, ask yourself how you’d feel
working with someone who acted like this. No one likes a hypocrite and
although some of these might seem like minor flaws, they’re often an
indicator that the leader is unethical and acting without integrity in more
serious ways in other areas of their work.
Successful leaders always walk the talk, aligning what they preach with
their own choices, behaviours and actions.

Put it into action

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Become a trusted role model
Start consciously role modelling the ideal behaviours and standards of
excellence you’d like your team to adopt. This has to be done through
leading by example, by personally demonstrating what you expect of
others through your own words and actions. If you need people to be
persistent, more strategic or less risk averse, then start acting in these
ways. Even if it’s not easy for you, show that you’re trying and this will
encourage and motivate your team to try to emulate you.

Be honest when not walking your talk

There may be occasions when you have to ask other people to act in ways
that are different to what you do. When that happens, be honest about it.
Think through how your team will react when they realize what’s
happening and explain the reasons for the situation. You may not be a
details person, but need your team to become more details-oriented. Tell
them what you need of them and admit that you struggle to concentrate on
the small print. By admitting a weakness, you show vulnerability and the
likelihood is that the team will respond by supporting you and the business
goal, which remain aligned because of your openness.

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 8 SUCCEED FROM DAY ONE

‘Get the beginning right – set the stage for what’s to come.’

Your first few days and weeks in a new leadership role, particularly in a
new organization, are critical. They will determine how successful you’ll
be in:

• Working with your new colleagues and team members. How you act
and perform in this initial stage shapes how your working relationships
form and develop. First impressions do count and how you’re seen to
be settling into your new role influences other people’s perceptions and
expectations of you.
• Achieving your goals and targets. The insights and knowledge you gain
early on will determine how well you get a handle on your role and
what it involves. Getting it right enables you to do the right things well.
Successfully transitioning into any new leadership role involves being
thoughtful and not jumping into any new tasks and interactions without
due care and attention. If you do, you risk making simple mistakes,
underperforming and even falling out with people. At first, just:

• Listen: don’t speak too much or share lots of opinions about how things
could be improved and how they were better in your last company.
• Give people a chance: don’t rush to make judgements on an
individual’s performance without fully appreciating all the context and
recent history.
• Adjust to fit: observe the norms of your new organization’s working
culture and alter your behaviour accordingly.
• Soak it up: you don’t need to create an instant impression by agreeing
with everyone and saying ‘yes’ every time you’re asked to do
something. Take time to appreciate the intricacies of the issues, of your
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 role and of what you’re actually agreeing to.
Successful leaders know the importance of pausing and reflecting to
minimize misunderstandings about what is happening around them.

Put it into action

Take a structured approach to onboarding
Onboarding, or the process of starting in a new role in a new organization,
should be treated like a complex project that requires your full attention
and careful planning. Put aside all your past experiences and assumptions
and be open-minded enough to recognize that you don’t know everything
on day one.
Calmly listen to, observe and learn from your new colleagues and team
members, appreciating how their behaviours, mindset and ways of
working are different to your previous colleagues, and be open to doing
things differently to how you have in the past.
Keep a journal of your notes and observations to help you record and
reflect on any differences and similarities you observe (compared to your
last role), especially around how:

• Colleagues communicate together and share opinions and ideas

• Colleagues thank and criticize each other
• Conflict arises and is dealt with
• Workspaces and offices are used and what is visible
• Goals, key performance indicators and other tasks are shared, delegated
and achieved
• Colleagues motivate, inspire, support and challenge each other
• Colleagues request help and resources
• Budgets, forecasts and plans are created, agreed upon, implemented and
monitored
• Good and poor behaviour and performance is recognized, rewarded and

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 dealt with
• New colleagues such as yourself are acknowledged, welcomed and
helped to succeed.

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 9 IT’S NOT A POPULARITY
CONTEST

‘If you want to be the most popular person in the room, sign up for a
beauty pageant.’

As a leader you have to be ready to communicate all kinds of difficult

messages, often in the space of one day. Leadership is definitely not a
popularity contest. You need a thick skin to make the tough calls, which
sometimes may appear very ruthless and out of character:

• Informing an eager team member that they’re not being considered for
a promotion
• Sharing with your team that they’ve not won a new high-profile project
they wanted to work on
• Informing a colleague that a candidate they’re keen to hire into their
team didn’t impress you when you interviewed her
• Expressing your frustrations at your team’s lack of progress
• Denying a colleague their request for holiday leave because too many
other colleagues in the same team will be out of the office in that same
period
• Telling a team member that they will be fired if they do not
immediately stop speaking badly about your strategic plan
• Giving a colleague an ultimatum to either accept and flow with your
vision for the company, or to resign.
Of course, you’ll get your share of positive news to share too, but it’s the
way you handle the bad that defines your leadership ability. Successful
leaders know that difficult messages have to be communicated without any
delay. To do anything else is to give people the wrong picture, false hope
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and incorrect expectations that will have a negative impact on motivation
and productivity. When you have bad news, communicate your message as
professionally as possible and be ready to manage the reactions of those
you’re speaking to, who may be shocked, upset, sad, confused or even
angry. Very few leaders do this well.

Put it into action

Don’t put off what you can do today
Never avoid sharing negative messages for fear of causing upset or to
avoid being unpopular and getting into a confrontation. There’s nothing to
be gained from putting off sharing bad news, delaying a feedback session
or sending a challenging email. You’re not doing anybody any favours by
delaying, and the sooner people know the hard truth the sooner they can
start processing it, dealing with their reactions and, hopefully, planning
how they learn, adapt and positively move on.

Plan communication well

Good news is easy, but when you’re giving someone bad news or critical
feedback it’s especially important to plan your message well. Take your
time to plan out the conversation or draft the email. Pause and reflect once
you’ve prepared everything and re-read your draft or ask a trusted
colleague to sense-check your communication plan.
The secret is to have a clearly stated and to-the-point message which is not
too harsh and undiplomatic. No matter whether you’re turning down a
request or giving a colleague constructive feedback, always aim to clearly
explain the facts, along with your observations and opinions.
Whenever possible, try to give the message in person and in private. If you
can’t meet them in person try meeting by video conference, so that you can
see each other. It’s best that emails, letters and phones are only used as
follow-up communications.

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Have a thick skin
Don’t take the reaction to bad news personally, no matter how angry or
upset the other person becomes. Show empathy and sympathy, telling
them that it’s okay to be upset or confused. Give them time to process
what you have told them.

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 10 LISTEN WELL

‘Switch off all those distractions swirling around your head and really
listen – and think about what you want to say.’

It’s really obvious when someone’s not listening to you. You may not
quite know how you know, unless they’re looking at their phone while
you’re speaking or talking over you, but you’ll know. These are the tell-
tale signs:

• They never clarify anything you’ve said

• They don’t ask any follow-up questions
• They cut you off or change the subject.

It’s frustrating when it happens and it’s normal to find this kind of
behaviour demotivating and demoralizing as we all value being heard and
we appreciate other people listening to what we are trying to say.
Successful leaders know that listening well helps people feel and perform
better. This is borne out in a study of leaders’ listening skills involving
3,492 managers, summarized in the Harvard Business Review. It found
that the top five per cent of leaders in terms of listening skills stood out
through:

• Creating conversations that were healthy two-way discussions

involving helpful questioning, with little defensiveness shown when
their comments and ideas were challenged
• Leaving those they listened to feeling more positive and with higher
self-esteem
• Making those being listened to more open to hearing suggestions in
response to what they were saying.

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Put it into action
Show that you’re actively listening
Aim to always fall into the top five per cent for your listening skills. You
can achieve this by doing the following when someone’s talking to you:

• Stop everything else you’re doing and give the person in front of you
all of your attention. If you’re unable to do this, plan another time when
the two of you are both free to have the conversation.
• Talk together in a location that’s calm and free of noise, distractions
and interruptions, and put away your phones and computers.
• If you have limited time, say so, and set a duration for the discussion,
offering to continue the conversation later as needed.
• Demonstrate that you’re present and listening:
∘ Look at the other person and use engaged body language such as
nodding, smiling and maintaining eye contact.
∘ Say things that demonstrate you’re really present such as ‘I hear
you’, ‘Sounds challenging’ or ‘Mmmm not easy’.
∘ Summarize or paraphrase what you’ve heard, and if necessary ask
questions to clarify your understanding.

Do people want to talk to you?

Having good listening skills isn’t enough. You need to be approachable
too so that people actually want to open up to you. Make sure that you’re
someone people are happy to talk to by eliminating distancing habits and
behaviours, such as leaving your door closed, always acting busy, cutting
people off mid-sentence, ignoring what they’re saying or jumping to
conclusions before they’ve finished speaking. If you’re not sure how good
a listener you are, just ask your team.

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 11 DEMAND EXCELLENCE

‘Leadership is all about doing the right things and doing them right.’

You must make sure that your team or organization is doing the right
tasks, and that those tasks are all being done really well. This is a hard
balance to achieve. The awful truth is that most leaders and their teams do
some important tasks badly, while also focusing on completing
unimportant or unnecessary tasks.
I compare this to the simple metaphor of digging a hole in the ground.
There’s no point in digging a hole really well if it’s in the wrong place; or,
of course, digging a poor-quality hole in the perfect location. In the
workplace, these two types of mistakes are far too common. For example:

• A team member spends hours creating a perfectly crafted spreadsheet

or written report, only to discover that he had misunderstood the
question or problem to be solved.
• You present a solution to a client in a very professional manner, only to
hear that the client had asked for information about a totally different
product.
• A key member of your team is given a great opportunity to present
work to your global management team, but prepares badly and
performs worse.
You’ll never achieve excellent results if you or your team misplace and
waste your energy, focus, time and resources in this way on the wrong
tasks and/or complete essential tasks in a shoddy and poor-quality manner.

Put it into action

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Challenge and support your team to achieve
excellence
Excellence is doing the right things well all the time. To achieve this,
make sure that each of your team has the right guidance and tools in each
of six areas (collectively known as Gilbert’s Six Boxes):
1. The right information and feedback to know what to do. Give them
written job roles and responsibilities, guidelines explaining what needs
to be done and why. They also need sufficient informal and formal
feedback.
2. The right tools and resources to do their work optimally. Sometimes
it’s as simple as giving someone a new and faster computer.
3. The ideal incentives to exceed expectations. Give clear rewards for
high performance, for achieving the goals and key performance
indicators (KPIs).
4. The ideal skills and knowledge to enable them to excel. It’s not
enough to send someone on a training course or to give them the work
experience – make sure they know how to use what they have learnt.
5. The capacity to do what is asked of them. Are some of your team out
of their depth and struggling with the range of tasks/volume of work
given to them?
6. The motivation and commitment to work hard. Do they like coming
to work for you, enjoy completing their tasks and working with their
colleagues?

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 12 HOLD FIRM TO WHAT YOU
BELIEVE

‘It’s not easy to stay still while buffeted by the winds of peer pressure,
group opinion and the views of the majority.’

There are times when being a leader will leave you feeling pressured,
particularly when you’re standing still or moving in another direction
while everybody passes you, urging you to follow them. But you may do
so because you know that your opinions, views and convictions are right
and theirs are not. Having your own opinions and views and sticking to
them is not easy but you have to sometimes if you wish to be successful.
Your opinions, views and convictions come from your life experiences,
knowledge and long-held beliefs:

• Some are based around your mindset and behaviours, for example: hard
work must be rewarded, you only get one chance, integrity is non-
negotiable…
• Others are goal and target specific: we must enter into this new
marketplace, our system has to be updated for us to succeed, that
business has to be more profitable or we close it down…
• Others may focus on how things are done: we must always plan
quickly, must collaborate in a certain way…
• Occasionally they may be more holistic and long term: a strong belief
that our products must change the world for the better, all our decisions
have to be sustainable in terms of their environmental impact…
Every leader has a mix of opinions and convictions. The most successful
leaders always seem to know when to hold firm to what they understand or
believe in, even when the tide of opinion moves in the opposite direction

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or their colleagues’ views and direction is different.

Put it into action

Strike the right balance … sometimes you’re right
and must hold firm
You must decide yourself when to hold firm to what you believe in, when
others beg you to do the opposite. To help you achieve this:

• Listen and reflect upon the opinions and convictions held by your
colleagues and try to understand where they’re coming from.
• Analyse and reflect upon your own thinking and have an open mind
about whether it’s right to hold onto your opposing views.
• When you decide that you need to hold firm, prepare to explain your
feelings, logic and reasoning. This can help justify your own views and
increase your chances of winning others over to your thinking.
Some people may struggle to understand and accept your views,
particularly when they are diametrically opposed to their own beliefs and
thinking. They may get upset with you – try to accept this and not allow it
to negatively impact your working relationships. Over time, people may
come to recognize that you were right to hold firm.

… and sometimes you may be wrong

Remember: nothing is permanent – your convictions evolve and change as
you gain more insight, information, experience and wisdom. You may
have moments when you realize that a particular belief or assumption you
held strongly is wrong and what you thought to be true is no longer the
case. Admit it with humility to colleagues and openly embrace your new
thinking, belief or view.

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 13 MASTER OFFICE POLITICS

‘Being a leader is like playing snakes and ladders – never knowing

when you will fall down the snake or rise up a ladder.’

Nearly every leader I have coached has spoken about their struggles with
different kinds of internal politics and of needing to survive when
colleagues play games with each other. One leader recently spoke of
feeling worn out trying to survive internal political struggles within her
company, describing her work environment as a jungle, where colleagues
would do whatever it took to gain resources and recognition, some
colleagues no longer on speaking terms and some having already resigned.
Perhaps you have experienced internal politics yourself, such as:

• Your reputation being muddied by colleagues gossiping about errors of

judgement you’re accused of making
• A colleague choosing to not warn you about serious problems with a
project you’re leading
• Another department passing the buck, claiming to bosses that it’s your
team at fault, when you know this is not true
• Before a budget planning discussion, discovering that colleagues have
been sneakily making arguments to the head of finance behind your
back about why their departments and not yours deserve extra
headcount next year
• Another business unit transferring a team member to your area with
glowing references, neglecting to say that she was a poor team player
• Realizing that your boss is showing extreme favouritism to certain
colleagues, which is negatively impacting upon you and your team.
To be a successful leader, you need to become used to such scenarios.
Build up the experience and sense to know when and how to speak up and
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challenge, and when to keep quiet to avoid making a fraught situation
worse.

Put it into action

Be a master navigator
Navigating your way through internal politics is not easy. You’ll need all
of your soft skills, in particular being able to influence, speak up, face
conflict, communicate clearly, give clear feedback and be assertive. In
addition:

• Never immediately jump up and down and assume the worst. When a
colleague does not tell you something important, you might be tempted
to angrily speak up assuming that their silence was deliberate and
intended to put you in bad light. Don’t do it! Perhaps they had simply
forgotten. Instead, calmly explore and check what is actually happening
and what people’s real intentions are.
• Choose your battles – learn to work out when to let go of something, to
not speak up, defend, justify or complain. Think carefully before doing
the opposite and getting involved in an attempt to right a wrong, stop
an inappropriate behaviour or set the record straight, perhaps to clear
your name or show that your team is performing a task well when
accused of the opposite.
• Keep your ears open and use your intuition to sense when an issue with
a colleague might be brewing. For example, they may be starting to
treat you differently to normal and now seem to avoid you or hold back
from sharing ideas with you. Don’t react negatively, do the opposite
and spend more time connecting with and befriending this colleague –
you may be able to warm up the relationship rather than leaving it to go
cold.
• Maintain a healthy and positive relationship with your own boss. You
need them on your side because they can serve as your biggest
supporter or defender, helping you clarify or quash any rumours that
might circulate about you or your team as well as stamping out other
types of internal politics that you may face.

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• Don’t create any internal politics yourself – never spread bad gossip,
innuendo or half-truths about other people. If you can’t speak highly
about other people, just say nothing.

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 14 THINK ABOUT CONTEXT

‘I love the idea of “horses for courses”, which means carefully

choosing the horse you will ride for each race based upon the
racetrack conditions.’

Far too many leaders treat every similar-looking situation exactly the
same, failing to recognize that each may demand a different type of
response to ensure the ideal outcome.
In your home, do you have a toolkit filled with various tools and you
choose the best tool to solve each particular issue – perhaps a small
screwdriver for one job and a drill for another? You’d never try to solve all
your repairs and maintenance with the same tool, would you? The same
applies to leadership – don’t use the same leadership style in all scenarios.
Surprisingly, many leaders ignore this basic truth and never vary how they
act and respond even in markedly different situations:

• Dealing with every employee performance issue identically

• Motivating all team members with the same incentives
• Always communicating information via the same type of long emails
• Reacting in the same manner to staff struggling to meet deadlines
• Chairing all meetings in exactly the same style
• Using the same clichés and comments to express their feelings
• Asking the same tired old interview questions, no matter what level of
role they’re interviewing for.
Treating each person or problem in the same way is inefficient and rarely
100 per cent effective. People may become confused or lost, follow your
incorrect advice and struggle, or feel misunderstood and become
demotivated. This is not what you intended or in your best interest…
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Put it into action
Learn to mix and match
Aim to become a situational leader, a leadership style made famous by
Ken Blanchard, in which you need to recognise each unique situation that
you’re facing and respond in the most appropriate way by:

• Always taking time to understand the issue. Calmly assess what is

happening before you respond. Explore and understand the full context
of the issue or problem facing you, including whether it’s a recurring
issue. Also determine who is involved, noting whether they’re
experienced, newly hired, overworked or demotivated and so on.
• Defining the optimal outcome. Once you grasp the uniqueness of each
situation facing you, you can then determine what the ideal outcome or
solution you need to achieve is.
• … and finally, deciding how you achieve your outcome. Decide what
the unique combination of ways you need to act and respond is in each
case:
∘ Sometimes you need to calmly listen and motivate and at other
times act quickly to show your team your upset or concern.
∘ In some situations, you need to act inspirational and visionary and
in others to become involved in the details and micro-manage.
∘ The list of possible ways of responding to different situations is
endless. You can choose to sit down one-on-one and coach
someone, lead a brainstorming discussion, ask how you can help,
pause and act later, spend time observing or do absolutely nothing
at all.
Only a lazy or inexperienced leader uses the same leadership tool every
time.

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 15 GRASP THE BIGGER
PICTURE

‘Sometimes we become lost among the trees and are unable to see
which way to move.’

Successful leaders understand the importance of taking a bigger-picture

view. They step back from their day-to-day issues to do so. It’s like being
an airline pilot who is always breaking through the clouds to spend time
higher up to see what is sometimes called a bird’s eye or balcony view.
This essential leadership task gives you space and time to:

• Better see patterns between issues, activities and problems

• Take a more strategic view of your responsibilities, challenges and
goals
• Look ahead into the future rather than being caught up in the present
• Give your team the space to flourish, without you peering over their
shoulders and constantly micro-managing them
• More time and insights to better plan how you can support your team
and other colleagues.
Few leaders do this well – they get into the habit of being immersed in
numerous daily issues, working through and ticking off tasks on to-do
lists, dealing with urgent tasks like a firefighter and keeping a close eye on
their team’s work. Many leaders can’t help doing this because in their
more junior positions they were never expected or encouraged to take this
balcony view. The risk is that your leadership performance will suffer if
you don’t regularly step back to take in the bigger picture. Only by
stepping back can you truly appreciate why it’s so valuable and important
to do so.

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Put it into action
Try zooming out
Think of yourself as a professional photographer. Zoom out to take great
photos of entire landscapes and views of your working environment. As
you rise into more senior leadership roles, this trick becomes even more
essential. If you find it difficult to do, work out what is holding you back:

• During your working day, observe yourself to notice whether and when
you spend too long involved in the details of your team’s tasks and to-
do lists. Ask yourself ‘Is this really productive?’
• Overcome any barriers that stop you from stepping back. You may
actually be more comfortable being in the details; you may not trust
your team being left alone with day-to-day tasks; you may be nervous
about stepping up into a new, more strategic and reflective role.

Make time to stand on the balcony

• Set aside time in your working week to be more strategic and bigger-
picture focused. At these times, standing on the balcony above your
work environment, reflect upon your medium- to longer-term workload
and challenges as well as the more strategic issues and challenges
facing you and your colleagues. What do you see?
• If this is difficult, have you thought of engaging with an executive
coach or mentor to help you focus and reflect upon these longer-term
and bigger-picture aspects of your work?
• It may also help you get used to taking a bigger-picture view to find
opportunities to attend strategic and longer-term focused events and
activities. You could try volunteering to sit on a restructuring or long-
term planning committee, or attending conferences on future business
trends or emerging business ideas.

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 16 YOU CAN’T RUSH
BECOMING AN EXPERT

‘Little by little, we grow in skills and expertise.’

You just can’t become a leadership expert overnight. You can’t short cut
the process of acquiring various experiences and skills from which you
learn and gain knowledge and wisdom. As a result, your own journey to
leadership expertise will probably meander or hurtle down a familiar route,
such as:

• You start out as a first-time manager with limited exposure to the rough
and tumble of facing leadership responsibilities and situations. You
may have attended Business School courses and other leadership skills
training, but won’t have had many years to implement and master your
learning.
• Over time, you gain more leadership exposure and experiences, which
when combined with mentoring, coaching and training enable you to
start becoming and feeling like an experienced leader.
• Until, hey presto, one day you’re viewed as an expert and are being
asked to mentor others and to be a keynote conference speaker at
company events, with people queuing up to hear you share your
wisdom!
This journey to becoming an experienced leader takes time and patience.
In today’s culture of everything being on demand, this is not easy and we
can easily forget that becoming expert at something takes time and that
being able to quickly learn something does not make you an expert. Some
young leaders mistakenly think merely having an MBA makes them
skilled in leadership, ignorant that genuine expertise can only be gained
through repeated real-life experiences. If you start prematurely thinking

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you’re an expert, you risk becoming overconfident and likely to think you
can take on more than you’re capable of. This risks you making big
mistakes that may even badly damage your career. Be careful.

Put it into action

Patiently follow a leadership development plan
Create your own leadership development plan and break down your annual
goals and actions by month. This will encourage you to constantly:

• learn new things

• reflect upon your successes and struggles
• seek and act upon feedback
• ask others to mentor you.

Every leader needs a development plan, even if you are already running a
successful business. Today’s technology start-ups often have very young
founders and CEOs. Their colleagues and shareholders understand the
need to help these young leaders quickly build up expertise by helping
them create leadership development plans. These might include providing
the leaders with all kinds of tools and support, including having
experienced and older mentors.

Be humble about how much you know

Always be open about the gaps in your own knowledge and experience.
We all have such gaps. When facing different business and leadership
challenges, recognize what is new to you and where you may lack
experience or understanding. Don’t worry about this – it’s okay and
expected that you be honest. Where you know you’re not yet an expert, try
responding to others by saying:

• ‘Actually, I am not clear how to deal with this issue.’

• ‘I am not sure. Who will have a better idea about what is going on?’

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• ‘I should know what to do but I am a bit confused. Let me reflect and
sense-check with others.’
• ‘How well am I understanding this problem?’

Being humble and honest in this way is an essential leadership strength,

particularly when you’re being promoted faster than you’re able to gain
expertise (which is becoming increasingly common).

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 17 LEADERS ARE SERVANTS

‘It’s their success, not yours that matters – nothing more and nothing
less.’

Your role as a leader is to serve others in support of their own needs, aims
and goals. It is not about focusing on your own successes and place in the
history books. This concept of servant leadership may not be familiar to
you but has been around a while and was first written about back in the
1970s by the American leadership expert and author, the late Robert K.
Greenleaf.
The central point about being a servant leader is that you put your own
success and needs to one side and focus on the needs and ambitions of
your followers and other stakeholders. The benefits of doing so include:

• Colleagues working with and under you feel more valued, listened to
and appreciated, and as a result will be more motivated, engaged and
energized.
• Your customers and suppliers experience better interactions when
working with your team members, which translates into more client
loyalty and closer supplier relationships.
This selfless attitude of putting the needs and ambitions of others first can
transform you both as a leader and a person:

• You become less competitive and stressed as you focus less on yourself
and more on your team and colleagues.
• You keep your ego in check and stop needing to always come out on
top, for example by winning arguments or dominating discussions in
meetings.
• Consistently acting in this way enables you to become a true team

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 player as you encourage your team members to contribute, be heard
and to have the credit.
• You are more open and generous, for example willing to freely share
ideas and let others run with them.

Put it into action

Little by little, become a servant
All leaders need to have their own needs, motivations and ambitions
recognized and valued, and to seek job promotions, salary increases and
bonuses. Nobody is suggesting that you stop doing this and become a pure
servant leader. The secret is to continue being the way you are, but to
make more space for the needs of other people by exhibiting a degree of
selflessness.
When facing key choices and decisions, get into the habit of taking what I
call the selfishness test by asking yourself, ‘In this situation, whose needs
am I primarily focusing on, my own or those of my team members and
colleagues?’ Review your answers to this question, and then decide
whether you’ve got the balance right – sometimes your own needs come to
the fore and at other times those of other people dominate. Hopefully, on
many occasions, all of your needs will align.

Become more a ‘we’ and less an ‘I’ leader

When reviewing your work, don’t ask yourself ‘What have I achieved?’
Think instead in a more collaborative fashion by asking, ‘How have I
helped my team, colleagues and/or organization to excel and prosper this
week?’ or ‘Together, how are we excelling, growing and being
motivated?’
Practise this way of thinking for a few months. You should find yourself
becoming less of an ‘I’ person and spending more time in the ‘we’ space.
Colleagues will hopefully notice this difference – ask them if this is the
case. Hopefully, you’ll receive some very positive feedback!

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 18 WATCH OUT FOR BIASED
THINKING

‘We rarely see the factual truths. Instead, we find ourselves staring at
our own distorted image of the facts.’

The next time you make an important decision, do so at your peril. We live
in an increasingly complex and volatile work environment where it’s not
easy to know what is actually happening. This is not helped by heavy
workloads, including inboxes stuffed with emails and diaries crammed
with meetings. How can you give sufficient time and focus to analysing,
checking, reviewing data and information so you can arrive at accurate
conclusions?
Even when we are sure that we’ve been thorough, we still risk making
incorrect decisions and coming to the wrong conclusions. Here are some
typical examples:
a. A new colleague acts very open and helpful during their first week of
work in your office and you assume they will always be trustworthy.
b. You disagree with your company’s decision to develop a new product
and keep finding reasons to prove you’re right, letting everyone know ‘I
told you so’ when you find evidence to confirm your thinking.
c. Your team member is struggling to complete a piece of work and asserts
that it’s not their fault, and then blames other colleagues.
d. You’re over-optimistic about the chances of your project team finishing
their tasks on time, while another colleague thinks the opposite and is
convinced that the team will always be late to finish such work.
e. Your boss has invested much time and energy into opening a new
subsidiary and is now unable and unwilling to accept that it was a
mistaken investment decision and that the new business should be
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 closed down.
f. Your team are keen to implement a new system simply because they
observe many other departments doing the same thing, even though they
know that there are few business benefits.
g. You win a new large client with a proposal that contains new fee terms.
Given this client win, you decide to always use this same winning fee
proposal format in all future client bids.

Put it into action

Start understanding what is really happening
Learn from your mistakes. And don’t stop there – learn from those made
by others too. Start to understand the ways in which biased thinking may
be clouding your judgement. Look again at the examples from the previous
page. The following show the biased thinking in each example:
a. This is called the halo effect where we form a strong opinion based on a
limited view. The danger comes from extrapolating and assuming that
one good outcome means all future outcomes (with the same inputs)
will be equally successful. We have forgotten how unique each situation
might be.
b. This confirmation bias blinds us to the possibility that we are wrong.
We are then unwilling to accept the possibility of having made a
mistake and seek any possible justifications to prove we are right.
c. When we struggle to achieve a goal at work, we rarely blame ourselves
and instead point our finger at others. This is known as the self-serving
bias and can lead us to never learn from our own mistakes.
d. Such optimism or pessimism biases may cause us to see everything
about a situation from either a positive or negative standpoint.
e. Called the sunk-cost fallacy, this is the tendency of not being willing to
admit defeat after having invested so much time, credibility, money
and/or energy.
f. Known as the bandwagon effect or groupthink problem, we can be taken
in by ideas and opinions when many people around us hold them.

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g. This type of thinking is called the outcome bias where we form a
simplistic view of how we succeeded at doing something. Perhaps the
fee proposal format was not very good at all and played no part in the
winning tender.
The point to take away from all this is to step back, be open-minded, think
of all aspects and angles and to question your own assumptions. Be okay
about discovering that you or your team may have made a mistake.

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 19 PUT TRUST AT THE TOP OF
YOUR LIST

‘Trust is like a glue that holds everything and everybody together.’

Your number one role as a leader is to create and maintain optimal levels
of trust. This is not easy because trust covers so many aspects of your
work and interactions including:

• Trust in others, in what they’re saying, promising, thinking and doing

• Trust in rules, laws, systems and procedures
• Trust in your own abilities, thinking and intentions.

When trust is missing or is being questioned, it’s challenging to

successfully lead because your colleagues might be distracted by their
concerns, which may impact how they work in the following ways:

• I don’t totally trust that I will be rewarded for performing well and
exceeding my goals
• I hope I can trust my colleagues to help me when I struggle
• I’m not sure I trust that my boss has my back
• I never trusted the accuracy of the online invoicing system
• Be careful when working with that department, they can’t be trusted to
give us accurate data
• Although I went on the training, I don’t trust myself with the new
process
• I have little trust in the company’s strategy and plans for new products.

It’s normal to only think about trust when you suddenly realize that it’s

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missing, for example when you lose trust in another person or no longer
trust a process. It’s also a very personal matter – something that you really
trust might not be trusted at all by someone else.

Put it into action

Be a role model of trust
Your key trust-related task is to make sure that your colleagues trust you in
all aspects of your work. They must trust that you can be relied upon 100
per cent in terms of what you say, promise and do.

Map out where trust is most needed

Try to understand how you can help raise the levels of trust:

• Between you and your colleagues

• Between your colleagues
• In the processes and systems your team works with, including those
that you create.
Start by making a list of where trust is most needed. Base this on your own
observations and opinions about where trust has been lacking and where it
seems to be essential for creating the ideal work environment. Involve
your team members by asking for their opinions. To encourage them to
share more openly, create an anonymous online questionnaire for them to
answer.

Proactively develop more trust

Once you know where trust is needed, explore how you can build it up in a
sustainable manner. Trust is based on each person’s perceptions and
experiences, so it can be very hard to objectively pinpoint exactly what
needs to be done. You may have to proceed by trial and error. Most of
your actions will involve communication and sharing, for example:

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• Make time for weekly one-on-one sessions between you and your team
members to help build up their trust in you
• Have more team-building sessions and social gatherings between two
departments to break down a lack of trust
• Hold discussions between your team and HR colleagues to share
people’s concerns about the accuracy of a new performance
management system.

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 20 INTERVIEW LIKE A
PROFESSIONAL

‘If you want a high-performing team and organization, hire top

performers.’

Far too many leaders moan about the quality of their team, despairing
about their team members’ poor motivation, mindset or willingness to
adapt and change. Having to lead such a team can be very challenging and
frustrating, particularly because it can stop you achieving high levels of
success. A major reason for ending up with this problem is poor-quality
hiring and you only have yourself to blame if you hire people who:

• Lack the ability to master the technical skills needed

• Fail to show any persistence and give up far too easily
• Always blame other people for their own problems and mistakes
• Show no interest in adapting to changes
• Show no desire to grow, take on more responsibilities and be promoted.

Sadly, most leaders invest too little time and effort into the recruiting
process and may:

• Rely upon their HR colleagues and external recruitment companies to

source and screen candidates, often never agreeing a clear job
description or ideal candidate profile
• Never prepare for interviews with potential candidates, often not even
reading their CVs
• Conduct interviews that are too short, where the leader speaks too much
and simply asks random questions

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• Leave HR to close the deal with a chosen candidate.

It’s no surprise that many leaders become disappointed with their new
hires and have to let them go and start the recruitment process all over
again (which can demotivate their entire team and waste time and money).
Successful leaders know that great hiring is the key to creating a high-
performing team – any team is only as good as the people who join it.
They also know that a poor-quality hire can’t easily be transformed into a
high-performing team member because there’s only so much that
interventions such as mentoring, coaching and on-the-job training can
achieve to change a person’s mindset and performance.

Put it into action

Be clear about what you’re looking for
Decide what the critical success factors are for a person to succeed in a
particular role. Make sure that these are clearly stated in any job advert and
role description. Agree these factors with your HR colleagues and any
external recruiters as the key criteria to use when approaching, filtering,
selecting and shortlisting candidates.

Prepare well for interviews

Create a great set of interview questions to help you compare each
candidate with the role’s critical success factors. Develop so-called
‘behavioural interview questions’ to help you explore how a candidate has
coped and dealt with particular challenges and issues. You could try:

• Tell me about a time when, working in a project team, you had to

suddenly change direction and how you coped.
• Describe a situation when you made a big mistake and explain how you
responded and what you learnt as a result.
• Give me examples that demonstrate how creative you are when faced
with difficult goals and problems.

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Catch candidates off guard
Most job seekers are well prepared and will have rehearsed their answers
to questions they expect you will ask them. In order to learn about their
real character and personality, you need to slip in a question or two that
they won’t be expecting.

Be just as thorough with internal hires

Before agreeing to take someone into your team or department, interview
them as thoroughly as you would an external candidate.

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 21 KEEP UP IN A FAST-
CHANGING WORLD

‘Working life has become so volatile and uncertain – you could

compare it to trying to remain seated while riding a rodeo bull.’

We live in a world of dramatic change and transformation, aptly referred

to as the ‘age of accelerations’ by the New York Times columnist, Thomas
L. Friedman. Industry disruptions, business revolutions and exponential
changes are becoming commonplace, with leaders worrying about what
will be the next Uber or Amazon business model that could suddenly
appear and destroy their businesses. This speed of change is so dramatic
that your leadership experiences and skills may quickly seem obsolete in
the face of new challenges.
You need to expertly take your teams, stakeholders and organization
forward in a so-called VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and
ambiguous) world:

• The volatility is the result of events and situations changing faster than
ever before, caused in part by new real-time processes and data
processing.
• The uncertainty stems from this volatility with it becoming harder to
know what is actually happening today or tomorrow.
• Thanks to technology, we have allowed everything to become more
complex than in the past.
• All of this rapid change and complexity makes it harder to understand
what is actually happening, with problems and solutions being less
clear-cut and more ambiguous.
As a leader you’re allowed to feel lost, confused and even stressed by all

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of this. But your challenge is to become a successful leader despite all this
noise.

Put it into action

Turn VUCA to your advantage
To successfully navigate through your own VUCA business environment,
follow this advice, which is expanded upon in later chapters:

Let go to make space for the new

What you thought or did yesterday might not be needed or even
appropriate for the challenges facing you tomorrow. You have no choice
but to be open-minded and humble enough to embrace the unknown, and
be ready to learn, understand and adopt newly needed thinking and ideas.

Spend time in sense-making

Accept that events, problems and situations may not be as easy to
understand as in the past. Together with your team, be ready to invest time
in exploring and brainstorming sessions to help you all make better sense
of everything.

Be comfortable when feeling unsure and lost

As a leader, you may feel that you should have all the answers and be
certain of everything. Unfortunately, it’s no longer possible to give your
teams or even yourself clear direction, comfort or certainty.

Have the courage to face unexpected challenges

No matter whether you’re facing a small business issue or something as
big as a new Uber entrant wiping out a taxi’s monopoly, it’s okay to feel
uncertain and to struggle to know how best to respond. The key is to face
each challenge as best you can rather than ignoring it and hoping the
problem won’t be major and will simply go away.

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 22 TRY AN EXECUTIVE
COACH

‘Being coached is rather like openly and confidentially talking to your

bathroom mirror, which listens attentively and asks some really
insightful questions.’

Being coached is all the rage. I don’t know of any global and well-known
leader who has never sought the help of an executive, leadership or career
coach. These are not like sports coaches who shout instructions from the
side lines of the pitch. They’re experienced individuals who provide
coaching that is a combination of being:

• a transformative process for personal and professional awareness,

discovery and growth, and the expansion of possibilities. [definition
from the International Association of Coaching]
• a professionally guided process that inspires clients to maximize their
personal and professional potential. [definition from the European
Mentoring & Coaching Council]
Such a coach confidentially helps a leader sense-check how they could
deal with any number of challenges, whether these are people management
problems or behavioural and mindset issues. You could ask a coach about
anything at all that will help you be a successful leader, such as how to:

• Deal with your over-critical boss

• Succeed in your new and complex role
• Inspire your team
• Create more balance in your work and life
• Lead with more stature and gravitas

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• Turn your vision into reality
• Manage some older and demotivated team members
• Become more assertive and extrovert.

The coach is not there to give you black-and-white answers, but to help
you arrive at your own conclusions and plans, to help you see things in a
clearer and new light.

Put it into action

Find a coach you’re comfortable with
Your HR colleagues will normally find a coach for you, and your
organization will fund the cost. Try to meet at least two possible coaches
in what are referred to as chemistry meetings. During these initial
meetings, you’re able to assess how comfortable you feel with both
coaches and how well you sense that they understand you and your
challenges.

Allow yourself to find value in being coached

Only by experiencing coaching can you discover its benefits. Why not start
with two to three coaching sessions spread over a few months, with each
session typically lasting one to two hours and spaced out at one per month.
During each session, leave your office and meet your coach in a quiet and
relaxing location. Bring to the coaching sessions your bag of topics that
you want to reflect upon with the hope of discovering the perfect way to
respond, solve or succeed.
Be ready for a conversation which might feel alien – the coach will, in
confidence, listen to you deeply, show empathy, ask you lots of questions
and encourage you to share your feelings, dreams, fears, goals and
concerns.

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 23 PROJECT PASSIONATE
POSITIVITY

‘We all prefer to work in the sunshine surrounded by sunflowers,

rather than to toil under dark and cloudy skies.’

Successful leaders create and maintain very positive working

environments because this positivity translates into improved profitability,
customer satisfaction and employee engagement. Studies confirm this –
one by the University of Michigan and published in the Journal of Applied
Behavioral Science found that positive and virtuous leadership and team
practices help an organization to excel for three reasons:

• The positive emotions in the office help people to work well and be
more creative together.
• The higher levels of positivity serve as a vaccine against negativity,
there’s less stress and people more easily bounce back from any
setbacks.
• Employees feel better in general, enabling them to be more loyal and
willing to perform at their best.
I have spent enough time within many organizations to observe that such
positivity is highly contagious within a team or an organization. When a
leader exudes positivity, their team feel better and they start to smile and
engage together more, becoming more interactive and collaborative.

Put it into action

If you’re already positive, be a role model
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Being positive might come naturally to you and you may always be
cheerful, full of high energy and see the best in people and situations
around you. If this is the case, then please continue being such a role
model and share your infectious positivity, which others will emulate and
copy.

If you’re not positive, then change

Perhaps you struggle to be happy and positive all of the time? You’re not
alone. You may even feel that you a naturally negative person. It’s not
easy shedding a tendency towards a negative personality and I have known
leaders who admit to being comfortable holding onto a negative and
pessimistic mindset and having no desire to change it.
This may to some degree be due to where you’re working, or have been
working. You’ll find it easier to break such a negative mindset or habit by
trying to work in environments that are positive, forgiving, fun, caring and
filled with laughter and happiness. Finding such an environment might
mean having to resign from your job to move to a healthier working
culture.
You might also seek help from a life coach or a therapist who specializes
in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Through a number of CBT
sessions spread over at least a few months, you could radically change the
way you think and behave regarding yourself, your work and life.

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 24 WHAT ARE YOU READY TO
SACRIFICE?

‘So often you must give up something such as time, options or energy
in pursuit of your goals.’

Think about what you may be willing to give up in pursuit of creating a

successful leadership career. It’s impossible to achieve all of your
leadership-related dreams and goals without sacrificing something.
Examples of sacrifices that leaders have to make include:

• Time is the most common, given that you only have a finite number of
hours in each day and you can’t be in all places at once. Many leaders
give up family time at evenings or weekends to make space for
teleconferences, emailing, business travel and meetings, as well as
dealing with ad hoc crises, emergencies and deadlines.
• Letting go of the past is also a common sacrifice. As an example, you
might have been a successful salesperson used to closing your own
client deals and earning large sales commissions. When promoted to
lead a sales team, you may lose having your own sales wins and have to
adjust to helping your sales team close their own deals.
• As a leader, you must sometimes sacrifice your own needs to put the
needs of your team first in order to motivate and inspire them, which
involves listening and responding to their needs. As a result, there will
be times when their opinions, views and goals will overrule yours.
• One day, you may have to make the ultimate sacrifice – that of
resigning and giving up your leadership role to take the ultimate
responsibility and accountability for serious mistakes or poor
performance by you or your team.

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Put it into action
Sacrifice to set the right example
If you’re a leader who makes sacrifices, this can be very inspiring and
motivating to your team. It can make it easier for them to do the same.

• By working over the occasional weekend, you can encourage them to

do the same thing when needed
• Putting your own needs aside in place of theirs may encourage them to
do the same with other colleagues.
These are examples of you leading by example, which is an essential skill
for any successful leader.

Are you comfortable with your sacrifices?

Try to think through your choices before you make them – you don’t want
to regret sacrifices later. As an example, there’s little point in working long
hours to gain a promotion at the expense of ruining your marriage and
never seeing your kids before they go to sleep. You’ll have achieved short-
term career success at the expense of later looking back in anger at how
foolish you’ve been.

Some things are not negotiable

Never sacrifice your ethics, integrity and character to simply help you
achieve your leadership ambitions and goals. Examples might include not
cheating by stealing ideas and claiming them as your own in order to
further you career, or not pretending you have completed a task simply to
earn a bonus.

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 25 DON’T SAY ‘YES’ IF YOU
MEAN ‘NO’

‘We live in a world of falsehoods with people rarely saying what they
really think.’

Stop replying ‘no’ when you really mean ‘yes’, and ‘yes’ when you really
mean ‘no’. Instead, start being honest and stop hiding what you feel, think
and want. We all are guilty, to a greater or lesser degree, of doing this and
sometimes for very good reasons, such as:

• To not upset or hurt someone else

• To enable someone else to win an argument
• To leave ourselves in our comfort zone.

As a leader, you must live to a higher standard than others do given that
you have a responsibility to those following you. No matter whether you
lead a small team or an entire global organization, you lead others and
your words, actions and decisions can have a big impact on them. There
are so many ways in which you and your team are impacted when you mix
up saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’:

Agreeing and saying ‘yes’

when… Saying ‘no’…

• Requested to take on more • To a job promotion, because you’re

work, even when there’s no in your comfort zone and fear you
spare capacity within your won’t succeed in the new role, even
team though you know it would be a great
• Asked to shorten a project career move
timeframe, leaving yourself • To an opportunity for you and your

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 with an impossible deadline team to present to your global board
to meet of directors, because you’re
• Asked whether you agree uncomfortable making public
presentations, even though the
with your boss’s opinion on
visibility would be fantastic for you
an important topic, even
and your team
when you really don’t agree
• Told to accept some cuts to • To leading a project team, in spite of
the great exposure and experience
your department’s budget
the role would give you
and headcount, which you
know are unreasonable and
will make it impossible to
meet next year’s sales
targets

It’s time to stop acting in this dishonest way and to come clean.

Put it into action

Do the right thing, starting today
When facing the dilemma of whether to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, take time to
think and reflect in order to determine when a yes is the ideal answer and
when no is the optimal response. Once you have reached a decision,
have…

…the courage to say ‘yes’

• To seizing the opportunities you want, in spite of having anxieties and
fears of entering into the unknown
• To leaving your comfort zone, in spite of the fear of taking on
something new
• Even if it may shock or upset other people
• By speaking up and overcoming any shyness, modesty and
introversion.

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…the strength to push back and say ‘no’
• No longer accepting feedback, requests and advice which you don’t
agree with
• Through being assertive and clear in your communications
• With a thick skin to help you face any criticism and peer pressure
• Accepting that you may upset your colleagues, particularly if you had
always said ‘yes’ in the past.
These steps are not easy and sometimes you just have to make a start and
jump in.

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 26 SEEK AND EMBRACE
FEEDBACK

‘Positive, constructive feedback to a leader is like water and sunlight

to a plant – the energy enabling the leader to grow, expand and
flourish.’

Imagine that you never ever received feedback, opinions or observations

of any kind about your behaviours, styles, habits and work performance.
You might feel you’re perfect because no one ever commented about or
criticized you. However, this would be dangerous because without any
feedback you’d never know how you can improve and grow as a leader
and whether what you’re doing is perfect or a total disaster. You’d be blind
to how others perceive and experience you. This would be like driving a
car with no side- or rear-view mirrors, and everything around you as you
drive would be blind spots you can’t see.
Successful leaders always seek feedback to provide them with a clearer
understanding of what other people think about and expect of them, their
team and work. The insights gained help them improve how they lead
themselves and others.
You don’t have to agree with everything you hear, but isn’t it better to
know what others are thinking and feeling, rather than being left in the
dark? Thankfully, feedback is normally free and easy to obtain and you
can seek it about any aspect of yourself and your work, such as how well
you’re leading, motivating, communicating, making decisions and
collaborating. You can seek feedback from anyone who knows you and
your work, although not everyone you ask may be willing to respond to
your request and you must respect their wishes. Some people may be
reluctant to share anything negative for fear of upsetting you or they may
feel they don’t know you well enough or simply have nothing of value to
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share.

Put it into action

Proactively seek regular feedback
First of all, find out whether your organization already has a feedback
gathering process in place. The most common kind is an annual or bi-
annual 360-degree online survey in which the responses are collected
together and given to you as anonymous feedback.
Such a formal process is a great start, but is nowhere near enough! It’s
better to also seek feedback on a more regular basis and in a more informal
manner so you can gauge how you and your leadership work are seen. Ask
those who report to you to give you monthly feedback in the form of
answers to these questions, with their answers ideally being given to you
verbally:

• ‘What are your observations about me as your boss over the last month,
and what did I do well and not so well?’
• ‘During the next month, what would you recommend I focus on doing
more of and/or doing better?’
This second question is known as feedforward as opposed feedback, and
it’s where you ask people to give you advice for the future rather than
about your past behaviour.
Always thank those who give you feedback by dropping them an email or
telling them in person. You are not expected to act upon every suggestion
you may be given, but do take on board any suggestions and advice which
could help you become a better leader.

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 27 DEAL WITH RESISTANCE
TO CHANGE

‘People rarely jump for joy at the sight of something changing in their
lives.’

There’s always something changing, something new or different occurring

and it’s rare for anything to stay the same for very long. For a leader,
dealing with all the changes around them can be incredibly hard. A typical
leader might be feeling comfortable and good about the way things are
flowing and suddenly along comes a big scary change, causing them to
feel:

• Confused, demotivated, upset, uncomfortable and even fearful

• Unwilling to accept the change, and instead choosing to resist and fight
back
• So opposed that they may even choose to resign!

It’s human to struggle in this way because it’s hard to have to let go of the
old to let in the new, to give up the familiar for something unknown. Such
reactions to change are comparable to how you cope with the death of a
loved one. In her famous work, Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross describes a
predictable process of grieving, which is exactly the same process we go
through when dealing with any challenging change. The stages of this
process are:

• Being shocked and surprised

• Feeling anger, frustration and confusion
• Wanting to negotiate and bargain
• Finding acceptance.

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Successful leaders become used to taking themselves and their teams
through this process of dealing with change.

Put it into action

Work through the grieving process
Working alone or with your team, you need to work through the different
stages in order to successfully confront, understand and accept any change.

• Allow time to get over any shock and surprise but don’t deny the need
for the change or ignore the fact that a change is really going to happen.
• Understand why there may be a need to change and seek to understand
the positive reasons and benefits of the change. Share these with your
team to help them view the changes in a more positive light. Sometimes
this may be difficult if you or your team feel the change may be
unnecessary and even a bad thing, and no amount of positive spin
would alter this thinking.
• Allow your team to express their feelings and help them to understand
that any change takes effort, can seem daunting and that it’s common
for someone to be anxious and even fearful when facing something new
like this.
• Make time for people to discuss the change. It’s natural for someone to
want to know if the change has to happen now and as planned.
• Help and encourage your team to become comfortable, to accept rather
than simply be resigned to living with the change. It obviously helps if
you’re also accepting and okay with the change and have already
overcome any of your own concerns and reservations. So try to work
on yourself first.

Allow some people extra time

Some people really struggle with change. Spend extra time talking with
them to understand why they’re resisting or unhappy about the change, and
try very hard to respond to their concerns. For example, if they:

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• Hold back because they lack the necessary new skills or knowledge,
make sure they know that you can arrange training
• Worry they will struggle with new processes, offer to support them
• Feel burned out and view the change as the ‘final straw’, give them
some time off or extra care and attention.

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 28 EMBRACE FAILURES

‘To never fail is the easiest way of ensuring you’re never successful.’

Do you worry about making mistakes, about making the wrong decisions
and choices? You would not be alone if you do – nine out of ten leaders
admit that the top concern keeping them up at night is a fear of failure.
This finding comes from a 2018 survey by Norwest Venture Partners, who
interviewed 200 CEOs and founders of privately held, venture- and growth
equity-backed companies.
In our very uncertain world, failure is inevitable. You can minimize the
possibility of it by employing all forms of expertise and wisdom to help
ensure that your actions and decisions are perfect, but you’ll still have days
when for any number of possible reasons you might fail:

• Actual sales revenues are far below your sales forecasts

• The construction costs of a new factory are double the amount you
budgeted
• The newly hired member of your team performs badly and must be
fired
• Your negotiation strategy with a key supplier does not work
• You lose out to a competitor when trying to win a new key client
account
• Your election strategy is weak and you come last in the vote.

How do you react when you don’t achieve what you planned or when you
have made a poor decision? Chances are you’ll be embarrassed, worried
for your job, wishing to hide the failure and perhaps deflecting the blame
by pointing your finger at the person next to you. These are common
reactions but, even worse, I have found that leaders sometimes put their

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fingers in their ears and actively avoid talking about their failures and act
as if they never happened. Successful leaders, however, know that acting
like this is a recipe for disaster. To improve as a leader, you must embrace
your struggles and failures and explore the lessons they can teach you so
that you grow, move on and never make the same mistakes again.

Put it into action

Have a mindset of experimentation
Be a leader who has a tolerance for failure and encourages their team to
constantly experiment and explore, who tries out new ideas, new people
and new ways of working and so on. Motivate and inspire your team to
never hold back for fear of failing. Instead, encourage them to be
innovative while understanding that things rarely go to plan and that
sometimes an unsuccessful outcome might open the door to new successes
and discoveries.

Learn from what’s happened

Mistakes happen! It’s your job as a leader to create a working culture
where everybody understands this, and that you must all be open-minded
and self-reflective enough to carry out a ‘lessons learnt’ exercise after each
failure to maximize the return on the effort you’ve invested.
When failure does strike, sit down with your colleagues to openly explore
and answer these two questions:

• ‘What can we learn from this, what happened and why?’

• ‘How can we grow stronger and wiser, to make sure we are more
successful moving forward?’
Don’t treat these sessions as opportunities to apportion blame and to hurt
each other. They should be brainstorming sessions with the explicit aim of
helping everyone to grow and become more successful in the future.

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 29 DON’T RELY UPON PAST
VICTORIES

‘Earlier career successes don’t assure you of success today.’

The top-performing members of your team might be the worst candidates

to lead the team for a number of reasons. Your worst mistake might be
promoting them into a leadership position. For example:

• A top-performing salesperson who is 100 per cent focused on their own

sales successes might struggle to step back and manage an entire sales
team. They may be unwilling to give up their focus on their own work
and find it hard to focus on training, encouraging and supporting the
team in achieving their own sales and career goals.
• A dedicated software engineer is so used to working alone, relying
upon their introvert personality to help them quietly think through
problems, that they may struggle to lead a department that requires
them to be an inspirational communicator.
• A workaholic and details-focused accountant is promoted into a
Finance Manager role, and in their new role rarely delegates tasks.
When they do they can’t stop micro-managing their team members.
• The keenest and most dominant member of a marketing team is
appointed its team leader. They are admired by senior colleagues but
their immediate colleagues refuse to work under them claiming they are
far too selfish, never listen and are only concerned with their own
success and visibility.
It is common for someone to be promoted based on their past performance
and in their new and more senior role they may struggle to be successful,
perhaps unable to cope with the high workload or complexity of the
problems. Sometimes referred to as ‘being promoted to their level of
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incompetence’, this is a common reason for someone who had been very
successful to then unexpectedly fail in their career and even be fired. It’s
something that successful leaders never allow to happen to members of
their team and also to themselves.

Put it into action

Differentiate between performance and potential
How do you separate a person’s performance today and their potential to
succeed in larger roles tomorrow? The same applies to you in terms of
your own performance and potential. Most global companies recognize
this and they monitor and reward their staff based on two separate criteria:

• Their actual work performance to date

• Their potential to grow in the organization and succeed in larger job
roles.
For this reason, a high-performing leader or employee might earn large
bonuses for exceeding their annual goals or key performance indicators
(KPIs), yet may still not be viewed as ready for a promotion into a larger
and more senior position.

Don’t fail in your first leadership role

When you’re fortunate enough to have been promoted into a leadership
role, be humble enough to admit that the skills that got you this far may
not be suitable or sufficient in your new role. To truly succeed in your new
leadership position, you need some brand new skills, styles and
behaviours. If you’re not sure what are these are, ask your boss and those
who may be in similar leadership roles to yours. Your new skills will
probably include learning to:

• No longer do everything yourself and instead start delegating and

empowering your team
• Stepping back rather than being details focused, micro-managing too

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 much and not trusting other people’s work
• Giving team members the credit rather than simply seeking it for
yourself
• No longer being a sole contributor or loner, and instead needing to
communicate more with others, moving from an ‘I’ to a ‘we’ mentality
• Keeping your emotions in check because now you have a team who
will be influenced and impacted by your reactions.

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 30 LEARN, UNLEARN,
RELEARN

‘The best leaders are like school children – they spend their days
learning.’

We live in a world where new knowledge and facts are appearing all the
time. Until 1900, it was estimated that the amount of human knowledge
was doubling every 100 years and, since then, this time frame has been
dramatically shrinking. Today, it’s estimated that total human information
and knowledge is doubling almost daily. At the same time, a lot of
knowledge is quickly becoming outdated and superseded – ideas that are
valid today may have little relevance or value tomorrow.
As a leader, you must deal with this exponential growth of newly available
knowledge that typically has a shortening lifespan of relevance and
usefulness. We see this phenomenon everywhere:

• A new manufacturing or supply chain process becoming obsolete

within a year
• Data on a new market for your products becoming useless in a few
months’ time
• Adopting new ‘best practice’ leadership styles and models being
required on an almost annual basis
• Keeping up with never-ending new cyber-security threats and other risk
management challenges
• Juggling numerous upgrades to every system and process you manage
• Continually adapting to new rules and procedures, on everything from
data privacy to corporate governance
• Constant pressure to restructure and reorganize in the face of new
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 evidence that things can be done better.
It’s impossible to be a successful leader if you’re not constantly learning,
unlearning and relearning. Bad luck if you have no interest in reading
articles or books, in attending conferences, or hearing about other people’s
ideas and experiences. You’re doomed if you’re uncomfortable in giving
up your old opinions and understanding, to make space for new concepts
and ideas. Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. Very
soon, CEOs may be known as CLOs (chief learning officers) and job
interviews for management positions may focus on a candidate’s
willingness and ability to learn rather than on qualifications and
achievements.

Put it into action

Adjust your mindset
Are you comfortable in having your assumptions, beliefs and
understanding challenged by new ideas and accepting that much of your
existing knowledge and understanding will become redundant? If not, you
need to be!
Every month, carry out a knowledge audit by keeping a note of:

• The new ideas and concepts that you came across in the past month that
seem important to your work but that you may not yet fully understand
• The relevant knowledge, processes, hard and soft skills that you need to
start learning about
• Which of your old thinking patterns, ideas and knowledge are no longer
relevant and have been superseded.
Find a like-minded colleague or mentor to discuss all of this with and to
hold you accountable for pursuing any new learning and training, and to
encourage you to let go of any out-of-date thinking and ideas.

Reading is key
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There’s always something that you can read or listen to which improves
your knowledge and wisdom. It might relate to technical skills, leadership
skills, to your organization or industry, or to the business environment.
Use your time wisely and always carry these reading materials with you to
read in any quiet moments, perhaps when on flights or in taxis. You could
also listen to podcasts as you drive to work.

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 31 PROACTIVELY SEEK OUT
CHALLENGES

‘You’re not being a leader if you never step up to tackle issues and
challenges.’

Leadership is an expedition – it involves taking teams, businesses and

organizations forward into new and uncharted territory, where all kinds of
challenges await. Such challenges may come from needing to embrace
new opportunities, take full advantage of new ideas, technologies and
markets, or from needing to cope with all kinds of problems, threats and
risks.
All these challenges must be faced head on. Successful leaders will never
avoid them no matter how complicated, unclear or downright dangerous
they may appear at first glance. Sometimes they will be tackled with
urgency and speed and at other times calmly only after careful planning.
Great leaders often go one step further – rather than waiting for the
challenges to arrive, they proactively hunt them out.
In addition to helping the organization, when a leader is willing to leave
their comfort zone to pursue needed challenges, they also boost their own
visibility and career opportunities. By putting up your hand and offering to
take on challenges, such as leading difficult projects and tasks, you put
yourself in the spotlight and senior colleagues may start viewing you as a
‘go-to’ leader willing to take on difficult, risky tasks that others are not.

Put it into action

Make challenge-seeking a habit
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Get your team together and regularly brainstorm to uncover and assess all
possible challenges that you may not yet have fully recognized and
tackled. These challenges may already exist or they may be ones that you
foresee arising in the near future. Such challenges may take all kinds of
forms such as:

• You notice it’s becoming harder to hire engineers

• Your plant is running out of an essential raw material
• A key client seems to be having worsening cashflow problems
• Key staff are retiring with no successors in place
• Tensions are rising between departments within your company
• A new competitor has just launched a lower-priced product that may
take market share.
Be aware that your eagerness to take on challenging tasks may have its
downsides such as needing to work longer hours and the risk of becoming
stressed. Do be careful about going overboard on this one and seeking out
problems to solve just for the sake of it and being viewed as someone who
finds a challenge hiding behind every corner and lurking under every
stone. Your team may become angry that you’re creating more work for
them unnecessarily.

Make a plan of action to tackle each challenge

You need to decide how to respond to each challenge that you discover
and observe.

• Involve the relevant team members and colleagues to help you analyse
and understand each issue and to decide how you’ll tackle and solve it
• Decide whether the challenge needs to be responded to now, at a later
date or can even be ignored altogether
• Create a plan of action
• Agree how you’ll obtain the necessary resources and approvals to
implement your plan of action.

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 32 EXPECT THE ODD STORM
IN YOUR TEAM

‘New team members can unsettle an existing team, like throwing a

stone into a still pond.’

A team goes through a series of stages similar to those faced as we move

from childhood, teenage years through to late adulthood. It’s vitally
important to help your team navigate the potentially disruptive early
stages.

• Forming stage: This is the first stage when a team has just been created
and everything is new, not fully understood nor aligned. Relationships
are not developed, goals not aligned and tasks not agreed upon. An
established team might fall back into this forming stage when there’s a
major change such as a new boss being appointed, new members
joining or the goals and aims of the team being changed.
• Storming stage: You can compare this to a person’s rebellious teenage
years and is when team members become more settled and comfortable
and start to learn what they can get away with. This might involve
speaking up, challenging or cutting corners, and is a team’s most
difficult stage. If not managed well, this stage can result in conflicts,
blame games and disruptive behaviour leading to poor relationships and
weak performance.
• Norming stage: This is the time when a team is overcoming its
storming stage challenges and is beginning to operate as an aligned and
healthy team in terms of goals, trust and collaboration.
• Performing stage: This is the ideal stage of any team and is evidenced
by high levels of motivation, interaction, accountability, responsibility,
sharing – at this stage, any conflict tends to be healthy.

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Do these stages feel familiar from teams you have worked within or led to
date? They form part of a team development model, first proposed by a US
professor of psychology, Bruce Tuckman, in the 1960s, which has stood
the test of time and is a lens through which you can understand any team
you’re asked to lead. The model can help you focus on how you need to
help your team to become a high-performing one as fast as possible.

Put it into action

Manage a new team well
• Pick new team members well in terms of personality, mindset and
attitude to ensure that they will fit into your existing team. Always
choose someone who is a team player over a very individualistic person
when deciding who to hire or invite into your team, to make sure that
the new person will collaborate and share with others.
• Introduce new goals, aims, processes and systems thoughtfully to
minimize any misunderstandings, work overload, stress and
demotivation. Spend extra time in communicating with all members so
that they fully understand everything, including buy-in of any changes
you need to make.
• As a new leader of a team, don’t become the reason why your team’s
engagement and productivity might fall. Take things slowly and
observe and listen before acting. Appreciate that your team will have
been used to the style of your predecessor, and need time to adjust to
your leadership style and expectations.

Overcome the storming stage

• What rules of conduct do you need to ensure that your team works
smoothly and positively together? Create these rules and maintain
them. They might include ideas such as if you need people to prepare
well for management meetings, then say so and be consistent in
demanding this. Likewise, if you need team members to quickly and
positively help each other, make this a topic you regularly talk about
and discuss.
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• Spend time building up high levels of trust by encouraging open
communication and addressing at an early stage any possible conflicts
and misunderstandings.
• Invest in team-building activities and team social events to help speed
up the bonding and trust-building process.
• Give each team member plenty of feedback in one-on-one sessions, and
allow them to also give you feedback on your role as their boss. This
open communication culture can allow people to share their concerns
and worries before they become more serious issues.

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 33 PUT YOURSELF IN
OTHER’S SHOES

‘You will only truly understand other people when you try to see the
world through their eyes.’

Showing empathy brings out the best in people. The people you show
empathy to will usually feel valued and understood by you and appreciate
that you’re making the effort to understand their concerns, issues, needs
and dreams. It’s not only with your staff you can be empathic, but anyone
you work with including colleagues, clients and suppliers.

• Having empathy for your clients allows you to fully understand the
issues that they face and need your help in solving
• Similarly, by understanding your suppliers you’re able to create a
deeper and longer-lasting partnership of mutual understanding and
aligned expectations.
Empathy is an awareness of other people – of their emotions, feelings,
moods and needs. It forms part of emotional intelligence. Often referred to
as EQ, your emotional intelligence comprises four key interlinking
aspects:

• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Empathy
• Social interaction.

Typically, if you have taken the time to know yourself well, to become
self-aware, then you’ll find it easier to be empathic. Being empathic is a
choice and can be learnt and practised and is essential to any leader’s
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success. Without it, you’ll struggle to inspire and motivate your team and
will be seen as a cold and uncaring leader.

Put it into action

Show empathy in challenging moments
If you wish to be recognized as a truly inspiring leader, make sure that you
demonstrate empathy during difficult moments for your colleagues,
organization or clients. Allow New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda
Ardern to be your role model. In 2018, she showed immense empathy by
spending time with grieving relatives of those killed in her country’s
mosque shootings. When a disaster or tragedy occurs, it can be so easy to
focus on being jealous, angry or upset but it takes great leadership to also
show compassion, understanding and caring.
At work, there are many examples of when your team will need your extra
support and understanding:

• You lose a large client business and this deflates your sales team
• Your team becomes burnt out through overwork
• One of your team fails to complete a project on time and is very upset
• A key employee is poached by a competitor and the rest of the team
must work overtime to fill her vacant shoes.
In such cases you must understand and acknowledge how your team is
feeling, giving them time to talk, grieve, cry, take time out or de-stress.

Be tough with empathy

As a leader you’ll always need to have difficult conversations and to give
people critical feedback. Make sure, however, that you do it with empathy.

• When you need to tell somebody off, do so in private and keep your
emotions in check. Talk to them calmly, giving them time to reflect and
respond.

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• If you need to terminate somebody’s employment, do it but
demonstrate your empathy by giving them as much notice, support and
termination pay as possible.

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 34 KNOW WHEN TO SHUT UP

‘So often, it’s the words coming out of a leader’s mouth that lead to
their downfall.’

Are you the kind of leader who always finds something to say rather than
stay silent? Too many leaders can seem desperate for others to hear their
own voices, rarely keeping their own opinions and views to themselves. I
am sure you’ll have often noticed this habit:

• A person criticizing their colleague for being late for a meeting

• The manager who keeps making inappropriate jokes
• A leader always insisting on having the last word in any discussion, no
matter how useful or inappropriate
• A team member always making comments about other people’s
appearance and lifestyle choices.
Acting in this way by always saying what comes in to your head is a recipe
for disaster and will cause you to fail as a leader. Over time, you’ll alienate
more and more of your colleagues by not listening nor respecting them
while appearing to belittle, over-criticize and demotivate them. As you
become more senior, your words carry more impact and weight so can
upset many more people. You can see this when observing global leaders,
such as the US President or UK Prime Minister, whose messages can
inspire or upset millions of people.

Put it into action

Be fast to praise, slow to blame

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Before you speak, pause. Will what you’re about to say make someone
feel good and uplift them, or will it have the opposite effect of bringing
them down and making them feel bad? Go ahead and share your positive
words, but think before being negative and critical and decide whether it’s
absolutely necessary to upset someone with your words. Sometimes, you
have to. But maybe you’re being critical simply because you want to prove
a point, win an argument or put someone in their place. You may simply
be acting out of habit and, by pausing, you can decide whether you need to
change what you plan to say. Try sleeping on it and, the following day,
decide whether you still need to say what you had planned.
This same thinking applies to your jokes, off the cuff comments and
stories. Some will leave a positive feel good feeling and are okay to share
while others may be offensive, insensitive or discriminatory.

Pause before pressing ‘send’

It’s not just when speaking verbally that you should pause. You might be
guilty of the same mistake in your emails. Emails are notoriously easy to
send without much thought. The next time you’re about to press the ‘send’
button, pause and check the tone, meaning and intention of your message.
Once someone else has heard or read your words, it’s too late – you can
desperately apologize but the damage is done. Try drafting your email and
saving it as a draft. Come back to it later and only press ‘send’ if you’re
absolutely sure your choice of wording is appropriate.

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 35 PLAY TO YOUR
STRENGTHS

‘Focus on what’s working rather than trying to repair what isn’t.’

It’s human to often look on the negative side in any situation before
focusing on the positive. With people, we tend to always notice a person’s
weaknesses rather than their strengths. We do the same thing to ourselves,
fretting about our faults rather than acknowledging and celebrating our
positive qualities and strengths.
This spills over into the world of leadership development where we tend to
focus on leaders’ gaps and weaknesses. By doing so, we are trying to
create great all-round leaders but this is a mistake. Using a sports analogy,
how many sportspeople have been pushed to become all-rounders who
excel across many sports? Very few, with the vast majority focusing on
their areas of strength: David Beckham on his control of a football, Serena
Williams on dominating a tennis court and Tiger Woods on his ability to
precisely hit a golf ball. Imagine how much effort would have been wasted
if David, Serena or Tiger had been pushed to excel in multiple sports by
developing skills in which they showed no promise. The same logic
applies to leaders. Focusing on and using your strengths will help you to
thrive and excel. This strength-based approach to leadership development
recognizes that:

• Leaders have particular strengths which they were either born with or
have developed over the years. Such skills come more naturally to them
and take less effort to develop.
• They prefer talking about and working on these strengths rather than
having to focus on fixing their weaker or non-existent skills.
• It can be demotivating and even stressful for a leader when they’re

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 being judged against their weaker areas – like a right-handed person
being assessed on their ability to write with their left hand.
• When an organization focuses on helping its leaders develop and use
their strengths, the leaders can more easily excel both individually and
collectively.

Put it into action

Know your strengths
You probably know where you’re talented and strong. If you’re unsure,
take an online personality assessment which has a strengths-based focus,
such as the VIA Character Strengths Assessment or Gallup’s
StrengthsFinder.

Work with your strengths…

• Always make the time and seek opportunities to deepen and broaden
your strengths, ensuring that your skills remain up to date and relevant
• Continually align your career plans so that any leadership job roles you
take on are best suited to your skill-set
• This may be a process of trial and error. You may never find a perfect
alignment, but avoid job roles in which you can only be successful by
excelling in areas in which you’re weak and/or have no talent or
interest, otherwise you may be setting yourself up for failure.

…and acknowledge your weaker areas

• Decide which weaknesses, if any, are having a material and detrimental
impact on your performance as a leader
• Commit to develop these weaker areas or try to change your workload
to avoid needing to use those particular skills, for example by
delegating certain tasks to other people

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• Some leaders choose to change professions or industries to better align
their strengths and weaker areas with the requirements of their job role.

Apply the same thinking to your own team

• Help your team grow their own careers by building on and using those
skills which are their strengths
• Don’t make them feel bad by focusing on their areas of weakness
• Only have them focus on those weaker areas that are essential for their
work and career success.

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 36 TRUST YOUR INTUITION

‘Don’t ever ignore your feelings about a situation, decision or person.’

Your gut feelings are a powerful tool to help you successfully lead.
Variously referred to as intuition, instinct, vibes, having a feeling or sixth
sense, these feelings are your antennae. They give you a sense of what is
happening, what the right decision to take is, or what a person is really
like. I am sure you must have had many intuitive moments, such as:

• Something does not feel quite right in a business negotiation in spite of

everything appearing to be going well
• You’re interviewing a candidate with a perfect-looking CV and who
answers your questions well, but you have a sense his personality is not
ideal for your role
• One of your team members seems very distracted but, when asked,
insists everything at work and home is all fine, but you sense otherwise
• You have a feeling that your team members have an issue with each
other as they rarely seem to socialize as one team anymore
• Driving to work, you have a flash of inspiration about how to solve a
difficult client problem.
Leadership is not easy so, if you have an extra tool to help you, use it.
After all, people around you can be hard to read, not always revealing their
true intent and feelings, and the business decisions you face are
increasingly more complex and challenging. Using your intuition can give
you an edge as you try to understand people and make the right decisions.

Put it into action

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Listen to your inner voice
The next time you’re unsure about something or need to make a choice or
decision, give yourself a few seconds to pause and reflect. How do you
feel about the person standing in front of you? Does that decision need to
be made right now? How does this situation feel in this moment?
Your head is probably guiding you to arrive at an apparently sensible-
looking outcome, which might be that the candidate who impressed the
most is to be hired, the lowest-cost supplier will be chosen, the most
profitable client opportunity will be pursued or the very helpful new
colleague is clearly trustworthy. But, before signing off on the decision,
ask yourself if your heart agrees with your head and sense how your body
feels about the decision. Perhaps you have an uneasy feeling in the pit of
your stomach suggesting that something may be amiss, a sense that
something is not as it seems. Close your eyes and ask yourself how you
really feel, observing what comes to you. It would be okay to decide that
you may need more time.
It’s easier to sense your inner feelings when you can be free of the noise
both around you and inside your head. Try sitting in a quiet place to reflect
upon important decisions and to quieten your mind and its hundreds of
thoughts and opinions. It may help you to take up meditation and yoga
while also spending time in nature, walking in forests or along a beach.
Sometimes, it’s enough just to sleep on a decision. The morning often
brings the answer.

Act upon your gut feelings

Have the courage to follow your intuition even when it might make you
stand out and appear odd. Questioning a decision can make you very
unpopular. Remember, though, as a leader you’re not trying to win a
popularity contest – you’re always trying to do the right thing even if
you’re in the minority. Share your feelings and concerns as soon as
possible to avoid derailing a decision at the eleventh hour, and also be
ready to explain to your colleagues what you’re sensing and feeling.

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 37 DON’T NEGLECT
PRESENTATIONS

‘How you present to other people can make or break your business.’

Your leadership happens through communication – spending your time in

meetings, writing emails, giving talks, on telephone and video conferences
and chatting with people all around you. You’ll struggle to perform as a
leader if you can’t communicate and present well using all of your verbal
and non-verbal communication skills.
For most leaders, the hardest type of communication is having to stand up
in front of others to make a presentation. I’m sure you’ve seen people
struggling to present in public – choking on their words, sweating and
even shaking, never looking at their audience, speaking too softly while
trying to get through dozens of boring PowerPoint slides. Many people
would love to avoid making presentations, preferring to speak in small
groups and communicate over the phone, email or Messenger.
If you want to be a successful leader, however, you can’t run away from
presenting and must learn to do it well. In a 2016 survey by Prezi and
Harris of 2,000 US professionals, almost 70 per cent stated that
presentations are critical to their success at work and 75 per cent felt that
their presentation skills needed improving.
You might be one of the lucky few who lights up and is a natural when
standing on stage facing an audience, and for you making presentations
may be straightforward and stress-free. Assuming you’re not so fortunate,
you need to be ready to hone your skills, build up your confidence and
practise. You have no choice if you want to grow as a leader because
failing to do so can be detrimental to achieving your goals and to your
career – a poor-quality presentation can cause your audience to switch off,
lose interest and not buy into your messages. Your reputation in your
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company might even fall as a result of a poor presentation.

Put it into action

Present like an outstanding speaker
The good news is that presentation skills can be learnt and honed through
practice, but it may take time depending upon your current level of
confidence and skills. Happily, there are hundreds of talks available
online, such as at www.ted.com, so you have easy access to watching and
learning from outstanding presenters who have mastered key skills such as
the following:

• Controlling body language. It needs to align with the aims of your

presentation, and it mustn’t act as a distraction. Look around at your
audience, make eye contact and smile. Decide whether to sit or stand to
present – if the latter, decide whether you will stand still or move
around.
• How you look and act when speaking. This sends a message to your
audience, so always give time and attention to your choice of clothes,
shoes, grooming, make-up and jewellery.
• Showing confidence and demonstrating that you know your subject
matter well. You can do this by practising your presentation beforehand
so that on the day you’re more used to your content and can present
more fluently.
• Projecting your voice so that everybody in the audience can hear you.
It’s always good to speak to the people at the back of the room so that
your voice will carry.
• Knowing your audience in terms of their expectations, needs, opinions
and likely questions.
• Following the mantra of ‘less is more’ when deciding the length of your
talk, its content, props to be used and the design and number of
presentation slides and video clips.
• Giving your talk a clear structure. A good opening, in particular, can
capture your audience’s interest and so can an impactful closing

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 section.
• Winning over your audience, creating an emotional connection by
sharing appropriate personal stories, memories and other personal
examples.

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 38 OWN UP WHEN YOU’RE
WRONG

‘Apologising is often viewed as a weakness, when in truth it’s a

strength.’

I hate to tell you but you can never be a perfect leader. It’s impossible to
know and understand everything, to always communicate in an ideal way
or to make decisions and choices which are always 100 per cent spot on.
The best you can do is to continually try to act and say the right things,
knowing that sometimes you’ll succeed and at other times you’ll fall short
by making all manner of mistakes. No leader is perfect and there will be
many times when you do something wrong:

• You ignore a team member’s good suggestions on how to solve a

client’s problem, only to discover that your own solution made the
issue worse
• You promise to revert to your chairperson with an answer to an
important question and totally forget to do so
• You insist that your recollection of a meeting’s agreed action plan is
correct, only to later realize that is isn’t
• You insist on choosing who is promoted into a vacant job role but this
turns out to be a very poor choice and they have to be fired.
A key measure of your leadership maturity and character is how you
respond to your mistakes and setbacks. Too often, leaders will want to hide
these mistakes or to blame others, claiming that it’s not their fault. A truly
successful leader demonstrates courage and humility by being honest and
open enough to humbly admit that they were wrong, made a mistake,
chose the incorrect direction or used inappropriate words and actions. Be
that person.
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Put it into action
Step up and be honest
You may be reluctant to admit your mistakes for fear of embarrassment
and loss of face, thinking others will view you as being imperfect, weak,
poorly prepared or rash. Yes, they might think these things but they will
think much worse of you when they discover you were lying about your
involvement in an issue. Put aside your ego and discomfort – always come
clean.

Never delay acknowledging the obvious

Come clean with both yourself and with those impacted by your mistaken
thinking or decision and quickly and methodically plan with colleagues
how you’ll rectify the issue. You’ll gain respect for being open-minded
and not allowing your ego and stubbornness to get in the way of saying
and doing what’s right.

Learn to apologize
Step up and say sorry that you were wrong. Do this in whatever way is
most appropriate, which might be by email, during a team meeting or in a
larger town hall meeting. In addition to apologising, give due credit and
thanks to those who pointed out your mistake.
Openly recognize those colleagues who earlier may have proposed the
ideal insights or solutions, which you might have been guilty of overruling
or ignoring. Listen to them more next time and pause before shooting them
down!

Move on positively
Learn from situations where you were wrong by reviewing your own
mindset, assumptions and biases as well as any relevant decision-making,
information collation and brainstorming processes to decide what changes

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you need to make to avoid a repeat.

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 39 EMPOWER YOUR TEAM

‘When never shown they are trusted and valued, people assume the
worst and doubt themselves.’

Most employees want to feel empowered by being supported and

encouraged to perform to their highest potential, by being given what they
need so that they can achieve their goals without needing constant support,
micro-management and hand-holding. Successful leaders know this and
always try to empower their teams so that each team member is given:

• The decision-making authority and freedom to complete a project

without constantly needing approvals and sign-offs from the boss
• Access to all information needed in order to complete their work
without needing to constantly revert for help and advice
• The full authority to hire their own team members and spend money up
to agreed limits
• The freedom to solve customer service and client issues without having
to seek the boss’s approval each time.
The alternative to empowerment is a leader keeping all the control and
authority, continually micro-managing the team and making all decisions
for them. In such an environment your staff will feel like birds being kept
in a cage. Some of your lazier staff may be happy to leave you to make
decisions for them, but most people will hate it and many will become
demotivated, feel they aren’t trusted and that they’re prevented from being
able to express and be themselves. They will stop trying and going the
extra mile by no longer showing any initiative, ownership or creativity.
More talented staff will often eventually resign.

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Put it into action
Give your team the freedom to act
Consciously step back. Leave your team the space to work independently,
take ownership and feel trusted:

• Give your team the necessary written job descriptions, goals and
processes which clearly show the degree of freedom and independence
they have (e.g. in terms of decision-making and signing authority).
• When possible, delegate to them the full authority to complete their
tasks rather than asking them to continually seek your verbal or written
approval.
• Adhere to these boundaries – don’t be tempted to step in and micro-
manage a task you have delegated to them. This can really upset your
team.
• Provide all needed resources to enable your team to complete their
work independently, with all necessary resources including time,
manpower, budgets, tools and equipment and so on.
• Brace yourself for ideas and suggestions coming from your empowered
staff. It’s inevitable that, when giving people freedom to act, you’re
also inviting them to share and to speak up. You must positively listen
to their ideas and thank them for sharing.
• Although not micro-managing, be ready to step in when asked to
provide any guidance, mentoring and feedback to your team members,
particularly when they may be doing something for the first time or
struggling with challenging parts of their work.
• Openly recognize your team’s successes, achievements and results,
which they’ve achieved without your active involvement. Feel proud
that you have enabled your team to lead both themselves and their own
work.

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 40 DON’T NEGLECT THE
SMALL TALK

‘Leadership is all about successfully interacting with people.’

Your networking and relationship-building skills can make or break your

leadership career. This is because your ability to perform as a leader
depends on how well you interact with the right people. Maintaining a
close connection and relationship with someone can have all kinds of
positive consequences:

• Your bank manager might be more open to funding your new business
ideas
• A supplier might be more understanding of your temporary cashflow
difficulties and let you delay a payment
• Your staff may feel more understood and valued by you and work that
little bit more positively
• Shareholders and business partners might be more supportive of your
vision and strategy.
Such connections can prove invaluable when you’re struggling, perhaps
even making serious mistakes or failing to achieve your goals. And
colleagues, and other stakeholders with whom you have a strong
relationship, might be more open to helping you.
There’s no magic number of people that a leader should keep in contact
with. The answer depends on your circumstances and on your personality.
In any leadership role, there will always be a range of people with whom
you should connect in order to achieve all your goals and aims. Some
leaders will only need to focus on a small number of relationships, often
just their business partner and few key staff.
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If you’re a quiet, shy introvert, you may be uncomfortable connecting with
more people than this. At the other extreme, an outgoing extrovert who
loves meeting people might have hundreds of friends and acquaintances.
But having a good relationship with someone is not determined by how
often you speak together, but instead by factors such as what you have in
common, how you’re able to help and support each other, and how well
you get on. If you worked closely with a colleague in the past, today you
might only need to meet or speak with them once a year to maintain the
close connection.

Put it into action

Develop your own relationship-building skills
You might be a natural communicator who is happy to walk up to
strangers and make small talk. If not, you need to learn how to improve
and master whatever skills are necessary to make sure that you build up
and maintain important relationships. Perhaps you need to improve in:

• Overcoming your shyness

• Building up your low level of self-confidence
• Being more proactive in trying to connect with new people
• Understanding how to avoid losing touch with people.

Create a stakeholder map

Draw up a list that contains the names of everyone with whom you need to
have a working relationship in order to help you succeed as a leader.
Known as a stakeholder map, your list will probably be a combination of
colleagues, mentors, clients, partners, investors, shareholders, suppliers,
key staff, past classmates and other contacts. By each person’s name, write
a note explaining why you wish to maintain a relationship with them such
as: ‘because they’re senior in my organization’ or ‘because they’re well
connected to many of my other stakeholders’. This is a list that you can
keep editing and adding to over time.

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Decide how to maintain the relationships
For each person, note the possible ways in which it’s practical to keep in
touch. This might vary from seeing them each day in your office, meeting
for a monthly lunch, having a drink on an ad hoc basis, speaking via
Whatsapp, meeting when you travel on business, or at an annual alumni
event or industry conference. Be systematic in maintaining this to-do list
of when and where you’ll connect with each person.

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 41 DELEGATE WELL

‘Only a workaholic superhero is daft enough to do everything

themselves.’

Delegation is a really powerful tool to help you succeed in any leadership

role. It seems simple to do but is actually extremely difficult to do well.
Every day, you have various tasks that need completing. Your challenge is
to decide who does what. If you do it yourself, you risk becoming
burdened and have no time to perform your other leadership
responsibilities. You might be tempted to always delegate tasks to your
most able and experienced staff. This might sometimes be best but not
always because, as a leader, you need to balance two competing needs:

• To have the work done well through having the most skilled staff
completing it in as little time and with as little effort as possible
• To develop and motivate less experienced staff by giving them new
tasks to help them master and expand their areas of expertise.
If you only delegate to experienced people, you face two risks:

• Those individuals become overloaded and demotivated, and over time

they may even resign
• Your other team members might feel jealous about your perceived
favouritism and upset because they never gain the experience and
exposure that comes from undertaking those challenging tasks.

Put it into action

Change your delegation patterns
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Create an ideal balance between keeping some tasks and delegating others
to your experienced and less experienced team members. Why stop there?
You may even be able to push some work to other colleagues, perhaps
even including your boss!

• Don’t delegate tasks to the same few people in your team. Instead, give
others the opportunity to learn by taking on this work, recognizing that
they may initially struggle. You may need to have a mindset change,
away from purely focusing on task completion, and learn to also focus
on growing people’s capabilities.
• Try rotating who you delegate to by giving different people, each week
or month, the opportunity to compete certain tasks, particularly those
popular and easier tasks, as well as those that are tedious and boring.
• Stop doing things yourself, because you feel it’s quicker and easier.
Accept that in the short term it might be more time-consuming to
delegate tasks because you need to brief the other person and even help
them. But over time, as your team becomes more multi-skilled, you’ll
be able to pass them work without the need for long explanations or
hand-holding.
• Know your team members’ strengths, areas of interest, preferences and
development needs. With this knowledge, try to make sure that the
tasks you delegate to each person are aligned with their wants and
needs.
• Beware of always delegating the dirty jobs to your team just because
you don’t wish to work on these boring, tedious or complicated tasks
yourself. This is not a healthy leadership habit and is unlikely to make
your team feel good about working under you. Take your share of the
drudgery.

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 42 INDULGE YOUR CHILD-
LIKE CURIOSITY

‘Every leader needs to become an open-minded explorer.’

In today’s fast changing and increasingly complex world, you can never
have all the answers. Fortunately, no one is expecting you to be a leader
who knows everything. They are, however, looking to you to lead in
finding the most suitable solutions. You’re expected to act like a scientist
who conducts research and experiments to explore how to improve
performance, solve problems or understand why something is happening.
A successful leader can appear like a young child who – naturally creative
and open-minded – delights in discovering new and previously unknown
insights and experiences.
An IBM Global CEO Survey in 2012 collected the views of 1,500 CEOs
and found that creativity was the key skill needed to build successful
businesses, even more important than qualities such as global thinking and
integrity. To foster and enable such creativity takes a combination of you
having the right mindset, while creating an environment that enables your
colleagues’ creativity.
Leaders such as Richard Branson, Jack Ma and Mark Zuckerberg come to
mind as well-known examples of such creative leaders who are very open-
minded and flexible, and don’t stubbornly stick to one idea or direction in
the face of better suggestions. They like to try out new ideas, to let their
teams run with untried solutions while never viewing any dead ends as
wasted effort and a failure, but instead as learning opportunities.

Put it into action

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Walk your talk
It’s not enough to say that you value and want more creativity and
experimentation. The true measure of success comes from whether your
staff actually feel they have the space and support to challenge the status
quo. Allow your teams to pursue innovative and creative solutions without
fearing dire consequences if their efforts fail to yield positive results. You
can help create such an environment in a number of ways:

• In team meetings, regularly ask your team if they have alternative

solutions and ideas to those on the table. Do this before making any key
decisions such as approving a choice of new supplier, a new process,
revised organigram or a product solution to meet a client’s needs.
• Celebrate as many examples as possible of your employees showing
creativity. Do this even when their efforts don’t lead to wonderful
results that can easily be acted upon.
• Provide the tools and resources your teams need to be creative. This
might be as simple as giving them full access to the internet, rather than
blocking or filtering apps or web pages for reasons of security or
productivity.
• Support the growth of informal sharing networks within your company,
which might include colleagues using online platforms in which they
share issues and ideas.

Run creativity competitions

Challenge your team or entire organization to suggest ways in which
undertaking a particular task or achieving a certain goal can be improved.
Invite people to share their ideas no matter how crazy or weird these may
appear at first glance. Remember that sometimes a ground-breaking new
discovery might have started out as an unusual or unexpected idea. The
competition does not need formal prizes although incentives can really
motivate people. As a minimum, be ready to publicly acknowledge and
thank people for their contributions.

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 43 GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY

‘There are times when a leader must jump into the muddy trenches to
support their team.’

Leadership is never about staying in the same place. It’s most definitely
not about remaining in your corner office while your team toil away at
their workstations. Sometimes you must lead from the front and be with
your teams of salespeople, engineers, trainee lawyers, book-keepers,
security staff, zero hours contract staff or shop-floor workers. Too many
leaders make excuses for not getting involved in this way:

• I don’t want to be accused of micro-managing my team

• I delegated all the work to my team, and they are taking full
responsibility
• It’s not my role to perform their tasks with them
• It’s beneath me to get involved in the nitty gritty
• My team don’t need me to help them
• I should be focusing my time on higher-level and more strategic tasks.

Spending time with and supporting your team members while they’re
working is an essential role of any successful leader. The benefits include:

• Understanding first hand the difficulties and challenges facing your

team
• Allowing you to better bond and collaborate with your team members
• Helping you see things from your team members’ perspectives
• Consciously putting your employees first and showing them respect
• Providing new insights into how efficiency could be improved

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• Motivating and engaging your employees, particularly when they see
you rolling up your sleeves and helping them with new and challenging
tasks.
Rolling up your sleeves also sends a clear message to other leaders with
whom you work, encouraging them to learn from and emulate your
leadership style. It also serves as a reminder that so much of your
organization’s success is the result of the commitment and dedication of
all your staff, who spend each day facing the customers, manning
production lines and doing other essential tasks.

Put it into action

Support, but don’t micro-manage
The secret is to spend time with your team, while not becoming a burden
through either distracting them from completing their tasks or
inappropriately micro-managing them. This is not easy. Simply standing
by or sitting with your staff can be off-putting and make them feel that
they’re being monitored. To minimize this:

• Aim to spend time on the shop floor when you know your team may
welcome the extra input. This might be when they’re implementing a
new process, kicking off a new piece of work or facing a client crisis.
• Plan ahead. Ask your team, in a team meeting, when they might
welcome your help.
• If you appear on the shop floor out of the blue, your staff may worry
what is wrong, but if you make this a regular habit, they will become
more comfortable with your presence.
• Your team may assume that you’re offering to help them in order to
check and review what they’re doing. Be open and honest about your
intentions – even if you’re not aiming to ‘audit’ their work, given your
wider experience, you may spot mistakes and ways of doing things
better. The secret is to not rush to criticize or to make an employee feel
inadequate because they missed something that you just spotted.
• Try spending more time with those working a level beneath your direct

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 reports, the level who are sometimes referred to as your N-2s. You
could do this through skip-level meetings, where you meet these N-2s
without your direct reports being present. The risk is that your direct
reports may feel threatened by this. Reassure them that you simply
want to better understand their staff, including their work challenges
and needs.

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 44 DEVELOP YOUR
SUCCESSORS

‘The true measure of any leader is their gardening skills – how well do
they nurture and grow new leaders enabling them to blossom and
flourish?’

Creating new leaders should be high up on your to-do list. Just as you were
nurtured and prepared for your own leadership opportunities, today’s
potential leaders now need your care and attention. This is an essential task
for any successful leader and was confirmed by the results of the Global
Leadership Forecast 2018 survey by Ernst & Young, DDI and the
Conference Board, in which 64 per cent of the surveyed leaders stated that
developing their next generation of leaders was one of their top five
challenges.
As your business grows in size, it will need more leaders at all levels and
you must never assume that this is the sole responsibility of your Human
Resources department. It takes a concerted and strategic effort by all
leaders to create a large enough pool of leadership talent, and you’re best
placed to lead in developing new leaders in your own department and job
function.
As well as helping your company’s future growth, focusing on nurturing
and grooming new leaders can have a positive impact on your own career.
As an example, you may be missing out on potential job promotions if
there are no candidates ready to replace you in your current role. You may
also be given lower performance ratings if you’re not successfully
developing leadership talent within your own team.

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Put it into action
Create a leadership pipeline
The key is to have a ‘talent pipeline’ mentality where you’re constantly on
the look-out for new and emerging leadership talent and are helping them
to grow and rise within your team and organization.

• Invest more of your time and energy in recruiting new staff with
potential leadership skills. When interviewing candidates for any
positions, look at each person’s future potential. Can they grow into
any kinds of leadership positions – leading people, projects, businesses
or perhaps purely technical leadership?
• Aim to hire only those individuals who will perform their individual
and team roles well, while also having the makings of a future leader.
Hire and develop people who will be even better than you as a leader –
never be threatened by this possibility. Just imagine how amazing your
team would perform if it were filled with such talented individuals!
• Understand a team member’s leadership potential through observing
their personality, attitude and mindset. Look out for generic leadership
traits such as initiative, self-responsibility and courage and so on.
• Help your existing team members to develop their own leadership
styles and confidence, through mentoring them and allowing them to
take on some of your leadership tasks such as chairing certain meetings
and leading particular projects. After they have tried their hand at
leading these tasks, give them some developmental feedback to help
them grow their leadership capabilities.

Not everyone wants to lead

You might want to be a leader, but not everyone does or is suited to
managing people, projects or businesses. When creating a leadership
development programme and pipeline, be careful not to give the
impression to your team that the only measure of success is to be keen and
capable of becoming a future leader.

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 45 DRIVE FOR RESULTS

‘Simply having great ideas and intentions is not enough to ensure

success.’

A successful leader knows that their primary role is to achieve some

clearly stated goals, no matter the obstacles and hurdles:

• A project manager must complete a project on time, within financial

budgets and meeting specific quality targets
• A sales department head must meet sales revenue targets along with
goals relating to acquiring new clients, achieving certain profit margins
on sales and growing the sales team
• An entrepreneur will have goals such as getting a new product into the
market or surviving on available cashflow during an initial start-up
phase
• A head of a charity might have fundraising goals as well as targets
linked to the charity’s aims, such as feeding a certain number of
homeless people.
Successful leaders don’t just achieve their goals but also aim to exceed
expectations by going above and beyond expectations through a
combination of determination, having a results-oriented mindset along
with the skills to manage necessary tasks, resources, processes and
systems. A number of this book’s chapters offer you specific advice on
doing all of these things well. But there’s one skill which comes first and
is the most essential – to ensure that the actual goals are created well, that
they’re both clearly stated and are optimally challenging.

Put it into action

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Get buy-in and agreement
No matter whether your goals are referred to as key performance
indicators (KPIs), targets or milestones, they need to be clearly stated,
understood and agreed upon by everybody who will be involved in
achieving them. To achieve this buy-in, you need to be ready to listen,
communicate, negotiate and compromise with all relevant parties. This
includes with your boss, who might impose some targets on you and your
team but which are totally out of reach. You may need to push back and
negotiate more acceptable goals and targets.

Cascade goals down to your team

You also need to carefully take any company-wide goals and agree which
of these involve you and your team. You need to create and agree any
necessary team-wide and individual team member goals which are aligned
with the company’s.

Set challenging, specific goals

It’s a good idea to make the goals for each of your individual team
members slightly larger than they need to be, so that the sum of the
individual targets exceeds the overall team or department target. Do this so
that the chances of you and your team exceeding the overall targets are
increased even when some of your team may fall short on their individual
targets.
Create and agree SMART goals:

• Specific – specific goals are more easily understood, accepted and

achieved.
• Measurable – each goal must be measurable but in terms of how well
your team is doing in working towards achieving it.
• Achievable and attainable – the resources including time and people
must be made available to enable you and your team to achieve the
goal.

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• Realistic – a goal should never be impossible to achieve.
• Timely – there must be an understanding and agreement on a goal’s
timeframe and the deadlines for attaining it.

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 46 PUT THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN
THE RIGHT ROLES

‘Don’t force that square shape into a round hole.’

You will rarely have the ideal number of staff each with the perfect mix of
soft and hard skills. As a result, you must constantly juggle workloads,
priorities and tasks with the available manpower and work with the
available talent at your disposal by successfully navigating all kinds of
people-related issues:
a. You struggle to fill a key position, perhaps an important technical or
specialized sales role, and after a few weeks of interviewing and
rejecting unsuitable candidates you’re only left with one possible
candidate. The problem is that that person only fulfils about 70 per cent
of the job’s technical requirements.
b. You face a similar issue with your boss, who is urging you to accept a
colleague from another department to fill a vacant key role within your
team. You know that this individual has a reputation for being very
selfish and is a poor team player.
c. Facing a hiring freeze, you can’t hire additional staff to work on a new
project and your only option is to ask your existing and very busy team
members to learn and take on the new project’s tasks.
d. Within your team, some people are struggling and seem totally
unsuitable for their particular job roles – they may not be very sales,
finance or details oriented and so on. You must decide whether to
replace them, knowing it will be costly to make them redundant and try
to hire replacements.
Successful leaders recognize these dilemmas are not easy to solve. They
always try to arrive at ideal outcomes, no matter how difficult or time-
consuming it will be. They understand the need for compromises but know
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that leaving anyone doing work that is not a good fit will always lead to a
combination of performance and motivation issues.

Put it into action

Accept compromises with a plan to fill the gaps
Sometimes trying to turn squares into circles will work – one of your team
learns to cope with some new and challenging tasks or a weak job
candidate you hire works very hard to overcome their weaknesses. But
often you’ll not be so fortunate and must be creative in how you face each
case of not having the right person in the right role. You can only master
this over time by facing and learning from many cases.
Let’s start by exploring how to deal with the four examples from the
previous page:
a. If you do choose to hire the final candidate who only fulfils 70 per cent
of the ideal skill-set, plan how to help her plug the 30 per cent gap. This
might involve working with your HR colleagues to create a training
needs analysis and provide intense technical skills training. In addition,
you might spend time mentoring her and asking her colleagues to help
her with tasks she is not yet expert in.
b. With the internal candidate who is poor team player, be very careful if
you accept him into your team. Be firm in explaining to him your
expectations and concerns and then offer to spend time coaching and
supporting him to overcome his weak areas in terms of collaborating,
sharing and interacting.
c. With the new project example, brainstorm with your team how you can
all work smarter to manage the extra workload productively without
burning out. Encourage them to write daily to-do lists, spend less time
on non-essential tasks and to more proactively support each other.
d. With your poor performers, once you have exhausted all available
options to improve their performance, bite the bullet and let them go.
Perhaps you could help them transfer internally to take on job roles that
are more suited to their skill-sets and preferences. Otherwise, you must
be ready to give them notice and fire them.

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 47 COACH YOUR TEAM
CAREFULLY

‘Help your team arrive at their own answers and conclusions.’

Giving your team advice and solutions every time they seek your help can
seem like the obvious thing to do. There is, indeed, a time and place for
using this very directive leadership style, particularly when:

• Someone new has joined your team and needs lots of guidance
• There’s a crisis and your quick decisions and orders are needed to solve
an urgent client problem or another emergency situation
• Your team must tackle a new and complicated task or project and only
you have the expertise.
However, this must never become your only style when helping your staff
solve their problems because when you’re giving them answers and being
so directive:

• They’re not learning to think for themselves and many will feel they’re
being spoon-fed and become frustrated, while others might enjoy being
able to sit back and leave you to do the thinking for them
• You might be giving your team incorrect answers. This may be because
you are misunderstanding their problems or issues, and the
consequences of your poor advice might have serious consequences.
Successful leaders know when to adopt different styles of conversations
and sometimes they adopt a coaching style which involves not providing
any answers and solutions, but focuses on asking questions to help
colleagues explore and understand their own issues and arrive at their own
solutions and answers. You might recall that in chapter 22 you began to

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learn about coaching.

Put it into action

Have GROW conversations
When your team face challenges and problems, help them to find their
own solutions by following a framework known as the GROW model, first
created by a coach named John Whitmore:
Goal – start by exploring what the problem, issue, question or challenge is
that needs addressing. Ask questions such as:

• What exactly is the issue and why are you trying to focus on it today?
• Why does the issue need solving and what might be a successful
resolution?
Reality – help your colleague explore the context, history and background
of the issue, through posing questions such as:

• For how long has this been an issue, and who else is aware of it?
• Have you tried resolving it before and what happened?

Options – when you’re both clearer on the issue and its context, impact
and background, start exploring the options available for solving it by
asking:

• If you were alone without my help, what would you do to solve it?
• Do you have a preferred option or many ideas in mind, or are you stuck
without a clue of how to move forward?
Way forward – once you have helped your colleague to digest and weigh
up any possible options, bring your conversation to a close by asking:

• What will you do now, which option will you proceed with?
• What help or support do you need to implement your chosen way
forward?

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At the ‘options’ phase of your GROW conversation, and only after the
other party has shared their own options, do offer to share any additional
ideas based on your insights and experience. Share them but don’t tell the
person which option is best and instead help them to reach their own
conclusions.

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 48 PERSIST WHEN OTHERS
GIVE UP

‘How tragic to turn back and, through clearing skies, you realize that
you had been so close to the mountain’s summit after all.’

Too many leaders give up just short of achieving their plans, goals or
dreams, thinking that they have exhausted all avenues, hit dead ends and
used up all of their ideas, energy and resources. Successful leaders never
throw in the towel so quickly. Instead, they persist knowing that any goal
worth achieving is not going to be easy.
In today’s fast changing and disruptive VUCA business environment,
where businesses are struggling to adapt and even survive, we should not
be surprised if our goals and targets can seem more challenging than in the
past and may even seem impossible to achieve. As a result, the tendency to
want to give up will be high and even successful leaders might struggle to
remain persistent and keep going.
In addition to helping achieve business goals, not giving up too easily can
also benefit your career. According to a 1985 research paper, more
persistent leaders tend to be viewed more favourably. The author of the
paper, US academic professor Laura M. Graves, found that leaders who
exhibited persistence were evaluated and rated more highly than non-
persistent leaders. This makes sense and I am sure that you too have more
admiration and respect for colleagues who show more willingness to
persist and never give up, compared to those who more easily quit.

Put it into action

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Develop your determination muscles
Build up your persistence by developing your willpower and
determination:

• Constantly remind yourself and your team why a goal is important for
you and your organization. Try discussing and visualizing the positive
impacts and benefits of achieving that particular goal.
• Avoid being distracted by things you can’t control. Instead, focus your
energy on those tasks that you and your team can influence and change.
• Don’t allow negative or demotivated people to affect you.
• A large goal can easily seem too daunting and difficult to achieve
compared to smaller ones. Break down any longer-term and larger
goals into a series of smaller ones.
• Celebrate achieving each of these smaller goals to help motivate you
and your team as you work towards the larger goal or target.
• Ask a trusted colleague to hold you accountable and encourage you to
stay the course, speaking with them when you’re doubting yourself and
feeling tempted to give up with a piece of work. You, in turn, can
provide the same support to your own team members.

…and recognize when you SHOULD give up

Your new found willpower and persistence should only be used when
needed and not all the time. Sometimes you really do need to give up and
stop chasing a goal when it’s clearly no longer achievable or your
priorities have changed and that goal is no longer relevant.

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 49 CONTROL YOURSELF

‘If you want to quickly fail as leader, simply start losing your cool.’

You would become very irritated if your oven had no temperature control
and would randomly leave your food under- or over-cooked, just as you
would be frustrated if your fridge had a broken thermostat leaving you
with rotten food one day and solid and frozen milk the next. We feel the
same when a colleague has no self-control, and it’s even worse when it’s
the leader because anything they say or do can have a large impact on so
many people.
At the start of this book, I spoke about the importance of self-leadership
and a key aspect of this is how well you control yourself. This is
sometimes referred to as self-management, which forms part of your
emotional intelligence (EQ), a concept I explained in chapter 33.
Successful leaders know that excellent self-management is essential.
Without it, you risk making all kinds of horrible and sometimes repetitive
mistakes that can have all kinds of consequences:

• You repeatedly lose your temper about trivial and small mistakes made
by your team, and some of your team members may become so upset
by your reaction that they resign.
• You have a couple of drinks and make inappropriate comments about a
work colleague, and as a result you’re investigated by your HR
department and risk losing your job.
• You become upset by an email from a client who is blaming your team
for poor performance and you reply with a strong and very emotional
email.
• During a management meeting, in response to someone challenging
you, you become angry and start a heated argument, causing one
colleague to say they’re tired of having to work with you.
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Put it into action
Follow a simple process of self-control
• Observe yourself more closely and learn when you’re becoming
emotional and liable to act without thinking.
• Ask trusted colleagues you’re working with to warn you when they
sense you might be losing your cool.
• When you’re on the verge of saying the wrong thing, pause and excuse
yourself from a meeting, or silently count to ten to calm yourself.
• When you realize too late and you have already said or done something
inappropriate, immediately apologize to those impacted by your words
or actions.

Take care with your emails and phone calls

If you know you’re upset while writing an email, don’t immediately send
it. Save it as a draft and come back to it later and decide whether it’s okay
to send. Similarly, when on the phone or in a video conference, when
becoming riled up and upset, find an excuse to pause the conversation,
maybe asking for a toilet or coffee break – this will give you time out to
calm down.

Seek anger management counselling

Sometimes the only way of bringing your emotions under control is to
seek counselling from a trained therapist with whom you can explore what
is triggering your reactions. They can help you overcome any underlying
insecurities, past events and traumas that are fuelling your behaviours.

Avoid being tired, stressed or hungry

You’ll find self-control easier on a full stomach, after a good night’s sleep
and when you’ve exercised and are free of stress. Without enough sleep
and healthy eating, your brain will become less sharp and clear and you
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risk becoming easily irritated, tired and short-tempered, which increases
the probability of you losing your control with other people.

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 50 KEEP YOUR VALUES
CENTRE STAGE

‘What you value in life dictates what kind of leader you become.’

A successful leader is continually striving to live and lead with some

carefully chosen values. Also known as principles or standards, your
values underpin how you think, make decisions, act and behave as a
leader. They are what drive you and what you seek when leading both
yourself and other people. Some people have no idea what their values are
but successful leaders always know what is driving them. Their values
might include:

Appreciation Fairness Learning

Authenticity Focus Making a difference
Autonomy Freedom to act Optimism
Belief Gratefulness Passion to win
Caring Helping Purpose
Commitment Humility Respect
Compassion Inspiring Transparency
Courage Integrity Truth
Empathy Loyalty Trust
Excellence Lead by example Wisdom

A leader’s values help them know what kinds of behaviours are and are
not acceptable to them:

• When a leader values integrity, they will react strongly when a

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 colleague lies or cheats.
• A leader who values being caring and empathic will often be the first to
console and support a team member who is very upset.
• The leader for whom persistence is an important value will rarely give
up with challenging tasks even when everybody else has done so.

Put it into action

Discover your values
The easiest way to know what your values are is to list the actions and
behaviours of other people that make you angry or upset:

• When a colleague upsets you by never preparing for meetings or can

never find important paperwork, you probably value work qualities
such as being prepared and being organized.
• When a team member annoys you by always rushing to speak and to
dominate discussions, it might be a sign that you value calm reflection
and allowing others to be heard.
To also help you discover what is important to you, ask close colleagues to
describe your working style, attitudes and behaviours, and what they have
observed as being very important to you.

Focus on only the values that serve you

Once you know your values, reflect upon which ones are helpful to you as
a leader. These are the ones you should focus on and might include
positive qualities such as being unselfish, empathic, bigger-picture focused
and inspirational. Encourage your team to practise these same values – if
they do, they will eventually become the team’s daily habits and working
culture.

…and stop focusing on those that are out of date

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Some of your values might be hindering you today as a leader. They might
have helped you in the past when you were an individual contributor or
were in a different work environment. But now you realize they’re no
longer helpful, stop treating them as something you value and do. Such
‘out of date’ values might include qualities such as independence and
working alone, being a perfectionist or being very expressive and
emotional.

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 51 OPTIMISE EVERYTHING

‘There’s always room for improvement with every single thing you
touch.’

Sometimes you must act like a management consultant by working with

your colleagues to help discover more optimal ways of doing things and
lead the implementation of any agreed changes or upgrades to systems,
processes or procedures. The resulting discoveries might generate huge
benefits in terms of productivity gains, cost reductions and shorter
timeframes.
As a leader, you have a good overview of what your different team
members and colleagues need to do and achieve, as well as what the
systems, workflow and processes are that they must follow. As a result,
you’re well placed to observe and understand when:

• Work flows may seem over-complicated and inefficient

• Processes seem to bring little or no value or are being replicated
• Systems and procedures cause unnecessary bottlenecks and delays
• Some excellent work flows and systems could be replicated in other
areas of the business
• There are gaps and things missing, being ignored or not being done
well.
Successful leaders are used to spotting and discussing such areas for
improvement, evaluating how solutions might be implemented. Over time,
they’re able to develop a systematic and process-driven frame of mind
while also maintaining a bigger-picture view and a details-oriented focus.
They understand it’s a team effort and that so much more can be
discovered when working together, even involving newer hires, who may
bring a fresh perspective and child-like curiosity to your team.
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Put it into action
Understand best-practice ideas and tools
Take an interest in research and articles written by well-known global
management consultancies such as Mckinsey, Bain, Stategy+ and PwC,
which offer insights into how leaders are changing and optimizing
different aspects of their organizations.
Invest time in becoming familiar with the range of tools, methodologies
and frameworks used by leaders and their teams, which can be used to
discover, plan and implement optimal organizational changes and
improvements. The more popular tools today include:

• Agile – this is a process for making improvements where small cross-

functional teams take full accountability for issues they’re asked to
tackle.
• Scrum – this is related to Agile and involves work being undertaken by
small teams who divide the tasks into work that can be completed in
short and defined time periods.
• Kanban – a process of visualizing processes and workflow to identify
potential bottlenecks and solutions to fix them.
• 6 Sigma – a range of processes used to identify and eliminate the causes
of errors or defects and to reduce variability in the quality of any kind
of business process.
• Waterfall – this refers to work being broken down into tasks, with each
task depending on a previous one being completed.
• Kaizen – this refers to a process of continuously seeking to make lean
improvements in any part of an organization.

Be okay with any disruption

No matter how disruptive and painful a new and needed process might be
to implement and work with, always keep in mind and remind your staff of
the benefits that may be created and implemented as a result. Think of any
disruption like a major road works – irritating in the short term in return

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for faster and easier traffic flows in the future.

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 52 SENSE-CHECK BEFORE
YOU ACT

‘Better to ask a silly question today than to make a stupid mistake

tomorrow.’

When is the last time that you totally misunderstood something, failing to
make sense of what you observed, understood or were told?
There’s nothing worse than finishing an important task feeling that you’ve
done a great job only to discover that you’d misunderstood what you
needed to do, and that your time and effort were wasted. This can be both
embarrassing and costly, as you may need to start the task all over again or
may have missed an opportunity or key deadline and it’s too late to redo
the work. This can really annoy and demotivate your team if they must
help you rework things. In extreme cases, your misunderstanding might
cost you your reputation or even career.
Junior employees might be forgiven for making such mistakes and the cost
of them doing the wrong thing is hopefully small. As a leader, you’re
being paid to get things right and not to create more problems by not
understanding properly what needs to be done. Successful leaders totally
understand this and, to ensure they’re never guilty of the same mistake,
they:

• Spend time making sense of what they’re being asked to do, the
questions they need to answer or problems they may need to solve.
• Do the same with their teams and colleagues, encouraging them to
explore what they’re hearing and understanding while also questioning
their own assumptions and perceptions.

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Put it into action
Slow down to make sense of things
Before rushing to answer and solve issues and problems, always spend
time alone or with colleagues to make sure that you fully understand what
is happening and what is being asked or expected of you and your team. I
call it slowing down to speed up. Those extra few minutes or days of delay
before starting a task can make all the difference. It’s comparable to
reading instructions before perfectly assembling one of those DIY pieces
of furniture. We all know what happens if you rush to assemble without
referring to the instructions at all and getting bits of wood back to front!
Take care when a colleague quickly responds in a meeting saying, ‘Yes, I
understand and it’s no problem, I will get started right away.’ Sometimes
that might be right response but so often it won’t be the case. Start being a
leader who is always helping others to make sense of things by asking
questions such as:

• It might be a silly question but are we sure about our assumptions or

about what the client is really asking us to do?
• At the risk of sounding stupid, is it really as simple as we are making
the problem sound?
• Do we need to double check what the other department is expecting?

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 53 WALK TALL

‘You can’t successfully lead when you’re cowering in the corner of the
room.’

When you meet new people, do they sense and acknowledge you’re a
leader, doing so before you introduce yourself and exchange name cards?
So many leaders lack presence, gravitas and stature. When they walk into a
meeting with some of their team, other people never guess they’re the
boss, perhaps mistaking a more confident and extrovert colleague of theirs
for that role.
You may feel comfortable not standing out as a leader and be very happy
to have your colleagues seen as more senior than you. In fact, sometimes
this can be a good thing, for example during a key negotiation when you
want to quietly observe the other party without them knowing who you
are.
However, most of the time, you can’t hide away in this manner because to
successfully perform in your role you need appear as and act like a leader.
You need to do so in order to stand up for your team and company and
represent both in all kinds of meetings, negotiations, venues and events. To
do this well, you need executive presence, also referred to as gravitas,
stature or walking tall. It’s not easy to master but successful leaders always
work to acquire such gravitas. Some are luckier than others and, by virtue
of their personality, physical appearance, language skills or upbringing,
they may have a natural executive presence. If you’re not so fortunate, you
must learn and practise a few tips.

Put it into action

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Own the role you’re in
Perhaps you shy away and lack the confidence to act like a leader because
you feel you don’t deserve to be in the leadership position in the first
place. Known as imposter syndrome, this tendency to feel you’re not ready
for or worthy of your current job role is quite a common anxiety. On
average, I sense it affects women more than men. Talk about your issue
with close colleagues, asking them to encourage and mentor you to
become comfortable in your role.

…then build up your extrovert confidence

If not already an outgoing and communicative extrovert, learn how to be
one. Start by building up the confidence to say hello to new people, make
small talk and give presentations as well as an experienced presenter. You
might initially feel reluctant, particularly if you’re a shy introvert, but all
you can do is practise each day so that, little by little, you become more
comfortable being outgoing and more confident in presenting yourself to
other people.

…and literally stand tall and dress the part

Body language and posture sends a very strong message and by simply
standing upright in a calm way, you project more gravitas and stature.
Similarly, what you wear has an impact on how you appear. It’s worth the
effort to find out what clothes, accessories and hairstyles work best for you
in your particular work environment.

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 54 GIVE OTHERS THE
SPOTLIGHT

‘Never hog the limelight.’

One of your main roles as a leader is to motivate people, including by

making sure that they’re acknowledged, thanked and recognized. This can
bring so many benefits to you and them:

• People are happier, more satisfied and productive when their boss and
colleagues are talking about and acknowledging their successes.
• As their boss, you should also feel energized because your team will
admire and respect you more because of how you value and recognize
them.
• It’s easier to give someone critical feedback or ask them to take on
difficult tasks when you have already created a strong relationship,
based on you regularly recognizing their positive qualities and good
work.
Recognition can take many forms from a simple ‘thank you’ in a meeting,
through having them share at your annual company conference about a
project they have successfully worked on, awarding them the employee of
the month, all the way to offering them a job promotion.
When recognition is lacking, people can get very upset. Perhaps you have
experienced how this feels when you have been similarly ignored – you
probably started to become demotivated, disengaged, even depressed and
feeling worthless. People can feel especially upset when they see others
getting the recognition for work that they themselves were wholly or partly
responsible for. This can lead to anger, envy, jealousy and even complaints
that their boss is showing favouritism or being mean in denying them any
recognition.
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Put it into action
Vary how you recognize people
Giving recognition is not as simple as doing one thing all the time. Too
much of the same thing loses its impact and there’s a limit to how many
times a person can be given the same employee of the month award before
it begins to feel awkward and embarrassing.
Similarly, you can’t hope to recognize different people in the same way.
One person might really appreciate a ‘thank you’ email written about them
and sent to a wider team, while for another this might mean very little and
they may be seeking recognition in terms of more job responsibilities.
Take time in your working week to reflect about who needs recognition
and the forms it might take. Be generous and fair and avoid accusations of
always recognizing the same few people in your team. Try asking your
team members if they feel that you’re recognizing them enough and for the
right reasons, and involve them in suggesting who may be worthy of some
special recognition.

Create opportunities for recognition

Always give people the opportunity to shine and to stand in the limelight
and, when possible, sacrifice your own opportunity or need to be
recognized:

• When senior bosses are visiting your department or location, allow your
team to meet and present to them without you doing all the talking.
• When you’re asked to represent your team at a global annual event,
don’t always attend yourself but ask one of your team to stand in for
you. Consciously rotate who you ask each time such an opportunity
arises to be able to give the limelight to more people.

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 55 WISELY STEP IN TO
MICRO-MANAGE

‘Breathing down their necks is unlikely to endear you to your team,

but sometimes you just have to.’

One of the worst types of leader is the one who never leaves their team
members alone. In chapter 43, you learnt that being a boss who is guilty of
peering over your team’s shoulders can be very demotivating and
suffocating, and is often a key reason why someone resigns from their job.
Although micro-managing must never be your default leadership style,
sometimes you have to micro-manage when you know there are very good
reasons to become very closely involved in a team member’s work. These
might include when:

• A new team member has joined the team who is not familiar with
various aspects of their duties and responsibilities.
• An existing and experienced team member has taken on a new and
challenging task that may be very high profile or very costly if not done
well.
• You have a poor-performing team member who you need to work
closely with in an attempt to encourage and challenge them to improve.
• There’s an emergency or very urgent deadline and you know you can’t
risk leaving your staff alone to deal with the relevant tasks. Such
periods of firefighting are hopefully rare and not a daily occurrence.

Put it into action

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Choose carefully when you micro-manage
The secret is to never allow any form of micro-managing to become your
default habit and automatic style but instead to have it as one of the
possible tools that you only use in very specific situations where you feel
it’s the most appropriate leadership style.

Be an encouraging and inspiring micro-manager

The difficult thing about micro-managing is doing so without demotivating
and upsetting staff. Successful leaders manage this by following these
rules:

• Explain your reasons and need to work closely with them and ask for
your team member’s understanding.
• Ask them how they would like to be micro-managed rather than simply
imposing your style on them. They may prefer to come to your office
rather than having you peering into their work area.
• Remain calm and avoid showing unnecessary anxiety, stress and worry
(about the person’s performance) as this will make the other person
more anxious and they may start to view your attempts to help them in
a negative light.
• Show that you value and trust the person you’re micro-managing. This
is not easy as being micro-managed leaves most people with a sense of
not being trusted. Try to overcome this by openly talking with your
team members about how much you trust and value them, explaining
the reasons why you need to micro-manage them at this point.

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 56 SPREAD OPTIMISM

‘Be careful what you start – both optimism and pessimism are highly
contagious.’

Have you ever worked for a very pessimistic boss? There can be nothing
worse than working for someone who is always grumpy, negative and
depressed. You’ll feel demotivated and unhappy while your boss will
probably underperform in their leadership role. Common sense suggests
such a correlation between a leader’s optimism and their performance, and
a 2017 research paper in the International Journal of Management that
reviewed studies on this topic confirmed this, finding that optimism
strongly impacts leadership effectiveness in four ways:

• Optimism creates trust between people

• It helps a leader remain positive and resilient in troubled times
• It creates a more cooperative and sharing environment
• It raises a person’s self-efficacy or belief in their ability to achieve
goals.
But optimism does more than even this. It can also help you achieve a
healthier and longer life! A 2002 Yale University study concluded that
more positive people live an average of 7.6 years longer than other people
do. So it’s worth working on…
Successful leaders understand all of these benefits and will always try to
project optimism, knowing that being pessimistic and down will only serve
to demoralize your employees, turn away clients and even make investors
cautious.
There are moments though when an experienced leader might need to tone
down appearing so optimistic, for example when apologizing for a mistake

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their company has made, announcing poor financial results or
acknowledging the death of a colleague. But these are exceptions that
prove the rule, most of the time a successful leader will consistently
project optimism in all their words and actions.

Put it into action

Develop an optimistic outlook
Train your mind to be optimistic, whether you’re a naturally positive
person or are someone who tends to view the glass as being half empty.

• Have an honest look at your patterns and ask other people to give you
their opinions on how often and in what ways you exhibit a positive
and optimistic outlook.
• Understand when you may have a tendency to act the opposite, for
example when things are not going your way or someone is disagreeing
with you. Ask close colleagues to tell you when they observe you
starting to act in a negative way. Tell yourself in that moment to let go
and move on, by smiling, laughing, taking a walk or closing your eyes
and calmly observing yourself breathe. If necessary, be an actor and
fake a smile.
• Approach events and situations through a positive lens by asking
yourself and your colleagues questions such as, ‘In spite of this delay,
what are the positives we can build on?’, ‘Although we are facing these
roadblocks, what is going well?’ or ‘The project may have failed to
meet the client’s expectations but what are the positive lessons learnt
for next time?’
• Stay away from negative people and avoid hiring such people into your
teams and organization. Their lack of positive mindset can be toxic and
will sap your energy as you try to manage and ring-fence their
negativity.
• Always inform your team members and colleagues when you’re not
feeling positive and may come across as negative or depressed. When
feeling this way, try to stay away from people by working from home,
cancelling meetings and avoid making important decisions. When

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 feeling down, it’s better to be alone rather than allow other people to
catch a dose of your pessimism!

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 57 PICK PEOPLE UP WHEN
THEY FALL

‘Everybody faces struggles. Leadership is about encouraging people to

keep on trying.’

It’s very easy for a leader to acknowledge and celebrate their team’s
successes, particularly when they can share in the glory. The team’s good
work reflects well on you as their boss and you’ll be easily motivated to
share, build on, sustain and replicate these successes.
Your challenge arises when the opposite happens and one of your team
struggles to achieve their goals and might even completely fail. In today’s
increasingly volatile and complex business environment, struggling and
failing are becoming more common. How will you respond when it
happens?
How you react to your team members when they fail at something is an
important measure of your leadership maturity. It can be very easy to
simply become angry, upset and critical and to leave your team member in
no doubt as to what they have done wrong. A wise leader might also be
upset but would quickly switch to a broader strategy of helping the
individual to learn, grow and move forward through:

• Challenging them to accept, learn and grow from their experiences and
mistakes
• Supporting them to positively move forward and to keep on trying.

Put it into action

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Systematically challenge and support
Whenever one of your team struggles to complete their work and achieve
their goals, use this five-part process to help them learn and grow:
1. Allow the individual to talk about and share their feelings,
disappointments and concerns (e.g. over how people, including you,
reacted).
2. Support them to explore, understand and learn from what happened,
who was at fault and how to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
3. Provide necessary training, coaching, mentoring or other forms of
support to help them succeed next time.
4. Spend time with them encouraging, inspiring, uplifting and motivating
them to confidently and positively move on.
5. Give them the backing, trust and reassurances to encourage them to
undertake the same activity or task again.

Never gloat
Never be a leader who revels in other people’s struggles and failures, even
if they’re your competitors. Stay silent and neutral if you must, but never
put someone else down when they’re already feeling bad and struggling.
Apart from being the right thing to do, you never know when you may
need their help, encouragement and support in the future…

When mistakes are repeated, respond with

wisdom, not emotion
If somebody repeats the same mistake, you may feel upset and angry with
them. Depending on the circumstances, you may wonder if you should
retain this person in your team. Before blaming them, explore whether
their struggles might in fact be your fault and that you:

• Did not do all you could to help them learn from their first mistake
• Did not optimally equip and support them to try again another time.

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 58 NO BULLSHIT ALLOWED

‘Want to be a great leader? Start by cutting out the lies.’

Leaders are continually being shown to have lied. Too often, it’s shrugged
off and accepted with all kinds of justifications such as:

• ‘It was a small twisting of the truth.’

• ‘Other people make the same false claim.’
• ‘It was a one-off and I never normally deceive people.’
• ‘The truth is too painful and complicated.’
• ‘Everyone else is saying the same thing.’
• ‘The truth is so unclear anyway.’
• ‘Nobody wants to hear the truth.’

You might feel that telling the occasional lie is acceptable and insist that
you’re honest the rest of the time. However, a 2016 study in the Nature
Neuroscience journal in which a team of psychologists, including Dan
Ariely, showed that as we lie more, our brains produce fewer feelings of
guilt, fear and anxiety. In other words, as we act more dishonest and
deceptive, we become less likely to stop ourselves doing it again.
Trying to be honest may not be easy but the benefits should be incentive
enough to compel you to try to always act with 100 per cent integrity:

• You’ll be trusted and respected as someone who speaks the truth and
gives honest feedback and assessments. There may be moments when
you’re not very popular for speaking the truth but others will hopefully
respect you for being a person of character.
• Honesty is so easy while lying takes energy because you have to
expend energy not being found out. This involves having to remember
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 what you said in case you ever need to repeat the same lie.
• People will be more comfortable in opening up and sharing with you
when they know you can be trusted to keep your word.
• Being honest is contagious and will encourage those you work with to
also be more open and truthful.

Put it into action

Think long-term reputation over short-term gains
The next time you’re tempted to tell even a small white lie, ask yourself ‘Is
the cost of being found out really worth it?’ Even if your conscience is fine
with you twisting the truth, is your reputation and name going to withstand
the discovery that you were dishonest?
You need to be especially strong when coming under pressure from
colleagues to cover something up and to lie – such as pretending a task
was completed on time when it was not. Be strong and understand that
protecting your reputation must always outweigh the upset and pressure
that you cause by refusing to play along.
If it becomes too stressful to remain honest, be willing to move on.
Choosing to resign is never a failure in such cases and is simply you
choosing to protect yourself from potential bullying, peer pressure and
being ostracized by your colleagues. If you’re a senior leader and feel
strong enough, you may choose to stay in order to try to proactively
change the working culture.

Push others to come clean

Even if you work in a really healthy environment where integrity is highly
valued, you may still have colleagues who make up stories and play with
the truth from time to time. As a leader, it’s your duty to stop them in their
tracks. You may try to do this diplomatically, in private, in a friendly
unofficial manner or in a more formal way where you officially report
what they have done.

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 59 DON’T FORGET YOUR
HEALTH

‘It’s not easy to lead other people when lying in a hospital bed or in a
coffin!’

Nobody would destroy their health in pursuit of leadership and career

success, would they? Sadly, far too many leaders do exactly this. They
work their way up the leadership ladder while simultaneously burning out
from stress, becoming physically sick, mentally ill and emotionally
drained. I have coached dozens of such leaders and am astonished how
unhealthy they had allowed themselves to become while chasing year-end
bonuses and promotions.
Successful leadership requires skills such as details orientation,
concentration, emotional balance, focus, calmness and persistence, all of
which require you to be at your best. When you’re stressed, overloaded
and worn out, you can’t perform these things well and as a result you risk:

• Making poor decisions and other mistakes because you’re tired and
unable to concentrate
• Lacking positive inspiration due to feeling stressed and depressed
• Not being calm and happy because of the pain and irritation from tense
muscles, a stiff neck or headaches
• Having no desire to look forward, to set a vision and direction because
you’re so drained. As a result, you may start losing interest in your
work and career.

Put it into action

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Look after all parts of your health
You must do whatever it takes to maintain your overall well-being and
health:

• Physical health – have an exercise regime made up of physical

activities that interest you such as walking, running, sports or visits to
the gym.
• Mental health – keep your mind calm and rested by seeking moments
of silence, stepping away from the noise of your everyday tasks,
perhaps taking up meditation and taking walks in nature.
• Emotional health – step away from tense and angry situations and pause
before reacting when a person or situation is making you boil inside.
• Spiritual health – we all seek meaning in our work and balance in our
lives. When your leadership role no longer gives you either, make
changes. This might include moving on from your current job and/or
organization.

Always put your health ahead of your leadership

career
When the stresses of being a leader gets the better of you, be willing to
step back, slow down or even resign to protect your health. This is what
successful leaders do and you should never feel you have failed by putting
your health ahead of your career. Take a leaf out of the book of Lloyds
Bank’s CEO, Antonio Horta-Osorio, who temporarily stepped down from
his role in 2011 to recover from exhaustion. After a couple of months of
leave, he returned to his leadership role with the bank, which he still holds.

Keep an eye on your team’s health

Help your team to focus on their own health by talking about health-
related topics and issues such as stress, working hours, conflicts and
tensions, physical working environments, healthy eating and exercise.
Always be supportive of your employees’ ideas and suggestions relating to
ways in which you can collectively make all of your work and lives
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healthier.

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 60 BE BOLD AND DARING

‘Stop playing it safe. Take your team where you have never been
before.’

Your leadership skills will be tested when you’re taking your team,
organization or business in new and uncharted directions in pursuit of
some large and audacious goals. Too many leaders are too cautious and
conservative to do this and will find every imaginable reason to explain
why such goals are impossible to achieve.
Successful leaders are quite different and never suppress their boldness,
passion, audacity and daring. They use these things to excite, energize and
motivate people (including themselves) to tackle even the most impossible
looking goals. You can always spot such leaders as the ones who:

• Are willing to create and focus on extraordinary goals that might seem
like pipe dreams to others
• Turn ordinary teams into extraordinary team players who are happy to
commit to challenges that would overwhelm most people.
Elon Musk is an example of a leader who consistently acts in this bold and
daring way. You can see this in all of his projects and businesses including
in his plans to colonize Mars, to create re-usable vertical landing rockets
and to build the world’s largest lithium-ion storage system in South
Australia in a self-imposed short time-frame. Not every leader has the
personality, ambition or inclination to become an Elon Musk, but all
successful leaders do develop and practise, in their own way, the skills of
thinking big and encouraging others to follow suit.

Put it into action

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What is stopping you from thinking big?
Observe your reactions and feelings when presented by your colleagues or
senior bosses with a very ambitious goal or dream. If you’re reluctant to
explore and embrace their ideas, understand why and be willing to work
out why you’re reluctant:

• It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and worry about the challenges involved
in working on such goals. But this is an issue to deal with later, not a
reason to shoot down the ambitious goal or plan today.
• It’s understandable to think a large goal may be impossible to achieve
and, as a result, to not want to invest any time or energy in discussing
it.
• But suspend such scepticism and disbelief, saying to yourself ‘maybe
it’s possible’ and start allowing yourself to actively listen to those who
are selling the idea.

Take the risk to chase enormous goals

Be willing to pursue your own bold goals. Just as you might have been
sceptical of other people’s ambitious and crazy ideas, be ready to develop
a thick skin to repel other people’s doubts and scepticism. Become so
passionate about your own ideas that you can more easily find the courage
and sense of conviction to push ahead, even when your colleagues may
think you’re crazy.

Seek buy-in from your team

• Practise being more extrovert and expressive in your communications.
This will help give uplifting, inspiring and motivational talks to your
team to seek their support for your goals.
• Use positive and inspiring words such as calling your plans exciting,
ground-breaking and first of a kind to help enthuse your colleagues and
help them buy into your ideas.
• You could also create stories to share with your team that help express

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 the vision of where you wish to take them, and make it easier for them
to understand your bold goals.

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 61 LOOK WAY BEYOND THE
BOTTOM LINE

‘Every leader has a deep purpose and responsibility to the earth and
all humanity.’

It’s no longer enough to meet your sales, profits and growth targets. To
call yourself a successful leader today, you also need to ensure that
everything you create is sustainable and helping make the world a
healthier and better place in which to live. To do this, you need to
recognize and deal with all kinds of questionable leadership practices with
which you might be connected, such as:

• Building up a highly profitable mineral water business which is

removing all of the water from the local aquifers and reducing the
water table
• Expanding your purchasing of clothing products from suppliers in low
labour-cost countries and turning a blind eye to claims that your clothes
are produced with child and forced labour and produce dye waste that
pollutes rivers by the factories
• Happily distributing single-use coffee pods and other plastic-based
products without having any plans to move to biodegradable products
or having product recycling initiatives with your customers
• Outsourcing your warehousing and supply chain to a firm whose staff
are on zero hours contracts and who must stand continuously for 12-
hour shifts with only very short monitored breaks
• Having a high carbon footprint through allowing your staff to always
fly to conduct business rather than working through video conferences
with overseas colleagues and stakeholders
• Running a furniture manufacturing firm which sources wood from
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 logging companies who are felling trees without any regard for the
environmental impact.
You can no longer lead a business in isolation and ignore its impact on the
environment, communities and society at large. So no matter whether you
lead a small local or large global organization, become a leader who wants
to leave a positive impact on the world around you for the future of your
children and their children.

Put it into action

Review where your business is today
Carry out an audit of your entire business practices, processes and
leadership decisions using external consultants or drawing upon a cross-
section of staff and leaders to conduct the review. Have them draw up a
list of any questionable activities and organize brainstorming and feedback
sessions to collectively decide ways in which your business can be more
ethical, fair and environmentally friendly.

Try the ‘what would your 16-year-old think?’ test

To give you a wider perspective, share the results of your audit and of the
brainstorming and feedback sessions with a group of young people. Ask
them what they think you should do. It’s highly likely that they will
answer you from a very clear ethical, sustainable and fair standpoint and
that their conclusions may help steer your own decision-making.

Have regular CSR discussions

Get into the habit of having corporate and social responsibility (CSR)
reviews and conversations involving a wide cross-section of your
company’s staff and key stakeholders. Create a budget for spending on
various CSR-related initiatives such as giving back to the local
community, organizing beach clean-ups and creating recycling systems.

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Have the courage to sacrifice the bottom line
Never delay rectifying unacceptable practices. It’s better to face the cost
and pain by choice, rather than waiting for a scandal to force the company
to change. Become a leader for whom profits are important but not
everything. Make it clear that you would never hesitate to do what is right
and incur the extra cost. An example might be to stop buying raw materials
from low-cost factories that treat their staff badly, and switch to more
expensive suppliers who are being openly monitored and provide fairer
working conditions to their staff.

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 62 BE AN EXCELLENT
MENTOR

‘To help other people grow, share your words of wisdom.’

All leaders share their expertise, knowledge and experiences and by doing
so are being mentors to their colleagues (who, in mentoring jargon, are
mentees). Unfortunately, most leaders do this very badly because they
have never been taught how to professionally mentor other people. Their
most common mistakes include:

• Sharing favourite stories and anecdotes from their careers that may
have no relevance to what a mentee’s challenges are and what they’re
seeking help with
• Lecturing a mentee without asking any questions to better understand
the mentee’s actual needs or to clarify if the mentee is understanding
what is being said
• Not listening to the mentee and treating the mentoring as a one-way
communication process and an opportunity to show off and impress
• Learning nothing from the mentee’s own experiences.

Poor mentoring is counter-productive and can leave a mentee struggling to

find value in and apply the advice the leader has given them. The resulting
confusion and sense of being stupid can be very demotivating and
disengaging. This is comparable to a leader always being directive through
telling, lecturing and teaching and their staff just have to listen.
Best practice mentoring is not simply about giving other people your
advice, experience and opinions, it’s a journey of discovery involving:

• A two-way sharing and learning process, in which the mentor helps the

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 mentee reflect upon their own experiences, build up their own wisdom,
become mature and improve the depth and breadth of their thinking.
• The mentor asking insight-provoking questions rather than simply
giving advice. At appropriate moments, they may draw upon their own
experiences and share helpful insights and suggestions aligned with the
mentee’s own needs, situation and context.

Put it into action

Become a best-practice mentor
Adopt the following framework for responding to requests for help:

• When asked to help someone, first decide whether they need an

immediate answer from you or whether there’s time to mentor.
• Start any mentoring as a coaching conversation by exploring what the
mentee’s issues are and what options they already have in mind to
solve their own problems. To help guide the conversation, follow the
GROW model which you learnt in chapter 47.
• During the conversation, switch from coaching to mentoring by saying
something like: ‘Having helped you explore and understand your issue
and available options, let me share some helpful ideas and
suggestions…’
• Align your advice with your colleague’s own situation and needs. Ask
the mentee whether they found your idea or story helpful and relevant,
and how might they apply it to their own setting.
• If both of you find the initial mentoring conversation of value, you
could continue the relationship over many months, having further
conversations where the mentee can bring up any topic for discussion.

Create an in-house mentoring programme

Work with your HR colleagues to set-up (or offer to support any existing)
in-house mentoring programmes where newer and/or less experienced staff
and leaders can be paired with a mentor such as yourself. Ideally a
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person’s mentor should never be their own line manager (in order to give
the mentee someone other than their boss to open up to).

Be open to learning from your mentees

Younger team members might bring you all kinds of new insights,
including in the areas of technology, and trends among their generation
that might help you learn how to motivate and engage with them. This
process of a mentor learning from a mentee is known as reverse
mentoring.

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 63 BREAK RULES

‘Show bravery by ignoring silly rules and norms.’

Successful leaders sometimes don’t allow rules, policies and norms to

stand in their way of taking the right actions, choices and decisions.
The larger and more established the organization you work within, the
more likely that rules might have to be bent or ignored in order to get
things done. This might involve breaking accepted norms, unwritten rules,
agreed policies or written guidelines such as:

• Your predecessor always attended particular weekly internal meetings

but you realize that there’s no point in you continuing this practice and
you stop attending. When challenged on why you’re breaking this
accepted practice, you may have to explain your reasoning.
• HR policies state that every candidate must be interviewed by five
colleagues and be reference and salary checked before a job offer can
be given to them. However, you interview a really outstanding
candidate, who has only met one other colleague to date, and you
realise this job seeker is about to accept a competitor’s job offer. You
decide to ignore the hiring rules and immediately extend her a written
job offer.
• Your team have been working very well over a number of years with a
supplier of a niche service. Under new procurement rules, you realize
that this supplier should be dropped because they can’t fulfil various
compliance requirements but you decide to continue working with
them, claiming that there’s no other supplier in the market with their
important skill-set.

Put it into action

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Be wise
The secret is to be wise and sensible in deciding when and how you flout
your company’s written and unwritten rules. Never do so if it risks your
career or reputation. If you have already overstepped the mark and made
the mistake of ignoring a really important rule, seek the understanding and
forgiveness of your boss or senior colleagues, and never do it again.

Be open and honest

When challenged, never deny having ignored a company policy. Calmly
explain your rationale for not getting the right approvals, filling in the
correct documentation or following a set timeframe.

Help change the rules if they’re of no value

Be ready to speak up and suggest that a broken or useless policy is
scrapped when it brings no value to the organization and perhaps is already
being ignored by many colleagues without any negative impact.

Stay within the law

It should go without saying that breaking rules should never extend as far
as breaking a particular country’s laws.

• You might fire a member of your team without following all the
requested internal procedures but never violate any applicable
employment laws.
• Similarly, you might breach your company’s expense limits when
taking a client out for a celebration dinner but you must never give the
client anything that might leave you accused of breaking an anti-
bribery law in that country.

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 64 ACCEPT YOU MAY BE
LONELY

‘Leadership and loneliness often go hand in hand.’

It can be lonely as a leader and you must take care because this loneliness
might be having a negative impact on your leadership performance. This
was shown in a 2012 study conducted by the Harvard Business Review,
which found that 50 per cent of CEOs said they experienced loneliness at
work and, of these, 61 per cent felt it affected their performance.
This loneliness stems from having no one to open up to and share your
troubles and concerns with. This is either because you may feel no one will
understand what you’re facing and going through or you feel it
inappropriate to be open with certain people:

• Your staff may not understand and appreciate your leadership

challenges
• You may have to keep many issues and decisions from your staff and
this limits your ability to freely open up with them generally
• With your senior colleagues and with your own boss (if you have one),
you may be reluctant to confide for fear of displaying vulnerability and
weakness, which you fear they may use against you later.
This sense of being alone can be harder if you’ve been a member of the
team you now manage. Before being promoted, you may have been very
open and close with your colleagues but now you’re the boss, they may
treat you differently, for example, no longer inviting you to socialize.
You may also find that your busy schedule interferes with your social life
and you have less free time to meet with family, friends and acquaintances.
This can be very frustrating and can further exasperate any feelings of
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being alone as a leader.

Put it into action

Acknowledge your loneliness
Get used to the idea of being alone and not having a ready pool of
colleagues to bounce ideas off, seek opinions from and to sense-check
your thinking. Have the self-confidence to listen to yourself and to make
some decisions on your own.

Make an alternative buddy or two

It may be possible to make some decisions alone but successful leaders
proactively seek the counsel, support and advice of others when needed.
They create an inner circle to support them. This may include:

• Reaching out to one or two trusted colleagues you have known for
some time with whom you can confide and open up about your
anxieties, concerns and fears. They may be individuals who are
mentoring you as part of a programme.
• Befriending leaders working for other organizations, with whom you
can open up, reflect, learn and brainstorm (without revealing
confidential company information of course!). You could meet leaders
at all kinds of networking events organized in your area by bodies such
as Lions, Rotary, Chambers of Commerce, industry body associations
and other private clubs (such as a local golf club).

Loneliness is not confined to leaders

In our technology driven world, many of us are feeling increasingly more
isolated as we rely more on emails, messages and online video
conferencing and less on physical face-to-face interactions. As well as
monitoring your own feelings of loneliness, always keep an eye open for
members of your own team who may be feeling lonely and disconnected,
perhaps offering to spend time with them over a coffee or lunch.
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 65 MAKE THE RIGHT CALLS

‘Your leadership journey will be made or broken by your key

decisions and choices.’

Decision-making is such an important skill because, as a leader, your

decisions could make or break your company’s future as well as your own
career.
Sadly, there’s no magic recipe to ensure that every single decision you
ever make will be perfectly baked. As you follow and read about leaders at
some of the world’s most successful companies such as Apple, Facebook,
Alibaba, Samsung, Airbnb and Zara, you’ll quickly learn that they have
made some amazingly wise decisions along with some very poor ones.
Sometimes the effect of a poor decision may only be visible to a few
people internally, but sometimes poor leadership decisions can have such a
large impact that their organization can make the world news:

• During the 2007–08 financial crash, some of the world’s largest banks
faced bankruptcy while the investment bank Lehman Brothers closed
down.
• The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 cost British Petroleum its
reputation and billions in compensation payments.
• In 2019, Boeing had to set aside a few billion dollars for compensation
payments in the wake of the grounding of all 737 Max aircraft.
• Previously renowned global brands such as Blockbuster, Kodak, Toys
R Us and Borders are all no longer trading.
Even if you only work in a small organization where the potential financial
impact of a poor decision is only a few thousand dollars, you still need to
avoid making mistakes like this if you want to be viewed as a successful
leader and keep your job. The secret is to become expert at making
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decisions and minimize the risk of ever making one that might destroy
your company or career.

Put it into action

Involve the right people
Never struggle alone with a challenging decision – always involve other
people. Seek the help of whoever is most skilled within your team,
colleagues, other stakeholders and experts. Ask them to evaluate and
challenge you on your own understanding, thinking and assumptions. It’s
always better to have some really difficult discussions and arguments
before eventually making the right decision than to quickly make a
decision which proves to be wrong.

Use the right (decision-making) tools

Work with your team to always gather and analyse all aspects of a decision
including the relevant facts, assumptions, risks and impacts. Learn about
and appropriately use decision-making frameworks, models and processes.
Your colleagues might be able to teach you how to use some of the better-
known and relatively easy to understand ones such as:

• SWOT and PEST analyses

• Opportunity cost calculations
• Cost-benefit and weighted scoring analyses
• Decision trees and matrices
• Cause and effect fishbone diagrams
• Payback and Net Present Value (NPV) calculations.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Never make a decision until you understand the potential negative impacts
of that decision. Ask yourself whether your organization can cope in the
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event of a worse-case outcome.
Sometimes you’ll discover that the potential risks of a decision are greater
than the benefits. In such cases, have the humility and courage to consider
altering or cancelling a planned decision. Better a little loss of face today
than finding yourself fired later for making a decision that proved too
costly.

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 66 PLAY PEACEMAKER

‘Your leadership is only really tested when storm clouds gather and
the seas become rough.’

Whenever people work together, you’ll rarely have harmony and

alignment with everyone in harmonious agreement about everything.
Instead, there will always be moments of tension, arguments and conflicts
within any team or organization. For example:

• Misunderstandings about what has been said or done by someone

• Tensions between colleagues as they fight over the same time slots,
attention or resources
• Department heads accusing one another of lying about who agreed to
take responsibility for solving an issue
• Disagreements over how to tackle a problem or achieve a goal
• Team members’ egos clashing over who has the superior idea and
should lead a discussion
• Jealousy over who received recognition for a completed project
• Colleagues who are not on speaking terms after someone took offence
at comments made about them
• The boss breaking a promise to promote one of the team and promoting
someone else instead, causing the slighted team member to become
angry.
How you respond in such scenarios is a measure of your leadership
maturity and wisdom. Too many leaders make problems worse by being
part of the conflict themselves or jumping in and taking sides, or by being
unaware of the issue at all or choosing to avoid it. By inflaming any
conflict, a leader can turn even small matters into conflicts which then

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have devastating impacts on a team’s productivity, collaboration and
motivation. Successful leaders do the opposite – they never choose to
create conflicts or to worsen conflicts that have already arisen if they can
possibly avoid it.

Put it into action

Sniff out potential conflict
Always be on the lookout for situations where upset, arguments,
misunderstandings or disagreements might emerge. When you sense a
problem might be brewing, bring the affected individuals together and
have frank discussions. Ask the sparring parties to:

• Remember their collective purpose, vision, goals and successes rather

than only focusing on any potential areas of difference
• Continually talk together, working through any differences as soon as
they arise, with you remaining as a mediator if needed.

Tackle fires already burning

When conflict has already started, be quick to eliminate any unhealthy
emotions and feelings and help resolve the issue through encouraging all
parties to:

• Pause and share their feelings, upset and concerns with you in
confidence. Then bring all parties together in the same room (or
through video conference), allowing all sides to hear one another’s
views and perceptions.
• Steer this conversation as needed to make sure that all needed opinions
are aired, and that no one stays quiet when you know they have
something to say.
• Find common ground and seek a compromise acceptable to all sides.

During these discussions, vary your leadership style as needed from very
firm and directive through to stepping back and allowing the parties
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involved to find their own consensus and way forward, if that looks like it
may produce results.

Allow healthy conflicts

Sometimes colleagues need to air differences and have moments of
disagreement. All successful organizations recognize this and have a
culture of healthy and productive disagreement. Just be sure to follow the
advice on this page to stop these discussions turning into negative, tense
and emotionally charged conflicts.

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 67 SPELL OUT
RESPONSIBILITY

‘An excellent leader never acts like a Teflon-coated non-stick frying

pan.’

You can always spot a weak leader by how skilfully and quickly they’re
able to pin the blame on other people when challenged about mistakes,
misunderstandings, missed targets and other poor performance-related
issues. Such people can become expert at washing their hands of
responsibility and accountability even when it’s obvious to others that
they’re the person in charge of the relevant tasks and goals. You’ll never
succeed by acting in this way and will eventually be called out for shirking
your responsibilities as a leader. You may even be fired as a result.
Successful leadership is about making things happen, implementing
changes and achieving goals. To do these things, you must be systematic
in allocating and assigning responsibility, including to yourself, to make
sure that everybody understands exactly who is:

• Responsible for an actual task or piece of work – this could be one

individual or a group and might include the leader.
• Accountable for the completion of that work – as a leader, you’re
probably the one who is ultimately answerable and responsible in this
way. As you become more senior, leaders beneath you will be
accountable for their own team’s work but you may remain ultimately
accountable.
• Asked to Support and/or be Consulted to help in the task’s completion
– they’re normally only responsible for the quality of their help and
advice.
• Needing to be kept Informed of the work and would normally have no
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 responsibility.
Known as the RASCI model, this framework makes it easier for any leader
and their team members to understand, accept and focus on the tasks and
goals they’re responsible and accountable for.

Put it into action

Advertise who is responsible
• Create your own version of the RASCI model, turning it into a table
that lists the names of those who are solely or jointly responsible as
well as accountable for different tasks and pieces of work.
• Have discussions and brainstorming sessions if needed to reach
agreement on who is responsible and accountable for which tasks and
goals.
• Support, motivate and encourage team members to take personal
responsibility and/or accountability. If needed, be directive and forceful
in allocating who does what.
• Be very clear about any shared responsibilities and ensure that those
who are jointly responsible, including yourself, are aligned and able to
work collaboratively.

Be the role model

Be a good role model by being enthusiastic and motivated to take full
accountability for all of your team’s work as well as for any tasks that you
personally undertake.

Demonstrate that your team’s failures are also

your own
Never make the mistake of passing tasks to your team and later blaming
them for poor performance or mistakes and thinking that you’re absolved

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of any blame. You always remain accountable for your team’s work – this
is a fundamental role of leadership. Challenge and support them to
complete the work themselves but never wash your hands when they
struggle or fail.

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 68 BE ENTREPRENEURIAL

‘Would you do the same thing if it were your own business?’

When you’re a leader working for a business that is not your own, you can
make decisions without needing to face the full consequences of the
decisions’ outcomes. The worst that could happen is you make bad
decisions and get fired. However, when you’re the entrepreneur who owns
the business, a few poorly thought through decisions could leave you
penniless if your firm goes bankrupt and your shareholding becomes
worthless.
Entrepreneurs know that every decision they make has very high risks
compared to a leader employed by a large corporation who is simply
spending or investing the company’s money. For this reason, successful
entrepreneurs have some valuable skills and attributes that you should
learn from:

• They’re deeply thoughtful about choices and decisions facing them,

given that their own money is always on the line
• They have honed their intuition and gut feelings to complement their
analytical and intellectual skills to give them an extra edge
• They have a strong passion for the businesses they create, making them
very inspiring, energetic and charismatic leaders
• They’re extremely creative, love thinking out of the box and always
taking the initiative in search of great ideas and solutions
• They’re very good at motivating and encouraging others to join them
on their start-up journeys.
You may never wish to put your capital on the line by becoming an
entrepreneur, but emulating some of their success traits can raise your
game.
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Put it into action
Think and act like an entrepreneur
Whenever you’re facing a problem, dilemma or decision and not sure
which option to choose, ask yourself, ‘Which would I choose if this were
my own company and it were my own money on the line?’ Having this
owner’s mindset gives you a heightened awareness and may cause you to
think twice about a decision when most other leaders might think it
through too quickly or even avoid dealing with it all together. With an
entrepreneurial mindset, you might:

• Wonder if an underperforming employee should be terminated now

rather than keeping them on and paying their salary in the hope that
they will improve
• Double-check if the forecasted returns in a capital expenditure plan are
really achievable or if your staff are being overly optimistic in their
calculations
• Evaluate whether a long-term supplier is becoming complacent and not
bringing the value-add they had promised and ask your team to seek
more cost-effective alternatives.
In addition to being more thoughtful, two other entrepreneurial qualities to
adopt are:

• Being passionate and enthusiastic about your goals, plans and

workload, and viewing your job responsibilities as something you’re
choosing to do as if you were your own boss
• Becoming excited about wanting to improve and optimize all aspects of
your work and business by bringing your intuition, creativity and
innovation to everything you do.

Encourage others to think like entrepreneurs

When you start acting more entrepreneurial, your team may like your new-
found passion and excitement. Equally, they may be surprised that you’re
acting more cautiously and probing every decision, forecast and plan they
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present to you. Explain why you’re acting in this way and encourage them
to also adopt an owner mentality when making their own decisions.

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 69 THINK GLOBALLY

‘No leader succeeds as an island, cut off from the rest of the world.’

The world is so interconnected, with virtually every aspect of life and

business becoming more global each year. It’s now impossible to be a
leader living and working in one city, county or region and ignore the rest
of the world. The New York Times writer Thomas Friedman introduced
this idea in his aptly titled book, The World is Flat, and today every part of
a business seems to have links to other parts of the world:

• European High Street clothing brands selling clothes designed in Italy,

made in Bangladesh with fabric from China, zippers from Japan and
buttons from India
• US Companies having their call centres and back office support
services located in places as far afield as India, Mexico or the
Philippines serving staff and fielding calls from clients located in every
corner of the world
• Sitting in your living room in Manchester or Chicago and purchasing
almost anything from anywhere thanks to a multitude of global
websites
• Supermarket shelves in any city stocked with products from every
imaginable country
• When you take a look at any individual products, you discover just how
global they are. To take one example – Airbus aircraft are assembled in
France but with parts produced in many countries including the wings
constructed in Wales in the UK.
Successful leaders understand just how global even the most local
marketplace or business is becoming and actively seek to learn about and
take advantage of this globalization.

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Put it into action
Lead locally, think globally
Not everyone wants to become a global leader running a business spanning
the world. You can be equally successful by leading a business which
focuses on serving just one area or community with some great
relationships with your local clients, suppliers and staff. But your local
business, based in Edinburgh, Detroit or Toronto, risks missing out on so
many great ideas and opportunities if you close your eyes to what is
happening elsewhere.
If you’re not doing so already, take a more global perspective starting with
these small steps:

• Attend trade shows and expos that cover your industry sector, and that
take place both within your country as well as overseas, to learn about
what your local and global competitors are doing and about how
products and services are evolving
• Consider sourcing materials, products and services from new locations
• Find a distributor or reseller in an overseas market to test how
appealing and valuable having foreign customers may be
• Market and sell your products and services online to a global
marketplace
• Be open to hiring staff with experience of working and living in other
parts of the world.
• Read widely both about your industry as well as more broadly about
global business trends and ideas.

Decide to network globally

Become involved in international business networking and referral
networks such as BNI (www.bni.com) or the Entrepreneurs’ Organization
(www.eonetwork.org). You’ll learn so much from spending time with
leaders from all corners of the globe who will bring with them different
insights, as well as giving you a network of new business friends who

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could support and aid any of your own international sourcing or expansion
plans.

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 70 COPE WITH THE
UNEXPECTED

‘Sometimes leaders must twist and turn like snakes to cope with the
unexpected.’

The best laid plans so often go up in smoke, don’t they? As a leader, you
need to skillfully cope with the consequences of any unexpected changes:

• A key member of your team who was your planned successor suddenly
resigns leaving you with a massive workload and the headache of
finding his replacement
• Your boss becomes seriously ill and you must cover for her while also
temporarily reporting to a senior colleague who you don’t know at all
• You team informs you that your largest client is taking their business to
a cheaper supplier, leaving a large hole in your sales budget
• Your laptop crashes while starting a presentation at a global
management meeting and you must continue without your slideshow
and videos
• At the eleventh hour, you’re asked to rework your department’s budget
numbers by incorporating a 10 per cent cost reduction.
Faced with all kinds of unexpected changes, too many leaders panic and
become stressed, start complaining and moaning. Worst of all, they may
even ignore what has happened and act as if nothing has changed.
Successful leaders, on the other hand, have mastered how to be successful
even when their best laid plans go up in smoke. You need to learn how to
emulate them when your own plans get messed up. They tend to exhibit a
mix of being flexible, agile, resilient and mentally strong, and are quick to
understand and process the changes in real-time and then calmly adjust
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their plans accordingly to ensure the best possible outcome.

Put it into action

Become adaptive and agile
Unexpected events must never stop you in your tracks and cause you to
stop or give up. When faced with a roadblock, delay or unexpected event,
follow these four suggestions:
1. Observe yourself and keep any emotional reactions, feelings of
disappointment and upset in check.
2. Positively focus on the problem at hand, deciding quickly whether you
must make any immediate changes or whether you have more time to
react. Either way, respond optimally to the unexpected event, news or
setback.
3. Explore the available information and decide whether you need to
reprioritize what must be done and write a plan of action with clear
timeframes.
4. Implement and communicate any necessary changes with a positive
frame of mind, refocusing your time and attention as needed to ensure
things quickly get back on track.

Bring your team with you

• Don’t allow your team to become entrenched in what they’re doing and
unwilling to adjust and change as needed.
• Involve them in both understanding what has happened as well as in
crafting a response.
• People are not stupid. Never feel that you must hide any bad news from
them or leave them in the dark about how they will need to adapt.
• Give them extra care and attention – this will help them cope with
whatever unexpected changes occur.

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 71 PEER INTO THE FUTURE

‘Yesterday and today are poor predictors of what will land on you
tomorrow.’

Successful leaders are futurists who always make time to look beyond
what is happening today to peer into the future. They’re like chess
grandmasters who have honed their skills and foresight to be able to
visualize many possible moves ahead in their chess games.
Looking into the future is no longer an optional activity for any leader, but
has become an essential leadership task because of the world constantly
being in flux. How the world you’re leading in will appear in only a few
years’ time could be very different from today thanks to the numerous
technology-driven changes impacting our already volatile, uncertain,
complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Your very survival as a leader
will depend on your foresight and strategic acumen, and your ability to
adjust your vision and goals as needed. There are three key and
interlocking areas you must keep an eye on:
1. Ensure that your company and its products and services will still be
relevant and valued in the years ahead by evolving existing, and creating
new, offerings to meet your changing market needs.
2. Understand and be ready to take advantage of trends in technology,
talent, regulations and ways of working to make sure that your business’
systems, procedures and use of resources remain optimal and best
practice.
3. Help both yourself and your team members to discover and understand
what skills, mindsets, education and work experiences need to be
refreshed to keep you valuable and sought after as leaders and
employees.

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Put it into action
Find out where to learn
• Read online articles and studies at sites such as http://www.futurist.com
and https://foresightprojects.blog.gov.uk, which explore future trends
and possible scenarios effecting different industries and aspects of
working life.
• Regularly attend conferences and expos that are relevant to the business
sector you work within and/or your area of work expertise and
interests.
• Explore online or in-person training courses that focus on topics such as
the future of work or the future impact of technologies on the
workplace. You could also seek out those targeted at your industry,
business sector or job function such as a course on the future of
financial services or those related to manufacturing. Many courses are
available online as free MOOCs at sites such as www.futurelearn.com,
www.edx.org or www.udemy.com.
• You could also explore becoming officially trained and certified in how
to explore the future with organizations such as The Futurist Institute
(www.futuristinstitute.org) and Global Foresight
(www.globalforesight.org).
A word of caution – never blindly believe everything you hear or read
because no one can predict the future with anything close to 100 per cent
accuracy. Simply take on board the ideas and insights you hear to help you
form your own evolving knowledge, insights, views, feelings and
opinions.

Organize reflective brainstorming sessions

• Get involved in updating and reviewing your organization’s vision,
future direction and strategic plans.
• Help your team to regularly brainstorm what skills, knowledge and
experiences they need in order to stay relevant and employable.
• Encourage your HR colleagues to source or organize training courses
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 on skills that will be key for your team in the future.
• Stay on top of any changing leadership expectations and issues.

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 72 CHOOSE YOUR ROLE
MODELS CAREFULLY

‘Observe those who inspire and impress you, then emulate their
positive qualities, but those only. No one is perfect.’

Many leaders have been blindly learning from the wrong role models
simply because they emulate and copy other leaders without realizing
they’re doing it. This pattern of unconscious mimicking starts in our
childhoods when we instinctively copy our parents. We take this same
habit into adulthood. You can see this happening when people are meeting
together and one person crosses their arms or legs and other people do the
same thing without even realizing it. It’s also likely that your first few
close colleagues and bosses became your unconscious role models because
you had no one else to observe and learn from.
Successful leaders stop relying upon this unconscious and automatic
mimicking of those they work for or look up to, and deliberately choose
their role models. In addition, once they have chosen a role model, they
never copy all aspects of that leader’s style because no leader is perfect.
Instead, they only emulate the positive behaviours and habits while
avoiding their role model’s weaknesses:

• A highly visionary leader might also have an anger management

problem and a low tolerance for certain people or behaviours
• A leader who has amazing decision-making skills when it comes to
choosing successful business opportunities but may lack the skills to
develop and grow a high-performing team
• A leader who always exceeds expectations by pushing staff to achieve
their KPIs may have no idea about how to listen, inspire and coach
people.

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Put it into action
Choose role models wisely
Decide which leaders have qualities you would like to emulate and learn
from, and which leaders you would never want to emulate or copy in a
million years. The latter are known as negative role models – you can learn
important lessons from them in terms of how not to be a leader.
If you’re not sure who your desired role models are, take your time to find
out by reading about and listening to all kinds of leaders through books,
articles, podcasts, at events and/or in-person within your own organization.
Do you prefer to learn, for example, from successful leaders with similar
backgrounds or experiences to your own, such as being a man or woman,
or from a particular ethnic, work or educational background?
Do change your role models over time in alignment with your own growth
as a leader. The ideal role models for you when you lead a small sales or
software team will be quite different to those you need when you’re
appointed Managing Director of an entire company.

Maximize what you learn from role models

• Read their biographies and other material they have written
• If a role model is a colleague or family friend, you have hit the jackpot
because you can easily meet them in person and even ask them whether
they would be willing to coach or mentor you
• If your role models are far away or you don’t know them personally,
consider connecting with them (via linkedin.com) to ask them specific
questions
• Keep a journal of your notes and reflections about what you learn from
your role models and about your own attempts to emulate some of their
better habits and behaviours while avoiding the bad ones.

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 73 GET OFF YOUR HIGH
HORSE

‘Nelson Mandela left us with one key learning – always forgive people
even when it seems impossible to do.’

Most people are unforgiving and refuse to forgive a colleague who has
done something to upset them. Too many leaders act the same and are
unwilling to let it go, reconcile and move on. They prefer instead to hold
onto their negative feelings and tell people how they have been wronged.
The problem with not forgiving someone is that you suffer – not other
person. You’re the one holding onto the negative feelings towards them
and the resentment you hold onto might turn you into an over-critical,
bitter and negative leader. Not surprisingly, being the opposite – a
forgiving leader – can help you both to lead as well as to create a better
working environment. In a 2017 study reported in the Journal of
Management and Organization, the authors concluded that being a
forgiving leader helps you and your team interact and collaborate more
optimally. This makes sense and I have observed this in my coaching
work, finding that leaders who are more forgiving:

• Enable people to take more risks, make mistakes and to speak up

• Help those they work with to become more understanding and
forgiving
• Create a more motivating, compassionate and positive work
environment.
Successful leaders understand all of these benefits and always make an
effort to forgive other people as well as themselves. They don’t forget
what has happened but choose to no longer carry the negative feelings
inside themselves and instead make a conscious decision to move on.
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Put it into action
Understand how unforgiving you’re being
Recognize when you’re being unwilling to forgive other people. Discover
your patterns, reflect upon them and observe when you’re:

• Holding a grudge or retaliating against someone

• Feeling mistreated, ignored or hurt by someone
• Writing someone off for making a mistake
• Angry about someone doing something
• Teaching someone a lesson by refusing to make-up after an argument
• Refusing to accept another person’s apologies and contrition
• Ignoring someone’s attempts to make good on something they had said
or done.

…and work to become genuinely forgiving

• Decide whether you really want to become a more forgiving person. If
you have a large ego, it may take extra effort to forgive, let go and
move on. When you feel torn between holding firm and being
forgiving, do speak to a close colleague who could help you see sense
and help you to forgive.
• Decide whether you want to write a note or email to explain your
perceptions and feelings and/or to meet the other person face to face in
your office, a meeting room or over lunch.
• Your forgiveness won’t change the past nor make it disappear but it
will allow you and your colleagues to optimally move forward together
without holding onto any excess and negative baggage.
• People are rarely 100 per cent in the right and your challenge may not
just be about forgiving someone else but also about you saying sorry
and apologizing for your part in an argument, misunderstanding or for
how you reacted.

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…and remember to forgive yourself
Remember that you may also need to forgive yourself and to stop beating
yourself up for things you may have done wrong in the past.

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 74 STAND TALL DURING
STORMS

‘Never lose your composure and focus even when living through a
Force 10 Hurricane.’

If you haven’t already, you’ll face all kinds of crises during your time as a
leader that can impact profit targets, project plans, careers, reputations or
even peoples’ livelihoods and lives. How you react and lead during these
critical moments can make or break your leadership career. You need to be
ready to tackle any crisis really well, no matter how it occurred:

Caused by events that are out of Caused by events that are within
your control your control

• Freak weather causing your • A deadly fire at your chemicals

electronics factory to be flooded plant caused by old wiring and
and stopping production paper rubbish which you knew
indefinitely about
• Economic sanctions imposed on • A poorly tested new product
your main export market explodes when used by
resulting in your sales revenue customers, resulting in a global
falling 25% product recall

Your leadership nightmare is facing a crisis that you could have contained
but allowed to grow or even spiral out of control because you overreacted,
made poor decisions or failed to understand and listen well. A worse
mistake is to try to hide or downplay a crisis because you know your
organization is at fault. We see many examples of this withholding of the
truth:

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• An oil company is slow to reveal that a major offshore oil leak is
happening because they know it’s their fault and their delay in coming
clean creates an even larger environmental disaster with a bigger
financial cost to them.
• An airline manufacturer is reluctant to admit that one of its aircraft
models is flying with a potentially catastrophic technical problem
which they knew about, and their delay worsens the bad publicity and
financial impact.
Successful leaders avoid these leadership mistakes and, instead, practise
high-quality crisis management to minimize the negative impacts of any
possible problem.

Put it into action

Master key crisis management skills
It’s essential that your responses to and actions during a crisis won’t
worsen an already difficult situation for you and your colleagues.

Be calm, honest and open

Remain steady and balanced even when those around you might be
panicking, crying, acting fearful or anxious. When you need to calm
yourself, sit down, close your eyes and take slow deep breaths. Pause
before saying or doing anything to be sure that your message or action will
be helpful and is not simply a knee-jerk reaction to the problem or you
being defensive and hiding something.

Evaluate and act decisively

Create a crisis management team made up of colleagues with differing
skill-sets and experiences who together make a strong team to help solve
the issue. Work together to evaluate what is happening and understand the
reasons for the problem. Decide what urgent short-term actions need to
happen now such as writing an initial press release, informing the
company’s shareholders or providing emergency assistance to those
affected.
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Treat the crisis with the same seriousness you would give to an important
work project – detailed planning, agreeing which stakeholders to involve
and identifying the necessary actions, resources, timeframes and
communications.

Keep appropriate stakeholders informed

There will be different people involved in each problem, each having their
own perceptions of the crisis and expectations of how it can be solved.
Regularly communicate with all parties, keeping them informed and never
lie to them, hold back information or keep quiet. Share with your team and
colleagues your plans and commitments, including your vision of how
you’ll lead the team or organization through the crisis and beyond.

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 75 VALUE DIVERSITY AND
INCLUSIVITY

‘We discriminate against certain people without even noticing.’

Diversity is a hot topic. In today’s working world we are all very well
informed, trained and supported to never knowingly discriminate, show
any bias or to treat anyone differently because of who they are. We are
encouraged to create gender balanced teams, give everyone equal
opportunities and to hire and to promote those from disadvantaged and
under-represented backgrounds.
You might be proud of how you’re always conscious of diversity issues
but most of your decisions and choices are actually being made by your
unconscious mind. The Nobel-winning scientist Eric Kandel believes that
nearly all of our thinking is hidden away from us in this way.
This wouldn’t be a problem if our unconscious minds were always making
great choices and decisions for us. But sadly, a lot of the time, our brains
are making biased split-second assessments and judgements of people and
situations, influenced by our backgrounds, personal experiences, cultures
and what makes us more comfortable. Thanks to this biased thinking, we
all exhibit what is called unconscious bias:

• We are drawn to people who look, act and sound like us, while also
tending to view people who are taller and fitter as having more
authority and deserving more respect
• We favour job candidates from certain academic and work backgrounds
that fit with our own
• During meetings, women are often ignored, spoken over and their
comments not valued compared to those of men

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• When a woman acts like a man, she can be accused of being too
aggressive, whereas when a man acts in the same way he might be
viewed as exhibiting an excellent leadership style
• We are influenced by a person’s name and are drawn to those we are
more familiar with. This is why some companies remove candidates’
names from their CVs before sharing with interviewers.
To perform more successfully as a leader, it’s time you stopped making
such unconscious choices, which can be unhelpful and are often totally
unacceptable.

Put it into action

Understand how you’re biased
Start by understanding and acknowledging when you might be guilty of
unconscious bias:

• Take the well-known Implicit Association Test from Harvard

University. It’s free to take and is available online at
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/iatdetails.html. It shows which of
your individual perceptions and actions are being determined by your
unconscious biases.
• Observe yourself, noting when you might be automatically jumping to
conclusions or assumptions about different people you’re interacting
with.

Open up and consciously diversify your thinking

• When in situations where your biases might be evident, pause and ask
yourself honest questions such as ‘Am I really preferring this job
candidate because of her work experience or just because she also went
to the same University as I did?’
• When you meet someone for the first time, ask yourself what your first
impressions are and reflect on which of your biases might have helped
determine your answer. Decide whether this is a fair conclusion to
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 make. Do you need to be more open-minded?
• Always try to broaden your focus, for example by ensuring that women
attending your meetings are not spoken over or ignored.
• Encourage your colleagues to also understand what unconscious bias is
and why it’s so bad if we blindly allow it to make our decisions for us.
• Read about the different types of biases that you may be guilty of
having.

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 76 LEAD WITH YOUR BODY
LANGUAGE

‘Stand tall, smile and show that you’re ready to lead.’

Your non-verbal communication is at least as important as your verbal. As

a result, it doesn’t matter how brilliant your choice of words is – if your
body language is telling your audience a different story, don’t be surprised
if your message gets lost:

• You have written an inspiring speech to give in a town hall meeting,

but it will fall on deaf ears if you slump your shoulders, wear ill-fitting
clothes, stare at the floor, look sad or speak in a monotone.
• You’re giving a well-designed interactive presentation to impress a
potential new client, but this will mean nothing if your handshake is
limp and weak, your shoelaces are untied, you mumble your words,
keep your arms crossed and act nervous.
Excellent all-round communication skills are not just a nice-to-have skill,
they are essential. As a leader, you’re an ambassador – how people see and
hear you has a disproportionately large impact on the success of your
organization as well as upon your own leadership career. Successful
leaders are conscious of the impact of all four aspects of their
communication:
1. Verbal – what you say in terms of your choice of words
2. Para-verbal – how you say what you say, which includes your tone and
volume of voice and intonation
3. Non-verbal – your facial expressions, eye contact and body posture
4. Appearance – your clothing, make-up and body odour.

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Put it into action
Have your communication work for, not against
you
Work on all four areas of your communication and invest the needed time
and effort to strengthen/overcome whichever elements of how you
communicate are helping you stand out and/or are holding you back:

Verbal
When you’re preparing for an important talk or speech, prepare your
words in advance and share them with someone who is a skilled
wordsmith and willing to edit and improve your draft. Be equally thorough
before any meetings by thinking through how you’ll craft your arguments
and make the necessary points.

Para-verbal
Make a constant effort to make sure that what you want to say is never
weakened or over-shadowed by verbal distractions such as using too many
filler words (such as um and ah), having long pauses, sighing, stuttering
and inappropriate giggling.

Non-verbal
Have someone film you while you’re giving a talk and then be honest. Is
your non-verbal communication working for or against you? Practise
overcoming typical mistakes such as having odd or unusual facial
expressions and hand gestures, not standing upright in a calm and relaxed
manner, appearing to look sad or not looking at people you’re speaking
with.

Appearance
Be well groomed, with neat hair and clean shoes. Wear clothes that you
feel comfortable in as well as make you look very professional. Your
choice of appearance is partly determined by your work environment.
When you’re unsure what to put on in the morning, remember the saying
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‘When in Rome do as the Romans do’. Dress like those you’ll be
interacting and working with.

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 77 LEAVE YOUR DOOR OPEN

‘Great leaders never hide in their offices.’

To bring out the best in a team, a leader must be willing to listen to

whatever the team members wish to communicate. Be careful though –
this isn’t as simple as leaving your office door physically open. I once
coached a leader who claimed to be very approachable with her door
literally wide open but her staff told me they hated speaking with her.
They explained that whenever they approached her with ideas, problems or
suggestions, she acted like she had no time, would make them feel
unwelcome, or would ridicule and find fault in their ideas rather than
saying anything positive.
Genuinely approachable leaders make their staff feel at ease, patiently
listen, reflect and calmly respond without any judgement. This is a genuine
open-door policy and helps create a very healthy and positive working
environment:

• As a result of being heard, people will feel more valued and motivated
and will be willing to invest more effort in their work.
• It creates a working culture of increased openness, trust and
transparency in which people will be less inclined to remain silent and
hold back from sharing with each other, including with you.
• There will be less fear and more eagerness to discuss problems and
issues before they become fully fledged crises.

Put it into action

Have an open door policy (but with some
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boundaries)
Always aim to be ready and available to speak with your team members,
but have them understand this does not mean you’re always literally
available every time a team member asks to speak with you. You might be
busy finishing an urgent report, reflecting on a problem or deep in
discussion with a client. When in this situation, be polite and explain that
you’re keen to talk as soon as possible and agree a time when you’re both
available to sit down. Be sure to block the time in your diary to avoid
double booking yourself.

Don’t dismiss your team’s concerns and worries

Be considerate and kind when one your team brings up an issue which you
might be tempted to dismiss as trivial, small or an overreaction. Hide this
initial thought and listen to your staff to show that you value their
contribution. You don’t have to agree with them but at least hear them out.
If you don’t, they’re likely to stop speaking up and sharing with you in the
future.

Don’t shoot the messenger

When a team member approaches you with some bad news, be careful to
not overreact by showing your anger or that you’re upset. Be grateful that
they have told you something that others may have been keeping quiet
about. Positively thank them for having the courage and good sense to
bring up the issue, encouraging them to always speak up.

Don’t wait for them to come to you

To demonstrate that you’re truly accessible, don’t wait for your team to
approach you. Instead, be proactive and go and find them by regularly
walking around your office or shop floor, stopping to talk with your staff
and asking them how things are. Invite them to come to talk with you
whenever they like.

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 78 BECOME CULTURALLY
INTELLIGENT

‘When you’re working far from your home, YOU are the odd one
out.’

In today’s interconnected world, there are so many people working away

from their own countries. It’s highly likely you’ll find yourself interacting
and leading people from many different cultures and the potential to be
misunderstood, cause offence or create confusion is quite high. What you
view as normal and may do without thinking might be misunderstood by
others and cause them to feel uncomfortable or even offended. Being
ignorant about cultural differences or making fun of them could easily
damage your business, reputation and career.

• President Obama once made a cultural blunder by greeting the Burmese

leader Aung San Suu Kyi with a kiss on her cheek. This is a very taboo
thing to do in Myanmar. If you had done the same thing, you could
have lost an important Burmese business deal over your cultural faux
pas.
• Your company’s business dealings could have come to an abrupt halt in
Mexico had you copied Jeremy Clarkson, who once made remarks that
were so offensive about Mexicans that the Mexican Ambassador in
London complained to the BBC about the ‘outrageous, vulgar and
inexcusable insults’.
Successful leaders have learnt to become culturally sensitive and to
appreciate the many cultural differences that exist in how people:

• Greet, come close and touch each other

• Express that they agree or understand something

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• Dress, dance, travel, eat and drink
• Speak up, complain, celebrate and share or remain quiet
• Are impacted by their religion and religious festivals
• Interact, work and socialize together
• Treat women and men differently
• Question and challenge each other
• Treat time and deadlines differently
• Make agreements and promises.

Put it into action

Learn about the cultures of your colleagues
• When you have a new colleague, client or supplier from another part of
the world, do a little research on the customs, unwritten rules and
practices of men and women from that country or area.
• Seek advice about the dos and don’ts by searching the web, using a
phone app such as ‘compare cultures’ and by reading books on culture
by experts such as Geert Hofstede, Richard D. Lewis and Erin Meyer.

If in doubt, ask and always apologize

• Ask those you’re working or travelling with to share with you
information about their own cultural norms, expectations and taboos.
• Invite them to share their own observations about your own culture,
explaining what appears similar or different to their own.
• Encourage them to point out when you may be on the verge of doing
something culturally inappropriate that may upset or embarrass people.
• Note, however, that in many cultures people are accustomed to being
very polite and will never tell you that you have offended them. You
may have to find out through your own research and by talking with as

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 many people as possible.
• Always apologize, in a culturally appropriate manner, when you have
caused offence.

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 79 THE CUSTOMER ALWAYS
COMES FIRST

‘Never forget the one who is ultimately paying the salaries of your
entire team.’

Everything you do as a leader is linked to fulfilling your customers’ needs.

The impact might be direct if you’re heading a sales team, or indirect if
you and your team are supporting colleagues who are your internal clients.
Only by fulfilling all their needs can you be sure of maintaining your
company’s success as well as your own. No matter whether you’re the
CEO or a new manager, you need to ensure that you and your team are
always performing well so that your internal and external customers
continually receive what they’re expecting and paying for.

• You’re the head of a finance team and must ensure that your team
doesn’t reimburse expenses incorrectly, pay salaries late or create
invoices containing errors. Otherwise, you’ll upset your internal and
external customers.
• As an IT manager, you must make sure that all of your colleagues’
technology requirements are being met and that key IT systems are
never offline. If you don’t, your company may not be able to serve its
customers.
• You head a procurement team and the pricing, quality and timing of
your team’s purchases impacts the work of your colleagues in
production and sales, which ultimately impacts the external customers’
products.
Successful leaders understand this well, and will move mountains to
ensure that external customers’ needs and wishes are satisfied (or
exceeded) so that their organization remains their valued partner and

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supplier.

Put it into action

Get to know your customers well
• Always make a conscious effort to spend time with your internal
customers to fully understand their needs and expectations. Appreciate
the importance and impact of your help and support, and understand the
impact of when your team are slow or make mistakes.
• Be innovative and creative to unearth ways in which you can add extra
value to what your internal customers need to create and produce.
• If your internal customers are in turn serving other internal customers,
understand each part of this internal value chain or pipeline by also
spending time in the departments or sections served by your internal
customers.
• Understand your external customers and how they’re using your
company’s products and services. No matter whether you work in
finance, HR, marketing, production or internal audit, try to visit at least
one key customer annually, and encourage your team members to do
the same. Ask a salesperson to accompany you on one of their regular
visits.

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 80 CHOOSE YOUR WORDS
CAREFULLY

‘Why are you crying? I am only trying to explain how you can do a
better job next time.’

You can so easily get it wrong when speaking with colleagues. You may
start out with the best of intentions but then your choice of words and
speaking style comes across wrong and you end up demotivating,
upsetting or even angering somebody:

• You want to help a colleague to better understand a problem she’s

facing and you’re accused of intruding and sounding condescending.
• You’re passionate about a new business solution that your company
could provide but colleagues complain that you’re becoming obsessed
and too evangelical about the idea.
• In a meeting, you question a colleague about his idea, intending to help
him fine-tune it, but he feels you’re not trusting or valuing his
contribution.
• You offer your reasoned critique of a team member’s project update
and afterwards she complains that you sounded upset and extremely
critical.
• You ask a colleague a range of questions about why an important
deadline has been pushed back and he accuses you of interrogating
him.
• You only make very brief comments when reviewing a team member’s
work and she becomes angry, claiming that you’re not interested in her
work.
• You suggest to your team a number of ways in which they could avoid
repeating a big mistake and, instead of hearing your advice, they feel
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 you’re patronizing them and treating them like a child.
If you have not yet realized it, people are very sensitive and always liable
to jump to conclusions and to assume you have the worst of intentions.
Make sure that what you want to say equates with what the other party
actually hears, feels and perceives.

Put it into action

Know your intention and execute it accordingly
Before speaking with colleagues, think about your desired intention and
the impact of what you want to say. Then plan how you’ll communicate
your message so that it’s clearly understood without the other party
misinterpreting. So, the next time you’re planning to:

• Point out an error or mistake – avoid sounding too harsh, critical and
personal when addressing those who may be at fault.
• Describe or clarify something – be careful not to speak for too long
and risk boring everybody or saying so little that nobody can
understand you.
• Explore and better understand something – be measured in the
number and form of questions you ask someone to avoid sounding like
an interrogator who is not trusting what they’re being told.
• Give someone feedback or opinion of their work – if you only say a
few words, they may think that you’re uninterested or not respecting
them.
• Share alternative opinions and views – if you do so too strongly or
emphatically, they might think you’re personally attacking a colleague,
and not just challenging their opinion.

Ask what the other party is hearing and feeling

Observe yourself as you speak, pausing as soon as you realize that you
may becoming too strong or extreme with your words. Ask the other party
how they’re feeling and apologize when you fear your style of
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conversation might be unintentionally overstepping the mark and causing
upset:

• ‘It isn’t my intention to be critical or harsh and I do hope you’re not

beginning to feel upset.’
• ‘I realize that I have been firing lots of questions at you and I hope you
don’t feel that I am interrogating or over-challenging you. I apologize if
I gave you that impression.’

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 81 MOTIVATE TO RETAIN
YOUR TALENT

‘One poorly thought-through request or action can demotivate an

entire team.’

It takes great skill to be a leader who is able to create and maintain a work
environment where staff come to work each morning motivated and with a
positive mindset. It takes effort maintaining a team’s motivation because
each of us can become upset and demotivated for any number of reasons:

• Losing out on a promotion we feel we deserve

• Being ignored by our boss who shows favouritism to other colleagues
• Failing to be given a salary increase despite being promised one
• Not being given the recognition for completing a project on time
• Working over the weekend without any compensation
• Spending time working under a negative and cold boss
• Finding that the work has become repetitive and monotonous.

The impact of having demotivated team members can be costly to you and
your business:

• They may come to work but lack the interest and energy to fully
contribute. They will take less initiative, no longer speak up,
collaborate less and may behave negatively. Such behaviours are toxic
and contagious, quickly turning a positive and productive working
environment into an unhealthy one.
• They might resign and you must cope with both the loss of their
knowledge and experience as well as needing to spend time finding,

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 training and bringing their replacements up to speed.
• Your reputation might suffer if your demotivated staff give you low
scores in any employee engagement survey or in your annual 360-
degree feedback. In addition, in their exit interviews, your resigning
staff may speak harshly of you and their departure will worsen your
talent retention statistics.

Put it into action

Help your staff fulfil their basic needs
Each of us has seven basic needs which, if fulfilled, can leave us highly
motivated and engaged. Your task as a leader is to ensure that what you
say and do is always helping your team meet these needs:
1. Need to be valued – always acknowledge your staff and thank them for
their work and contribution.
2. Need to have variety – your staff will rarely want to do the same
monotonous work each day and will become easily bored. Whenever
possible, give them variety such as giving them ad hoc tasks, project
responsibilities, opportunities to travel or to swap their job roles with
others.
3. Need to grow – invest your time in helping your staff to grow in terms
of exposure, responsibilities, experience, skill-set and so on.
4. Need to connect with others – create a very collaborative work
environment where staff are encouraged to interact, help and support
each other. Support having social activities including team dinners,
family outings and sports events.
5. Need to contribute – help your team understand how their work fits
into the bigger picture of your company’s purpose, vision, and goals.
6. Need to have certainty – your staff need to know what is happening
and what they have to do, and will dislike the unexpected. Always
communicate plans and openly share information about any upcoming
changes.
7. Need to leave a legacy – help each of your team to find meaning in
their work and to take pride in what they accomplish and create.
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 82 ALWAYS UNDERSTAND
THE NUMBERS

‘All leadership issues involve numbers in one way or another.’

Be careful if your financial knowledge is really basic and you want a long
and successful leadership career. These two things are mutually exclusive
because all leadership roles involve money in one way or another. Many of
your leadership responsibilities will be finance-related and include:

• Cost centres to manage, which involve being responsible for a range of

expenditures
• Financial budgets to create and to compare your department’s or
business’s actual revenues, expenses and capital expenditures against
• Business and strategic plans to create and execute
• Agreeing pricing and other financial terms with your clients
• Financial investments to make in property, working capital and new
product developments
• Financial accounts to be audited, which you may need to review,
approve and/or sign off on
• Hiring new staff and agreeing their remuneration
• Signing up new suppliers and negotiating terms of any contracts.

You risk making poor decisions and mistakes if you don’t understand the
financial impacts and consequences of your actions. Successful leaders
know this and build up enough financial knowledge to succeed in their
roles and to avoid mistakes such as:

• Being financially cheated and taken advantage of by being overcharged

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 for work provided or having your staff cheat on their expenses
• Agreeing badly calculated pricing with clients or suppliers that may
result in financial losses for their company
• Signing off on budgets, forecasts and project plans that have key items
missing.

Put it into action

Become financially literate
It’s time for you to learn the basics of finance and accounting. Luckily,
this can be easily achieved through a combination of:

• Taking one of the many free ‘basics in finance’ online courses often
referred to as MOOCs
• Reading books focused on teaching finance to non-finance managers
• Attending a short finance course at a Business School or organized by
an accounting certification body such as the UK’s Chartered Institute of
Management Accountants (CIMA) or the American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)
• Ask your finance and accounting-focused colleagues to teach and
mentor you, and ask them to help you understand your company’s
different financial reports and statements.
As a minimum, seek to understand:

• Profit and loss statements, balance sheets and cashflow statements

• Key ratios of profitability and capital employed
• Product costing, pricing and margin calculations
• Budgeting and forecasting, including how to compare actual versus
forecast revenues, expenses and capital expenditure
• Bank funding and others sources of financing and debt.

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If already an expert, look beyond the numbers
Perhaps you’ve studied finance and business at university, qualified as a
financial analyst or accountant while working or have already learnt about
finance and money earlier in your career. Don’t fall into the trap of
complacency by either taking your eye off the numbers or doing the
opposite and only focusing only on them while ignoring the human impact
of financial decisions you need to make.
Make time and offer to share your knowledge by teaching your non-
financial colleagues the essentials of finance.

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 83 EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY

‘Don’t be a technology-fearing Luddite.’

New technologies fuelled by the internet and high-speed computing are

having an effect on every aspect of your work and life as a leader and are
very hard to ignore:

• Thanks to smartphones with apps such as WhatsApp and FaceTime,

everybody is contactable 24/7 at no cost.
• With real-time data analytics, we can know and understand everything
that is happening to our businesses as soon as it has occurred.
• With global social media platforms and analysis of users’ behaviours,
we can understand all our actual and potential consumers’ preferences,
tastes and needs.
• The online storage of business data including in the form of emails and
transactions (between staff, suppliers and customers) creates an
environment where everything is in the open and can be tracked and
monitored.
• Evolving automated processes involving advanced software, robotics
and Artificial Intelligence are changing every workplace, from offices
and warehouses through to factories and retail outlets.
You’ll fail as a leader if you hide away from technological changes either
by not learning about them or being reluctant to try things out and
experiment:

• Your competitors will be more tech savvy and will overtake your
company
• Your business model will become slow and antiquated
• Your consumers will be better served by other suppliers
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• Your staff will feel that their workplace is falling behind the times
• You’ll lose career opportunities as colleagues start to view you as a
dinosaur.
You have no choice – openly and positively embrace evolving
technologies.

Put it into action

Embrace the cutting edge
Have the clear intention of wanting your organization, your team, as well
as yourself, to benefit and gain in this world of fast-changing technologies.

• Constantly learn about technological innovations, solutions, services

and products that may impact and/or be introduced into your
organization.
• Read online articles, talk with technology-fluent colleagues and visit
relevant conferences and expos. If you know of other companies that
have already taken the plunge and adopted a particular technology, visit
them too.
• Volunteer to be the first to explore and experiment with new ideas, such
as when your company is looking for a department head or team leader
to trial a new smartphone customer relationship management app, or try
out an upgraded version of an online performance management tool.

Help your staff face tech disruptions positively

Be a leader who has an optimistic vision about the changes and disruptions
brought by new technologies and encourage your team to be interested in
new technologies and their impacts. Help them to understand that they
must be ready to learn and adapt, and to view any changes as career
opportunities.

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Tough decisions will be necessary
Be prepared for some difficult decisions and actions, such as needing to
lay off staff as a result of technology-fuelled changes to how the work gets
done. Give these staff as much warning time, re-learning opportunities and
job-hunting support as possible. If funds permit, you could arrange for
them to be given the services of a career coaching or outplacement firm.
You also need to make an extra effort to motivate and engage your
remaining team members, who’ll be shaken by the loss of their colleagues.
They may be wondering if and when it will be their turn to see their jobs
become automated and phased out.

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 84 NEGOTIATE YOUR WAY
TO SUCCESS

‘Be prepared to negotiate with everyone you meet.’

A successful leader is a skilled negotiator, who must constantly use their

negotiation skills to seek alignment and agreement with many different
people for all kinds of reasons. Examples include:

• Staff over changes to their employee benefits and other proposed

changes
• Clients over pricing disagreements or product quality issues
• Suppliers over differing delivery dates
• A team to agree how a new process is to be implemented.

The benefits of being a successful negotiator who is able to reach

agreement and alignment with other people can be substantial. These
include:

• Avoiding tense conflicts and arguments that could cause you to fall out
with a client, government department, supplier, shareholder or
employee
• Eliminating wasted time and energy spent in waiting, misunderstanding
and arguing
• Being able to implement plans, ideas and goals
• Creating higher levels of synergy, trust and engagement, which over
time can improve client satisfaction, employee retention and
engagement and business performance.
Given these benefits, it’s no surprise that negotiation skills training is often
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mandatory for leaders. In my coaching and mentoring work, helping
leaders to hone their negotiation skills is a common request.

Put it into action

Practise these key negotiation skills
• Know your own position
Before communicating with the other party, identify what you wish to
achieve, what the range of acceptable outcomes is for you and how
flexible you are able and willing to be. Have relevant information to hand
to help you explain your arguments, suggestions and points of view, and
also to help understand the other side’s position.

• Acknowledge differences
Sometimes it may not be clear to the other person that there’s an issue
needing to be resolved. It can be very helpful to clearly spell it out,
explaining your understanding of the issue at hand.

• Listen to the other party

Before you start proposing your solutions, ask the other side to share what
they understand, observe, and hope to achieve. Actively listen to them,
thank them for being open and acknowledge where you’re in agreement.

• Keep discussions and communications healthy

Agree with the other side how you’ll discuss and resolve your issue. Try to
make it more personal by speaking together face to face rather than relying
upon emails or lawyers’ letters. Make an effort to build rapport and trust
through being as honest and open together as you possibly can.

• Be willing to walk away

If you’re not able to reach an acceptable agreement (or so-called
negotiated settlement), decide whether to stop trying to negotiate and
simply walk away. If you are willing and able to walk away, determine
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what the next best outcome is. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘best
alternative to a negotiated agreement’ (BATNA). As an example, if you’re
trying to hire someone into your team and you fail, your BATNA might be
to promote an internal colleague or to second another candidate from a
sister company.

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 85 RESIGN FOR YOUR
BELIEFS… IF NECESSARY

‘Better to fail because of what you believe in than succeed at things

you don’t.’

Never make the common mistake of staying on in a leadership position

when you’re repeatedly forced to act in ways that go against your beliefs,
ethics or integrity.
You may not know what is important to you until the day you find yourself
in a situation where you feel uncomfortable and know something is wrong.
This might be when you’re expected to play along with your colleagues in:

• Deceiving customers by downplaying the health risks of the products

that your company produces
• Pretending that your products contain 100 per cent recycled and
biodegradable packaging
• Repeatedly promising staff salary increases and improved working
conditions when you know this won’t happen
• Lying to your auditors about your company’s actual invoiced revenues
or balance sheet accruals
• Covering up cases of sexual harassment or racial discrimination
occurring within your company.
When faced with these kinds of issues, far too many leaders keep quiet,
saying things such as:

• ‘If I speak up, I will come under peer pressure to shut up and may even
be fired.’
• ‘If I leave, people will wonder why I resigned and I may struggle to find
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 a new role.’
• ‘Maybe I am being too demanding and the issue is not so serious after
all.’
• ‘I can’t rock the boat as I need the salary to pay my mortgage and
school fees.’
• ‘All organizations face similar issues so I may as well stay here.’

Successful leaders never act in this way, closing one eye to what is
happening. They find the courage to speak up and may even resign and
move on. For them, whenever their beliefs and ethics are at odds with
those of their senior bosses and colleagues, they will never allow fears or
job security to allow them to compromise their convictions.

Put it into action

Open up and seek advice
When confronted with an issue at work that is challenging your
convictions, speak up and talk about it with someone you trust. Try to
open up with someone who is not working in the same company to avoid
the possibility that they might share your concerns with other colleagues,
which would cause you embarrassment.
Ask them whether they think you’re being reasonable in feeling the way
you do about a particular issue. Explore with them how you’ll respond in
terms of:

• Keeping quiet or speaking up

• Staying on in your role or resigning.

Become a whistleblower
If your company has a whistleblowing programme where you’re able to
anonymously bring up issues, you could follow this route to raise your
concern about a particular business practice. If this proves futile because
your CEO, senior colleagues and/or board of directors don’t act upon your
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tip off and even try to suppress it, you could choose to talk about the issue
with an industry watchdog, ombudsman or regulatory authority. Failing
that, you could contact the media.
Protect yourself by taking legal advice given the high likelihood that in
your employment contract you’ll have agreed to some very clear and all-
encompassing confidentiality and non-disclosure clauses.

Find a new leadership role before resigning

If you sense that you may end up resigning over some kind of
unacceptable business and ethical practices, try to plan ahead by finding a
new job before you tender your resignation.

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 86 SMASH THROUGH
CEILINGS

‘Never allow others to hold you back just because of who or what you
are.’

A whopping 25 per cent of UK employees have experienced workplace

discrimination, according to two 2018 surveys, one by Sky plc and the
other by Learnlight. In the US, a 2017 study found that 42 per cent of
women have faced workplace discrimination while another 2017 study
discovered that over half of African Americans have faced discrimination
in terms of pay and promotions.
In chapter 75, I encouraged you to be a leader who is never biased towards
other people, but what happens when you’re personally faced with other
people’s unconscious bias, or even outright discrimination, against you –
discrimination that could risk derailing your leadership career and success?
When in a junior job role, you might want to ignore such things, trying not
to rock the boat or claiming that it’s a one-off. But once in a leadership
position, the discrimination may become more obvious and pronounced
and it may be impossible to ignore its effects, for example:

• Being passed over for promotion into a more senior leadership role
• Not being entrusted with leading a high-profile project
• Being paid less than other leaders performing similar roles
• Failing to be shortlisted and interviewed for a leadership position in
another company
• Not being respected and treated as a leader by your colleagues and/or
bosses.

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Put it into action
Value yourself
Be yourself and never hide any aspect of yourself, while always trying to
break through any barriers that may be holding back your career. Allow
your strengths to come through in your work performance and interactions
with colleagues.
When you face any type of discrimination or bias, calmly investigate,
speak up and talk about it. Ask the others involved to understand,
apologize and change. If your bosses and colleagues treat you unequally,
challenge them by discussing it. If they don’t respond in a fair and
authentic way, consider resigning and seeking a healthier working
environment.
In my coaching work, the areas in which leaders typically feel
discriminated unfairly against are regarding remuneration and performance
ratings:

• If you feel are you being underpaid based on some aspect of your
background, speak with your boss and HR colleagues to seek
clarification. Push for remuneration comparable to what leaders in
similar roles to yours are earning.
• If you receive a lower than expected performance rating and evaluation,
don’t rush to assume it’s because of bias or discrimination. It may be.
But it could also be a correct rating and you might be accused of trying
to divert attention away from actually being an under-performing
leader.

Help others break through their own glass ceilings

If you’re a leader who is female, from a particular ethnic group, religion or
socio-economic background, or a member of the LGBT community, be a
role model. Give lunchtime talks, be a mentor or write in your in-house
magazine and openly share about your own career journey and struggles to
succeed in spite of being too old, female, Asian, transgender and so on.
This may well encourage other colleagues to speak up about their own
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career ambitions being thwarted by various kinds of bias and of having had
to jump through more hoops to arrive at where they are today.

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 87 DON’T IGNORE THAT
ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

‘If you leave the elephant unattended, you might return to find all
your furniture is destroyed.’

Far too many organizations and work environments have problems and
issues that are not being addressed. This is often due to people being
unwilling to rock the boat, upset people or become immersed in tricky,
sensitive issues. Left undiscussed, such issues then fester and grow, which
can damage your business’ performance, working culture, staff morale and
even your own credibility. Examples of such elephants in the room
include:

• Everyone knows that your boss, the CEO, is a bully and ruthless in how
he treats those who don’t agree with him. Many talented colleagues
have resigned but no one addresses the issue for fear of upsetting him.
• Your company’s acquisition of a competitor is straining resources and
there’s no evidence that the forecast cost savings will materialize.
Everybody is keeping quiet so as not appear too negative and critical of
what was a popular strategic purchase.
• Many of your management colleagues are worried about your
company’s recent move to outsource some of the manufacturing and
are concerned about the impact on product quality and delivery times.
The issue is not being openly spoken about because the entire
management had originally agreed to this move. No one is willing to
admit they may have been wrong.
No matter how uncomfortable, sensitive, sacrosanct or long-running issues
may be, successful leaders never leave them brushed under the carpet.
They recognize when a topic must be spoken about and resolved, even if

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this will upset people or create tensions.

Put it into action

Search for elephants in any new roles you take on
Keep your eyes open for any issues within your own team and work
environment that may have been left untouched by your predecessor, such
as:

• The second-in-command in your team has been under-performing and

should have been fired many months ago.
• Your team is split into two camps with obvious tensions and poor
collaboration that no one has addressed.
These topics should be relatively easy for you to tackle, given that you’re
new and want to establish your leadership credentials and authority.

Confirm what is real

Take time to investigate whether the issue is as it appears. Heresay and
gossip may be totally untrue and you would have wasted your time and
credibility in tackling the supposed problem if you’d waded in without
checking things out first.

Openly acknowledge the problem

When you have confirmed the issue is real, talk about it with colleagues
and ask them to share their opinions and feelings. Be mindful that some
colleagues may feel guilty for causing the issue in the first place or for not
have already brought it up and resolved it. Reassure them that your focus
is primarily on to solving the issue, rather than to look back, find fault and
apportion blame.

Go to the heart of the issue

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Make time to fully explore the issue, allowing everyone impacted and
involved to speak up and share. Together, agree how to resolve things and
move on. There may be situations where you do need to find fault and
apportion blame. In such cases be firm and ready to make the tough calls
when you realize that somebody might need to be told off, demoted or
even have their contract terminated.

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 88 LET GO OF THINGS YOU
NO LONGER NEED

‘Don’t be blinded by nostalgia. Clear away that deadwood.’

Is it time for a spring clean to clear out ideas, people, goals and processes
that are no longer helping you or your business to succeed? This may
include:

• Staff with unhealthy mindsets who are resistant to your leadership or

who constantly speak badly of everyone they work with
• Plans and goals that have been important for your business in the past
but are past their sell-by dates
• Team members who are not capable of fulfilling their duties and are
holding back others who are relying upon them to perform
• Outdated processes and systems that work but might be slow, liable to
breakdown or lack the latest functionality and benefits.
After many years in leadership positions, you’ll hopefully have learnt
through trial and error to never hold on to anything that is not serving you,
but when you’re new to leadership you may lack the experience and
confidence to act as quickly as you should. Try to gain this as soon as
possible.
In addition, knowing that you need to let go of something may be the easy
bit. Actually doing the letting go can be the challenge, particularly given
our tendency to remain in our comfort zones and not wanting to upset
others.

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Put it into action
Weigh up the pros and cons of updating systems
As soon as you become aware of an outdated system, process or
procedure, talk about this with your colleagues and have someone assess
how it might need to be updated or replaced. If it will cost money to
change, involve your finance team as well, by asking them to carry out a
cost-benefit analysis to judge whether the benefits of changing outweigh
the up-front and ongoing costs.

Revamp your offices

The same thinking should be applied to buildings such as your offices,
warehouses and plants as well as to equipment such as company cars and
computers. A run-down and dilapidated office with a terrible layout of
rooms and workstations may seem too expensive to renovate. It may,
though, be worth it – the benefits in terms of improved staff productivity
and motivation from working in a more modern and healthier office layout
could more than justify the costs of renovation.

Never hold onto the wrong people

Stop worrying about upsetting an employee who may not be fitting in and
focus instead on following your company’s HR processes. Give the
individual an opportunity to improve (over an agreed timeframe). If they
fail to do so, let them go. Be honest with them and try to be as fair as
possible with the terms of their contract termination. Explain to the rest of
your team why you have taken the decision to fire their colleague. Most of
the time, they will have probably been expecting it and wonder what’s
taken you so long!

Assess the relevance of all ideas and goals

In your team meetings and other discussions, adopt the regular habit of
asking colleagues how relevant and valid any of the key assumptions,
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ways of working, goals and targets are. Decide together which should be
scrapped or changed.

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 89 THERE’S NO TIME FOR
DELAY

‘Don’t catch the disease of always putting off what should be done
today.’

When you procrastinate and put off important decisions and tasks for later,
you’re not only affecting your own productivity and efficiency but also
detrimentally impacting your team. In a 2018 study reported in the Journal
of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, a team led by two
University of Exeter academics found that procrastinating managers make
their staff frustrated and less committed to their work. Many staff started
to exhibit unhealthy behaviours such as taking extra sick leave, being
abusive to colleagues or even stealing office supplies.
Far too many leaders delay working on a task, solving a problem or
making a decision for a variety of interconnected reasons:

• Being busy and distracted by other things that are competing for their
time and attention
• Not being interested or motivated to spend time on that particular issue
• Not being in the mood and lacking the drive and push to get started
• Assuming it will be easier to do later when the impending deadline will
push them to complete the work
• Feel it’s too complicated or difficult and decide to simply ignore it.

Not all procrastination is a bad thing. You might recall in chapter 52 the
benefits for leaders of slowing down to pause, reflect and make sense of
issues and problems facing them. Successful leaders understand the
difference between knowing when to take their time with certain issues
while also knowing when particular tasks need to be focused on right now.
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Even if you enjoy procrastinating about urgent work and burning the
midnight oil the night before a report is due, remember that your team may
not share your last-minute style. If you want to motivate and inspire them,
stop procrastinating.

Put it into action

Get to the root of your problem
When tempted to delay or put something off, stop and ask yourself if you
really want to give in to this urge. It may be hard particularly if:

• Your personality lends itself to procrastination, for example you’re

prone to being slow and reflective and to avoiding tasks.
• You need to overcome any fears holding you back from getting started,
such as fear of not doing a good job, struggling or failing.
These might be very deep-seated habits but you can change them with
some focus, willpower and determination. If you find it really difficult,
find a therapist or coach who can help change these patterns of behaviour
using a well-known process called cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
You can complete this in a few weeks or months, through a series of one-
on-one conversations.

Brush up your to-do list and eliminate

distractions
To help change your procrastination habit:

• At the end of each working day, tick off what you have accomplished
on your to-do list and create a fresh or updated version, listing the
important tasks to work on tomorrow. The following morning, make
sure you work on the activities you have listed.
• Minimize any distractions that might make it easier for you to
procrastinate. What distracts you regularly? Constantly checking your
social media or emails? Allowing people to constantly interrupt you?
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 Spending too much time in unproductive meetings?

…but thinking is not procrastination!

Remember to occasionally make time to stop what you’re doing and to
reflect and consider how you’ll deal with your many leadership issues.
This might appear to others as if you’re procrastinating but you know that
this is not the case.

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 90 PREPARE FOR THE
IMPOSSIBLE

‘Beware of writing off the improbable as being impossible.’

Just because something has never happened does not mean it never will.
Recent history is stuffed with highly improbable events actually occurring
that have shaken and even destroyed businesses and their leaders’ careers:

• Companies such as Enron, Kodak, Carillion, Lehman Brothers and

Jamie Oliver’s restaurants hitting the wall and going bankrupt
overnight. If these were a key supplier or client, their closure could
have been devastating to your own business.
• Natural disasters such as forest fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions
and hurricanes, which can have devastating impacts such as widespread
loss of life, destroying communities, stopping production, closing
airports and cutting off communications – events that can cause your
own business major difficulties.
Each of these events may be unexpected but they do seem to be happening
with increasing regularity. Successful leaders recognize this and are
learning to prepare and plan for these ‘black swan’ events, named after the
discovery that not all swans are white, which was something deemed
impossible until Europeans saw one when they first landed in Australia.

Put it into action

Stop being taken by surprise
Accept that the impossible happens and, in some cases, is becoming

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commonplace. Start being proactive to understand what may occur by
carrying out ‘what if’ analyses. This involves exploring highly improbable
but possible scenarios of events that could have a catastrophic impact on
your business, such as:

• How would you cope with your main raw material supplier closing
down?
• What could you do if your main export markets become closed due to a
military coup or major earthquake?
• How would we adjust if the government changed hands and all of our
tax incentives were cancelled?
• How do we continue serving our clients if our main factory were totally
flooded by the nearby river?
For each possible event, map out how you would help your company to
not just survive but thrive.

Get actively involved in risk management

Implement necessary measures to minimize the potential impact of any
black swan event. You could think about diversifying your production
locations, supplier base or even client base.
Make sure that your business has sufficient insurance coverage for any
possible disruptions to your business. Consider having ‘key man’
insurance for the possibility that you or other key leaders die or become
incapacitated. You could even introduce a rule that the leadership team and
yourself must never fly on the same flight together to avoid a one in a
million chance that you all lose your lives at the same time.

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 91 LEAD REMOTE TEAMS
CAREFULLY

‘The saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’ has a lot of truth to it when
leading people.’

Your leadership skills will be tested the day you’re given a globally
dispersed team to manage and you no longer have your team sitting
happily within earshot of your office door. Having team members in
different parts of the country, or even spread over many continents,
presents you with a unique set of challenges:

• You can’t just sit down with them for a coffee whenever there’s
something to discuss or if you simply want to catch up.
• You may have team members living in different time zones, reducing
the number of hours that both of your working days will overlap. If
you’re in London and have staff in Hong Kong and San Francisco, you
need to fit in early morning calls with those in Asia and late afternoon
calls with those in the States. For much of your own working day, you
need to get used to the fact that much of your team will be at home
asleep.
• You can’t pass by their workstations sensing how they are and what
they’re working on. Instead, you need to manage them while only
seeing them on video conference screens or listening to them on the
phone.
• Any remotely located staff may feel neglected and forgotten,
particularly if you rarely travel to their location and they rarely visit
you. As a result, they may easily become demotivated and disengaged.
• If they report to you as well as to a locally based line manager, you may
find that your influence is diminished compared to the local manager

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 who probably has a regular face-to-face relationship with them.
Successfully leading remotely located staff involves acknowledging and
overcoming these challenges. To do so, you’ll need to change your
approach to your day-to-day role of connecting and working with your
team.

Put it into action

Select remote staff carefully
If you get to choose who in your team will be remotely located, select
somebody with the ideal mindset – comfortable working alone and
independently, and someone self-driven who won’t need constant support
and confirmation they are doing the right thing. The ideal candidate is
someone who has already worked alongside you so that you both already
understand each other’s working styles and personalities.

Give them special care and attention

Remote staff need extra care and attention. You can’t simply treat them
exactly the same way as staff based in your own office. You need to try
harder to make them feel valued and equal members of your team:

• Call them on the spur of the moment to ask how things are and just to
chat, ideally via a video call so that you can see each other. By doing
so, you’re trying to mimic the casual and informal connecting that
happens in your office when you pass by someone’s workstation or
meet them in the corridor.
• Plan your travels so that you visit their location and also bring them to
yours whenever possible. Be careful allowing your finance staff to push
you to reduce costs by travelling less. In my experience, the cost of a
train or airfare and a few nights in a hotel is more than offset by the
motivational and productivity benefits of being face to face with one of
your remotely located team members.
• Similarly support and encourage your other team members to also be in

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 regularly contact with their remote colleagues. When you have an
opportunity to create project teams, have mixes of remotely and non-
remotely located staff.

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 92 AGE IS JUST A NUMBER

‘Imagine having to manage staff 50 years older or younger than you.’

Today’s leader must become expert at leading people of all ages,

particularly as for the first time in history there are five generations
working together at the same time:

• The oldest generation who were born before 1946

• The Baby Boomers who were born between 1946 and 1964
• Generation X born between 1965 and 1976
• The Millennials (also known as Generation Y) born between 1977 and
1997
• The youngest generation born after 1997 and known as Generation Z.

With retirement ages rising and people choosing to work in old age, you
could conceivably be managing a team of people aged from 20 up to 80.
This is like having grandparents working with their grandkids or even
great-grandkids, each with very different life experiences and world views.
Leading such a diverse age range presents you with some interesting
opportunities and challenges.
When thinking about leading such a diverse age range, we tend to put
people into boxes making broad assumptions such as:

• Younger staff hate repetitive tasks, are more agile and impatient for
career growth
• Older staff are stuck in their ways, wiser, reluctant to change and harder
to motivate.
These assumptions influence how we as leaders recruit, promote, delegate,
motivate and work with our colleagues, and also affect how people within
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a team work and collaborate together. But the evidence shows that our
assumptions are wrong. This was confirmed by a 2012 research paper that
analysed 20 relevant studies involving nearly 20,000 people and concluded
that any differences in performance or working style were attributable to
non-age-related factors and were not the result of our common
assumptions (young people are faster and keener and so on).
Successful leaders understand this and focus on the benefits of having
different generations working together.

Put it into action

Overcome any ingrained generational bias
Adopt an open mind by observing and understanding the mindsets,
behaviours and actions of each individual team member. You might be
surprised to find any assumptions you had been carrying are just wrong,
for example discovering that some younger staff are wise beyond their
years while some of their older colleagues are more adaptable and
ambitious than peers half their age.
Encourage your colleagues to be equally open-minded and observant. Start
by openly talking with your team about their experiences and perceptions
of working with people much older or younger than themselves. An
anonymous survey may be a good idea to help understand what your team
are feeling and experiencing, for example that younger people don’t listen
to older ones, or that older colleagues seem slow and not interested.

Remove age from the equation

Start ignoring a person’s age, or at least treating it as a secondary factor,
when making decisions about who is hired, promoted and what
responsibilities and opportunities you give people. Focus instead on their
strengths, actual performance and potential.

Treat having multiple generations as an asset

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Differences are good and you should view having different generations
within your team in the same way as you do differing personalities,
qualifications or work experiences. Having a mixture is always a good
thing. People from different generations will bring unique insights,
thinking and experiences – what one person misses or misunderstands,
another might understand very well. Encourage your team to grasp this.

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 93 MANAGE YOUR BOSS

‘Sometimes the person most in need of your leadership is your own

boss.’

Managing your boss is just as important as managing your own team. This
is called leading upwards. This might sound odd, but to be successful
you’ll often need your boss to:

• Understand and support your needs and requests

• Hear about and be guided by your suggestions and proposals
• Help you gain needed resources and organizational buy-in
• Act in a similar way to you to reinforce your own actions, for example
in being firm with a supplier or apologetic to a key client
• Support you in an internal conflict or misunderstanding
• Give you space or other needed support.

To enable these things, you need to lead your boss well to make sure that
their expectations, timeframes, actions and words are optimally aligned
with yours. This is the same no matter whether your boss is a line
manager, a global CEO or Chairperson of your Board of Directors.
If your boss is very senior, elusive or hard to approach, you might feel
uncomfortable leading upwards, but research shows it’s worth the effort. A
global 2016 study by McKinsey & Co, which surveyed 1,200 Chief
Marketing Officers, concluded that to achieve business success it’s 50 per
cent more important to manage upwards (and also – horizontally – manage
your peers) than it is to manage your own team. This correlates with the
leaders I coach, many of whom realize that they need to manage their
bosses even better than they are doing in order to achieve their own goals
and KPIs.
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Put it into action
Lead in a non-directive way
Your boss may not take kindly to being told what to do because they’re
more senior and don’t have to listen to your requests. If you’re too
demanding and directive, you risk them viewing you as arrogant and
disrespectful. The solution is to lead them indirectly through a
combination of:

• Understanding your boss really well, including knowing when they’re

receptive to suggestions and knowing what motivates and drives them
• Using your skills of influencing and convincing to have them agree to
something that they might ordinarily be inclined to reject
• Warming them up over time to your ideas as opposed to simply asking
them point blank to agree with your thinking
• Making them feel that your ideas were actually their own.

If all else fails, you may need to be firm and strong, but only do this when
you’re sure you have all your arguments and facts in order.

Choose your moments wisely

With your own team members, you’re free to direct, guide and delegate to
them as frequently as you wish. This is obviously not the case with your
boss. Be highly selective about your boss’ expectations, understanding and
actions.

Manage horizontally
With your peers, avoid being too persistent, pushy and demanding. Unlike
your boss, your colleagues are less likely to disagree with you directly.
They may instead complain about you behind your back.

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 94 NEVER BLATANTLY SHOW
OFF

‘It’s not about blowing your own trumpet.’

No matter how successful you are, avoid bragging, praising and shouting
about your good fortune. No one is interested or impressed except you and
praising yourself produces no gain except to send a message of ‘look at
me, I am really great’. Sadly, too many leaders can’t stop themselves,
partly because they have ambitious, arrogant and cocky A-type
personalities and also because they’re so used to being right and coming
out on top.
When I coach such leaders, I realize that they’re addicted to wanting the
limelight and tend to think that being quiet and humble is a weakness. This
is especially so among male leaders – who also seem to more easily get
away with showing off than do their female counterparts. With men, we
typically view their bragging as showing confidence while for women the
same level of showing off is often labelled as arrogant, reflecting our
subconscious expectation that women should be more humble and quieter
than men.
Genuinely successful leaders have learnt, often the hard way, that there’s
no lasting value in being a show off because:

• Success is transient and what goes up may just as easily come down
• Seeking the credit and praise is simply a sign of insecurity and lack of
wisdom
• Bragging does not endear you to your colleagues and won’t win you
friends.
The secret is to find the ideal balance between showing confidence versus
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being humble, while also sharing the successes of you and your team in the
best way you can.

Put it into action

Don’t be on autopilot
Observe yourself – do you have a pattern of behaviour that you’re addicted
to and needs to change? Perhaps you’re guilty of always remaining quiet
and humble and never speaking up or of acting cocky, overconfident and
always showing off.

Find your happy medium

You need to practise and develop the skill of knowing when to be humble,
be confident or to show off about yourself and/or your team. As a rule of
thumb:

• Be quiet and humble when the work of your team and yourself speaks
for itself and other people already know what has been achieved or
when the achievement is standard or small.
• Act confident all the time but without becoming arrogant. You can
achieve this by balancing your confidence with moments when you
admit you’re wrong, don’t understand something or are unsure of what
to do.
• Share about your own successes in an understated and low-key
manner and only on a selective basis. It’s far better that your boss and
your internal clients and colleagues speak highly of your work,
enabling you to stay quiet.
• Share about your team’s successes regularly. With your team you’re
allowed to show off and sing their praises in order to give them
visibility and to motivate them. Your intention, however, should never
be to indirectly shine the light on you as their boss.

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 95 CREATE AN AMAZING
WORKING CULTURE

‘You are not an Island and it isn’t enough to simply focus on

becoming an excellent leader.’

A truly successful leader is one who develops a really positive and healthy
working culture. Much like the culture we explored in chapter 78, a
working culture describes the many ways in which colleagues interact,
communicate and work together and the environment that develops as a
result.

Poor working culture Outstanding working culture

• People are scared to speak up • People openly communicate

• No one challenges their boss • Line managers are approachable
• People rush to criticize others and used to being challenged
and rarely offer compliments • Colleagues regularly thank and
• There’s no flexi-time or working complement each other
from home allowed • Staff can sometimes work from
• A strict dress code is enforced home and can dress how they
wish, except when meeting
• There’s an expectation that clients
everyone will work unpaid
overtime and take work home at
• A lot of effort is invested in
weekends creating work-life balance

• All staff promotions are based • There’s a feeling that hard work
is rewarded and job promotions
on years of service.
are based on performance.

Ensuring a positive working culture can be a daunting task because:

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• You’re not the only leader in your organization, and each of you may
have different views and opinions about what makes a good working
culture.
• One employee might love the working culture while another might find
it stifling or depressing – not everyone values the same things.
• If a CEO is pushing things in a one direction, it can be hard to
successfully pull in another.

Put it into action

Walk away from a bad working culture
Never remain in an organization that has a horrible working culture that
you believe is never going to get better, no matter how hard you might try.
Staying on will only demotivate and depress you and you’ll struggle to
flourish as a leader. Try to only work in companies where you:

• Enjoy the working culture and feel that you can flourish and succeed
• Sense that the working culture needs to improve and are confident that,
with your help, it can develop into one that is more motivating and
inspiring.

Audit the working culture

Work with your HR colleagues to conduct annual or bi-annual employee
engagement surveys. Use an online survey for this, which allows staff to
anonymously answer a broad array of questions that cover all aspects of
the working environment. Analyse the results to help you understand the
positive and not so positive aspects of the working culture.
In addition, whenever you have an opportunity, have a face-to-face catch
up with your staff and seek their ideas for improvement by asking them:
‘What do you like and dislike about working here?’. The same question
can be posed in the exit interviews of staff who have resigned.

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Make a plan of action
Decide what key changes are required to help turn your working culture
into one that everybody will agree is outstanding, positive and highly
motivating, and draw up an action plan. Involve your leadership colleagues
and bosses in this process, reminding them that as leaders everything that
each of you do or say has an impact on the working culture.
At least once a month, devote time in a management meeting to review
how well you’re all doing in role modelling the ideal working culture and
working styles. Ask each leader to share success stories to inspire and
enthuse each other.

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 96 BE THE REAL AUTHENTIC
YOU

‘Be yourself, no matter what they say.’

As you draw to the end of this book’s 100 lessons, it’s time to step up, find
your leadership voice and become the unique leader that only you’re
capable of becoming.
No one else is you – with your combination of values, personality,
communication style, work experience, strengths, ambitions and dreams.
So resist the temptation to take the shortcut of imitating other people such
as your role models, bosses and mentors, or to simply apply all of this
book’s advice without allowing for your own context and needs.
Better to struggle or even fail being your authentic self (as a leader) than to
copy someone else’s leadership vision, goals or style and to become a half
version of what you could be. This would be as unsatisfying and
unproductive as owning a BMW sports car with a non-BMW engine (that
came from a second-hand family sedan). You would never be able to drive
yourself to your full potential.
Successful leaders know that being their true selves ensures that they will
be as efficient, effective, energized and inspired as they possibly could be
in their leadership roles.

Put it into action

Work hard to find your authentic leadership style
To lead as the real and authentic you means becoming comfortable in your

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own (leadership) skin and getting over any sense that you’re not suitable or
worthy of being an outstanding leader. This is the imposter syndrome that
we talked about in chapter 53. If you have difficulty in overcoming it,
consider seeking the help of a coach or therapist.
Becoming the real you also means finding out what works for you and
what doesn’t. Do this by continually observing yourself and keeping notes
about what you realize, such as:

• If you’re not an aggressive and extrovert type of person, think twice

before trying to act that way as a leader
• If the values of your boss don’t resonate with you, don’t act as if they
are also your own
• If you feel it doesn’t work to delegate as much work as your staff or
boss continually suggest you should, create your own optimal
delegation plan.
In addition, do learn from mentors, coaches, leaders, books, courses and
experts and so on but never totally imitate what they have done. Take only
what seems helpful and carefully apply it to your own unique context and
needs.

Don’t hide your weaknesses

Part of being real and authentic is to discover that you’re not perfect and
that it’s better to be open and transparent about your imperfections and
weaknesses. They’re as much part of you as your strengths and positive
qualities, and to deny the former diminishes who you are.

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 97 STEP DOWN BEFORE
BEING PUSHED

‘We all have an expiry date.’

Far too many leaders overstay their welcome and hang onto to their
positions beyond the period in which they were most effective and
impactful. This hanging on can result in:

• Their vision, thinking and style turning stale and old-fashioned

• Becoming stubborn and unwilling to listen, adapt and change
• Their support and following declining amongst their colleagues
• Turning lazy and corrupt in both their thinking and their actions
• Potential successors giving up waiting and resigning
• The business or company struggling and losing direction.

It’s understandable that a leader may stay on given that power can be
addictive. Leadership positions can be enjoyable and have considerable
perks, and reaching a leadership position might be pinnacle of someone’s
career – there may be nothing else they wish to move onto. In addition, we
do value leaders with staying power who remain in their roles through
various changes, strategy and budget cycles and so on.
There’s no magic number or formula to help know when you may have
overstayed your welcome, although a 2013 Harvard Business Review
reported study calculated that the optimal tenure of a CEO is 4.8 years.
This correlates with my own observations that an ideal length for staying
in a leadership role is between three and five years depending on the role’s
level of seniority.
As well as not over-staying, successful leaders also know the importance
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of leaving on a high when things are going well rather than when they’re
fired, forced to resign or not re-appointed (when on a fixed term contract).
Such ignominious departures are common with well-known examples
including the UK’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the former
head of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi Carlos Ghosn, Steve Jobs after his
first stint as Apple’s CEO and Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick.

Put it into action

Read the signs
Take an annual reality check to assess whether and for how long you wish
to continue in your current role. Ask yourself:

• To what degree am I still needed and valued by my bosses and

colleagues?
• What will I contribute and create in the year ahead?
• Am I still feeling keen, energetic and passionate about being in this
role?
• Do I have things I still want to learn and achieve in this role?
• Are there any danger signs that I need to be aware of that might be a
problem for me (e.g. in terms of lacking a sense of direction or
becoming stale, or of other people tiring of my style or starting to fall
out with me)?
• What other opportunities await me and is now the time to move on?

Talk in confidence with a trusted colleague, friend or executive coach to

share your thinking and listen to their opinion. Nobody else can tell you
what to do but they can help you sense-check what you’re thinking, which
should give you the confidence to make your own decision about whether
to continue in your role or to plan to resign or retire and move on.

Leave gracefully
When you have decided to move on, plan your departure well:
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• Update your CV and quietly job-hunt. Only resign once you have
secured a new leadership role because it’s so much easier to impress
new employers and be offered a new opportunity while you’re still
employed.
• Spend time choosing and preparing a successor, helping them to be
ready to take over when you leave. This topic is covered in the next
chapter.
• Be willing to work your entire notice period to help the company
transition smoothly. However, if you’re in a senior or sensitive
leadership position you may be asked to leave immediately.
• Leave your company positively and later always speak highly of your
time there as well as of your bosses and colleagues.

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 98 HAND OVER THE BATON

‘Only a foolish leader walks away from a position with no one in place
to continue the good work.’

Although most leaders know that succession planning is really important,

they rarely do it well. As a result too many leaders are promoted, resign or
retire without having suitably prepared candidates ready to take over.
Many of my coaching clients are eager to find and groom potential
successors, particularly if they felt under-prepared when moving into their
current leadership role.
Knowing who your successor will be, and having them ready to take over
from you, has very clear benefits:

• You can spend time preparing and involving them in your daily work as
well as helping them understand your vision and strategic thinking.
• Your successor can carry your torch forward in terms of maintaining
your working culture, vision, values and strategic direction.
• The formal handing over of your responsibilities will be straightforward
and smooth, rather than in a rush over just a few days.
• Your staff, and other stakeholders, can be informed and become used to
who will replace you. This is more motivating for them than simply
learning the name of their new boss on the day of your departure, or
having the position vacant while your successor is found.
Succession planning can be challenging for a number of reasons:

• Evaluating people is not easy and some organizations have weak

performance management systems, which makes it harder to
objectively choose who may be most suitable.
• There may be no one suitable, because of poor hiring, training and
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 development or because a leader has avoided developing someone in
order to make themselves indispensable (i.e. having a mentality of ‘you
can’t fire me because I am the only one capable of running the
department’).
• Reluctance to inform people they’re not potential successors, so that no
one candidate is ever singled out and given the needed individual
development and exposure.

Put it into action

Be OK if a team member is better than you
If you have a team member who is capable of replacing you, view this as a
positive outcome of your successful leadership. You’ll be able to delegate
much of your work to this person, which leaves you to be more strategic
and reflective, while also having more time to motivate and engage your
team and to pick up on issues that may otherwise be neglected.

Plan ahead and be objective

Working with your HR colleagues, outline an objective, transparent
succession planning process. Ensure that the data from your annual
performance appraisal processes is clearly and objectively agreed and
recorded, as this will be the basis of your succession planning decisions. In
particular, objectively agree with your staff:

• Their KPIs, goals and performance ratings

• Their performance and their potential to take on new responsibilities
• Their motivations, career goals and aspirations.

Be open and transparent with:

• The entire team about when your own position may become vacant
• Your named successor in terms of filling any gaps in their experience,
skills and behaviours to enable them to eventually be promoted

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• Those who may be hoping to be promoted into your role but you know
are not ready. Be honest, even if your feedback might upset them.
Be careful about having a ‘may the best man win’ mindset and
encouraging two or more people to compete against each other. This is a
waste of energy, rarely ends well and can create competing camps within
the team. It’s much better to choose one as your successor and to develop
or find suitable future roles within your organization for the others.

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 99 KEEP LEADING

‘Once a leader, always a leader.’

Successful leaders don’t stop leading when they pack up and leave their
office for the day. They want to make a difference by bringing their
leadership skills to:

• Helping lead a charity or local community organization

• Becoming elected onto the local town or county council
• Being on the Board of Governors or Board of their children’s school
• Facilitating family issues such as setting up a trust fund
• Organising the scouts or girl guides in their town
• Being appointed as a non-executive director of a local business
• Becoming active in helping run a local church, mosque or synagogue
• Sitting on their university alumni association committee
• Running a residents’ committee or association.

Leaders might take on these paid or pro-bono roles in their evenings and
weekends, as well as when they have retired from full-time careers. The
benefits to you as a leader when you use your leadership skills in these
ways are very important (particularly in retirement):

• Keeping your brain and body active at weekends and in retirement

• Gaining immense fulfilment and satisfaction in providing pro-bono
leadership help and seeing the impact of your efforts
• Having a renewed sense of purpose and meaning coming from being of
value beyond simply the day job you hold (or held).

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It’s now time for you to work out how you can give back and provide
leadership within your community during your spare time or retirement.

Put it into action

If you can help, then help
You may feel tired and drained after a full week in the office and reluctant
to put up your hand to be a leader in your weekends. This is totally
understandable but ask yourself whether you’re content to do nothing and
to simply:

• Send your children to a school which faces all kinds of challenges and
yet not wish to help by standing for the school board
• Attend church or mosque each week aware of the financial issues
facing the local parish or Muslim community and simply do nothing to
help
• Contribute money to a local charity but repeatedly turn down requests
to join their board.
As a minimum, use your leadership skills to give back in a small way and
offer your help on a one-off or ad hoc basis:

• To a local charity to help restructure its governance framework

• A church to help carry out a fundraising initiative to be able to build a
new clock tower
• To teach leadership skills and mentor unemployed young adults for one
term at your local community centre.

Lead in retirement
If you’re close enough to retiring, explore how you might use your
leadership experience and wisdom once you’re no longer in a full-time
role. As well as keeping you active and engaged, you may well enjoy the
new challenges of leading in totally new working environments and
organizations.
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******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******
 100 LEAVE A SUSTAINABLE
LEGACY

‘The true measure of your greatness comes from what is left when you
have gone.’

It’s not enough to have simply been a remarkable leader who your former
staff fondly remember, you also need to ensure that the positive impact of
your leadership remains in place long after you have moved on. In other
words, what you create as a leader should be sustainable and ongoing,
rather than just a collection of one-off, short-term and momentary
successes.
Think of yourself as a leader whose primary task is to plant seeds, water
and tend to them, helping them grow into saplings. Long after you have
gone, these small plants will have grown into towering trees with deep
roots. For truly successful leaders, these metaphorical trees include things
like:

• Creating a meaningful vision and mission statement for your company

that will continue to guide your colleagues long after you have left
• Being an example and role model who leaves such an impact that your
behaviours and mindset are emulated and become part of your
company’s written core values and unwritten working culture
• Ensuring that your organization has put in place the best practice
compliance and ethics guidelines, HR policies and leadership
competencies
• Being strategically alert and courageous enough to push your business
into future products, markets, technologies and ways of working, and
your legacy is leaving a company that continues to prosper long after
its competitors may have gone out of business.
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Put it into action
Make sure your actions have a positive ongoing
impact
Before doing something, always consider the short-, medium- and long-
term effects of your actions and choices with the intention that whatever
you do is not just for short-term gain but must also be good for the longer
term. It might be difficult to precisely know and measure the longer-term
impact and longevity of your actions, but you can probably make a good
guess and allow this to help determine your choices.
As an example, suppose you’re contemplating the introduction of a new
process or system that would reduce costs this year but would make it
harder moving forward for your team to complete their work within the
normal working day and then be forced to work unpaid overtime each
week. You might decide not to implement the cost-reducing initiative
given the ongoing and longer-term impact on your employees’ work-life
balance and motivation.
Whenever you face such dilemmas, ask yourself how you want people to
remember you. In this example, the choice is simple – between finding
ways to cut costs or for helping your team to feel valued, engaged and
motivated. How you answer will determine your legacy. Choose wisely.

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 AND FINALLY…

Be constantly wise, because what you choose to do, think and practice
each day is the foundation of the leader you will become.

I genuinely hope that the ideas, exercises and suggestions in this book
inspire you to action. I hope that by sharing my own leadership
experiences and those of leaders I have coached serves as an amazing
guide, equipping you with the tools to succeed on your own leadership
journey.
Build on my 100 things. Do your own discovering, learning,
experimenting. Create your own list that works for you as a leader.
I would love to keep in touch. Please connect with me on Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. You can also email me at
[email protected].

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 REFERENCES

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Chapter 6
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Chapter 10
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Chapter 11
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Chapter 14
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Chapter 17
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Chapter 21
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Chapter 22
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Chapter 23
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Chapter 28
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Chapter 30
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Chapter 32
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Chapter 35
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Chapter 37
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Chapter 44
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Chapter 47
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Chapter 48
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Chapter 56
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Chapter 58
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Chapter 59
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takes-sick-leave-idUKTRE7A10Y620111102

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Chapter 64
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Chapter 69
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Chapter 73
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Chapter 75
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Chapter 78
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Chapter 86
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Chapter 89
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Chapter 92
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Chapter 93
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Chapter 97
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Chapter 98
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leadership-succession-planning.html

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 First published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing in 2020
An imprint of John Murray Press
A division of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd,
An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Nigel Cumberland 2020

The right of Nigel Cumberland to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover image: Shutterstock

The acknowledgments constitute an extension of this copyright page.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor
be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

eBook ISBN 9781529353341

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