Leadership Inspiration

Many years ago over in China there was a lovely man who lived in a mountain village. Because he loved his beautiful wife and family so much he got up early every morning and he would pick up two pots with one of those sticks you put across your back, and he would walk for a mile and a half to a river to pick up clean water. 

This meant his family could get washed and have breakfast. It put a smile on his face seeing them happy. He did this every single morning. He would walk down the...

I read in the papers a few years ago about a story of mum and a little girl. They were walking past a doctor’s surgery and the little girl tripped and fell over gashing her forehead on the brick wall around the surgery.

Being outside the surgery, the traumatised mum picked the girl up rushed into the surgery and was met by a receptionist who said, “I am really sorry but we can’t treat you here because you are not registered.”

How can that happen?

The poor lady and the...

And more importantly do you know the colour of the SCARF of each member of your team?

It's snowing hard here today in our village of Burwardsley, near Chester in the UK. Lovely to get out for a walk into the surrounding hills and be grateful the beauty of nature and the stillness when it snows. Plenty of time to think, reflect and allow the snow globe to settle!

On my walk today I was thinking about how much change we are facing as leaders and how the pace of change just seems to be...

Leadership for me is all about building relationships with people to deliver extraordinary results. It's very easy to fall into the trap of just focussing on deliverables and hitting KPIs.

I've found it far more effective to build relationships first, set up your team for success and then put your foot on the accelerator for results. That way we get sustained performance and continued engagement. We avoid the dead body syndrome!

When you reflect on what you do, and the leaders around you do,...

Do you find that as leaders we give so much, all of the time?

And that it can get tiring giving so much and sometimes lonely out there as a leader?

I believe it's important to ensure we receive inspiration too!

Have you found that it's very easy to fall into the trap of trying to solve problems yourselves?  

The reason for this is that we were taught this at school. 

If you went to a school like mine, we were told off for collaboration. We had to work out the answer ourselves...

In a world of low volatility, high complexity and which changes slowly you can manage. In a world where learning has a long shelf life and where some individuals know all and where the eldest is the most knowledgeable it's all about doing more of the same and more efficiently. In this world you need to manage.

In this context KPIs really help because we can direct, spot trends, make incremental gains and boost performance. You can get away with people 'just doing' rather than 'thinking and...

Running effective meetings is a key skill we need to develop as leaders. The question is what type of meeting do you run?

Have a look at the graph below and make sure they are on the green line and not like the purple line! Want to learn how to keep them green, then read on...

Here are my top tips to make them 'green' and ideas on how to run meetings that inspire real action:

1. When planning a meeting the first question has to be, “What is the purpose of the meeting?”
2. And if there...

By Graham Wilson, Author of Leadership Laid Bare! and creator of ChangePro

I'm on a mission the transform the way organisations lead change, fancy joining me in the leadership revolution?

The reason for my mission is that I so many organisations getting it wrong. It still amazes me when I see an organisation spend a huge amount of money on a technical solution and then very little on the change piece... and then wonder why the project fails as the benefits aren't realised!

I also see so many...