What Followers Want From Leaders
When it comes to effective leadership, everyone has a different opinion on the best leadership style. Some believe in visionaries like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson, while others look towards empathetic leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk and Oprah Winfrey. While leadership styles vary from one individual to the next, there are certain traits that followers prefer over others. These traits lead to effective teams, revolutionary ideas, and great workplace environments. But what makes a good leader?
Read moreFlexible working uptake
With its many benefits, we believe flexible working should be the norm - not the exception - for UK workers, and central to the creation of inclusive and productive workplaces. In the context of a global pandemic, flexible working remains as relevant as ever for both employers and policymakers.
Read moreEmployee Health And Wellbeing
Employee health and wellbeing should be a core element of any HR strategy and central to the way an organisation operates. This is especially critical given the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on employees' mental health and wellbeing.
Read moreThe Most Important Characteristics of Effective Managers
A lot has been said over the years about management styles. Some of it is true, but much of it is also misleading. For instance, it’s true that everyone has a preferred management style, however, it’s not true that you can’t change it. We all do some things naturally, though if we want to expand our skill set, then we can learn to do things in a way that supports the style that you’d like to have - the style that will make you more effective. Of course, you have to want to change, ...
Read moreHow to Make Ineffective Teams Effective
Teams have been in existence for millennia. For example, until the widespread use of the internal combustion engine, teams of animals were yoked together to provide transportation of freight and people and, to this day, this method is still used in less-developed nations as well as in communities that shun modern life such as the Amish.
Read moreWhat Has the Pandemic Taught Us About Working?
The pandemic, infamously referred to as Covid-19 - even though its impact wasn’t really felt until the following year or so - has profoundly changed what we now know to be true of working. It’s hard to remember what working was like beforehand. Shops opened and closed at regular hours just as they always had done. Public transport was used by those who normally commuted. Others drove to work, or bicycled, or walked.
Read moreIs It Possible for Your Employees to Be Too Engaged?
Employee engagement has become commonplace. It’s no longer the newest term in the neighbourhood. In fact, it was first mentioned in a 1990 academic paper where the author described engaged staff as those who expressed or employed themselves in the work, and the disengaged as those who withdrew and defended themselves from it.
Read moreCreating a Culture for Competitive Advantage
Most of what passes for competitive advantage these days is a myth, and that’s because of a phenomenon that Doris Day once sang about in the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun. The opening lyric is, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” And that’s about the size of it.
Read moreAre Leaders Born or Made?
This is one of those questions that surfaces every once in a while. The late Sir Neville Marriner, founder of the Academy of St Martins-in-the-Fields, once said in an interview that music conductors were born, overlooking the fact that even he wasn’t born with a baton in his hand.
Read moreWhy Stress Is So Stressful
It has been suggested that employee stress, depression, and a lack of personal motivation were caused by the disruption the pandemic brought and the subsequent ripple effect that followed. This is false. Although it may have accelerated their impact, the ingredients were already there and, to a large extent, were producing negative outcomes in the workplace long before.
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