Season Seven Top Tips

It may have finished at the end of 2023, but here are my top ten favourite tips from Season 7.? As always, I am eternally grateful to all my guests for giving up their time to chat with me and for generously sharing their knowledge and experience. Every episode is packed full of great conversations, tools and tips that can help you on your leadership journey and the good news is they are always available on your favourite podcast platform so you can dive in whenever you want.

I loved chatting to Gareth because he had loads of great wisdom to share with anyone undertaking a change and transformation project, although as he quite rightly noted, “change and transformation is now business as usual.” According to Forbes, March 2022, 70% of change initiatives fail so there is no doubt that as leaders we could all do with a little help in this area.

This made it into my top ten tips because of the importance of communication not just in relation to change but across every aspect of our organisation.? Gareth noted that nowadays we have a plethora of communication tools at our fingertips (email, WhatsApp, Teams to name just a few) and so agreeing what tools you will use is of paramount importance.

I recently tried this out with a senior leadership I was working with.? As is so often the case they were trying to identify ways that they could better communicate.? Following Gareth’s advice, I asked them to firstly list all the ways they communicate, and then put some rules of engagement around how they would do so moving forward.

The results were perhaps unsurprising: firstly, they couldn’t believe all the different communication tools they used, and that different people had different preferences. Then came the discussion about which tool was best in certain scenarios. Finally came the agreement of which methods would be used in which situations - email for important messages that required follow up, WhatsApp for emergency situations and consensus that the Teams chat function would be dropped completely).? Every member of the team agreed that they would repeat this exercise with their own teams. The team loved the process so thank you Gareth for the tip!

Rosie’s episode was an absolute corker and a must listen for anyone who enjoys nature.? She spoke of the different intelligences we have.? There is IQ – our intelligence quotient, EQ our emotional intelligence and SQ our spiritual intelligence.? Rosie describes this as a three-legged chair and is a firm believer that we have a fourth intelligence – NQ - natural intelligence.

For Rosie NQ is the positive use of our instincts, insights, and perceptions, which allows us to make decisions at speed. And it comes from a place of deep knowing. Before chatting with Rosie, I had never really heard of the term, but do I believe in natural intelligence? Yes absolutely.? For me, our natural intelligence comes to the fore when we make decisions or act seemingly without thinking. It’s those moments when our mind and body are in sync, and we just know what we need to do. So often we talk about trust and how important trust is in our relationships with other people and yet we don’t talk about trust in ourselves.

How much do your trust yourself – are you comfortable making decisions on your own or do you always need to seek out someone else’s opinion? Embracing our natural intelligence is a way to trust ourselves and live out Rosie’s belief that we have everything we need inside of us.

I was so happy that Hayley accepted my offer to return to the show, so that this time we could chat about the onboarding process. Check out episode 20 if you want to hear our first conversation which very much focused on candidate attraction and recruitment.

We pick up the conversation this time with the assumption that you have recruited the right person and now it is time to onboard them in the best possible way. For Hayley the onboarding process starts from the moment the offer goes out to people and the key is about communication and keeping in touch.? It is much more than just planning an induction programme for a week or two.? It is how you welcome them into your organisation, prior to their arrival and on that very first day and after that initial, often intense induction period.

Onboarding is about understanding what makes the person tick, helping them understand what makes you tick, having regular check ins and recognising that the onboarding process is much more than a week or two – it could be several months or even a year given the cyclical nature of Higher Education. Yes, it is an investment of time but surely as leaders we should want to ensure every person is set up for success not failure and losing a good person and having to re-recruit is far more expensive, in terms of both time and money.

It was an absolute joy to listen to Sam as he shared his career journey to date and figuring out the type of leader he wants to be. I loved this tip because we all know that a directive approach to leadership is only successful in a limited number of situations.

How often do you find yourself just telling people what to do? In some ways telling someone what to do is so much easier than any other option. If you tell someone what to do you are increasing the odds that the task will get done and let’s face it, it will be done in the way that you would do it. In some situations, the ‘tell’ approach is absolutely called for but let’s be honest it isn’t very motivating especially if people don’t understand ‘why’ they are being asked to do something.

Helping people understand the ‘why’ is key if you want to help build a team that is motivated and engaged. Once they understand the why, you no longer need to tell them what to do – they can figure it out for themselves (although be prepared it may not be in the way you would choose to do it!), leaving you free to do other things and congratulate yourself on being a leader that inspires others, helps them grow and has a highly motivated team. Underestimate the power of why at your peril!

Susan has had such an interesting career that has been full of twists and turns, first as an Opera Singer and then a communication specialist. It’s perhaps no surprise then that there is so much wisdom packed into Susan’s statement.? Firstly, as leaders we cannot be experts at everything and secondly sometimes, we just need to stop talking and listen. Simple advice but so very difficult to do.

Often within Higher Education (as in many other sectors), those that wish to climb the career ladder necessarily move from being single focus managers to multi-disciplinary leaders.? Having worked with many people making this transition, their biggest fear is having little or no knowledge of the areas for which they are responsible. They are worried that they won’t have the answers, not understanding that their job is no longer to do the ‘doing’.? Instead, they should focus on creating environments that enable the ‘doers’ to shine.

To do this successfully we need to listen to the experts around us. To understand their challenges and how we can support them so that they can flourish.

Where do you sit on the ‘must know everything barometer’? Are you comfortable with knowing that you don’t know everything, or do you do everything in your power to ensure that nobody knows this?

Leadership is tough and learning to accept that there are people in the room that know more than you do (in certain areas) is part of our growth because if you aspire to be the expert in every area for which you are responsible you will fail. Not only as being an expert but also as being a leader that inspires others.

Throughout our conversation, Gareth was very candid about the successes and failures he had had with change throughout his career.? This tip really resonated with my own experience of change. Most change projects start with a real impetus of enthusiasm.? Those leading the initiative are excited by the prospect of delivering change and are keen to get others on board and start the ball rolling. Any good project plan will have some key deadline dates in it and at the start most people are committed to achieving them. So why doesn’t it happen as planned?

Real life gets in the way.? A great many change projects are instigated alongside business as usual and then of course there is the most unpredictable factor of all – us humans. Some of us will get on board and some won’t and not necessarily because they are troublemakers or naysayers. No matter how robust the project plan is, I have never seen one that takes account of human behaviour. And so, what happens when a change initiative hits a bump in the road, people start to lose interest and timescales slip.

It's at this point we need to heed Gareth’s advice. We need to keep going and have an open mind.? If you are leading the project, you need to keep hold of the mantle and not stop. You must also keep an open mind and not be welded to the outcome.? If you keep going but choose a different path or you find that your final destination isn’t quite where you thought it would be, so what? Surely some change is better than no change at all which is what you would get if you didn’t keep going and had a closed mind.

One of the many things we discussed during our conversation, was Rosie’s use of horses in the work that she does with leaders and their teams.? Whilst I am no horse expert (they scare the heebie jeebies out of me if truth be told), these three questions really resonated for me. Am I safe? Can I trust you? And who is leading right now?

These are important questions for leaders. Are you creating environments where your team feels safe? Do they trust you? Because if they don’t feel safe and they don’t trust you, they will not be performing to the best of their ability. And finally, who is leading right now?

As leaders we don’t always have to lead. The key is to understand when you are leading and, in those moments, when you are not, what is your role? Is your role to mentor the person who you are leading? Perhaps your role is to observe or maybe it is to be led. Any one of these scenarios may be right, the key for you as a leader is to have the awareness to recognise which one is playing out and the role you need to take.

Yes, yes, yes! One of my mantras is that as humans we are all different and a one size fits all model is very rarely the optimum choice. Since COVID many people expect more flexible working conditions and whilst this may be possible it is not always the case. Being transparent right from the start about how flexible you can be as an organisation is absolutely key.

Too many times I have seen employers promise the world to ensure their preferred candidate accepts the job offer only to renege on it once the person is in place. And it happens the other way round as well.? Candidates accept a role, believing that once they are in situ they can ‘persuade’ their manager to flex the conditions even further.

As leaders we must walk a fine line in terms of doing what is best for the business and the people we work with. The only way to do this successfully is to be transparent right from the start and be flexible where we can.

To ever think you have this leadership malarky nailed is dangerous. If I look back at my past 25 years in leadership roles, there are two things I notice. Firstly, how thinking in this area has evolved (diversity and inclusion probably wouldn’t have even made it into the top 100 management speak terms back when I started my career) and secondly; how I have developed thanks to all the training, education, coaching and mentorship opportunities I have had. And that desire to keep learning and growing will never end because as a leader I know I can never stop growing.

For me leadership is a never-ending climb. I may run leadership programmes and coach others, but I learn as much from those people as they learn from me. Believing we know it all as leaders is a very dangerous mindset to hold. Why? Because it can stop us from listening to others and we are in danger of becoming complacent and arrogant – neither of which are leadership qualities we should be proud of.

How do you view your leadership journey? Is it one with a finite end or a continuous adventure that may never reach a conclusion?

Oh my goodness, I love this tip, not only for the wisdom that Susan is sharing but the conundrum of how the hell do you do this without becoming an egotistical maniac?

Owning your space doesn’t mean that you must be loud and brash. It’s about understanding the impact you can make and doing it in a way that aligns with your values. I have been reading such a lot about imposter syndrome recently and this can be one of the biggest factors in us not owning our space. We stay quiet for fear that if we speak up, we may look stupid and then of course there is the battle we have with ourselves about not being good enough to even be in that meeting or doing the job that we do.

As leaders we need to own our space and if our gremlins are stopping us from doing this then we need to don our big pants and deal with them. A coach is a great way to do this (I am here for anyone that would like to go down this route) but there are many other ways as well – just type ‘dealing with imposter syndrome’ into Google and a plethora of resources will appear by magic.

Owning your space, can feel quite daunting but finding a way to do it with integrity and authenticity can be extremely liberating and empowering, not just for you but for those around you.

Five wonderful guests with great wisdom to share. A massive thank you to Gareth Duffin , Rosie Tomkins , Hayley Mintern , Sam Glenister-Batey and Susan Heaton-Wright for taking the time to chat with me and so generously share their skills and experience.? I have highlighted just ten tips but there are plenty more contained within every episode of the Dive Deep, Climb High podcast.

You can listen to all previous podcast episodes at my website.

Dive deep. Climb high. Can-do leadership in a world of can’t.