Advent Calendar
Each day in December, there’s something new for you behind the day’s number to support and inspire your leadership journey — all leading up to a special gift for you on Christmas Eve. So bookmark it, enjoy, and feel free to share!
Each day in December, there’s something new for you behind the day’s number to support and inspire your leadership journey — all leading up to a special gift for you on Christmas Eve. So bookmark it, enjoy, and feel free to share!
Enduring leadership excellence is the art of influencing others to reach a common goal or vision, while taking care of the needs and development of everyone involved at the same time.
Leadership often evokes images of goals achieved, challenges conquered, and teams united under a shared vision. Too often, the developmental aspect of the people involved is…
Enduring Leadership Excellence is about how you interact with yourself, your team, your organisation and your environment. Self-awareness is key.
A strong profile gives your leadership traction, and enables you to navigate the unique set of challenges you face. Using our leadership profile model, you…
What qualities do excellent leaders you have worked with display? Here are the qualities workshop participants have named over the years. Which of these do you share, or could begin to?
Having spent years working in various leadership roles, including as a research programme director at ABB, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing great leadership in action, and it’s clear that…
A surefire way to free up some time for yourself as a leader is to master the noble art of delegation. Along with developing trust in your people.
You got to where you are because you’re excellent at what you do. Now you face the challenge that you have more to do than you can deal with, so you need to delegate tasks to other…
With practice, giving constructive feedback is as easy as 1, 2, 3. If you deliver it in private. And you prepare 1 carefully.
Giving feedback is a lot more challenging in practice than it seems. It requires attitude, timing and technique. Let’s look at attitude first: What’s the purpose in giving someone feedback? To let off steam? Then, I button my lips. To put someone down? Button lips. To appear knowing? Lips. If
Clients regularly ask me about how they might criticise a colleague or employee, without that person taking offence – or how they might broach a delicate topic with someone. In most cases, the first step involves offering the colleague or employee some feedback. This is because an easy way to
Motivation, derived from the Latin ‘movere’ (to move), drives us to action.
You may not be able to motivate your people, but you can avoid demotivating them, and the worksheet in the resource section helps you do that.
Once I facilitated a ½ day workshop on leadership at the 1st Post-Doc Days at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. One of the topics we discussed was motivation, the topic researchers ask…
Define your own values and those you want to support your team to reach its goals. Then discuss these with your people. A common set of operational values provides clarity, strengthens cohesion, and improves productivity.
Are values recognisable? Fortunately, yes. One helpful resource for making values visible is Ed Schein’s book “The Corporate Culture Survival Guide”. Using it as a
Avoid the discrepancies in lived values in your team that lead to decreased cohesion and productivity. A recurring theme in our workshops is the increasing
The art of negotiation is about them: think about their goals, interests, concerns, and emotions. Take these into account, and you increase your chance of finding the sweet spot, where both of you win
Negotiation often feels like a tug-of-war, with each party holding firm to their positions, leading to a back-and-forth struggle. This approach, known as positional bargaining,
Leaders tend to procrastinate in roles which are both important and uncomfortable for them, which sabotages their success. One way out of this bind is to ask your mentor. Another way is to ask your coach.
We all take on different roles in our daily lives, whether as leaders, team members, or friends. Understanding these roles and how they shape our
One surprisingly accurate way to figure out the true values at work in your environment is to analyse the commonly used phrases and sayings from conversations and meetings. Here are examples to get you started:
Well selected, a team’s values improve cohesion and productivity. They guide our behaviour, so we know what to expect from each other. Poorly selected, a
Values represent deeply held beliefs and show facets of identity. It’s not possible not to have them, it’s very possible not to be aware of
Leadership is rarely about having all the answers. Instead, it often comes down to the principles that guide how you navigate challenges, inspire others, and
Helping them to understand which level of initiative is taboo and which level is acceptable when can really boost your people’s initiative and their effectiveness.
When discussing with clients how to lead their staff, one question that arises often is, how much initiative should my people show? In their classic
Understanding where your team is in its development is key to improving both performance and atmosphere. Sometimes, it’s even goes like clockwork!
Apart from the leaders who seem to think that ability is genetic or in-born, all leaders I’ve met are interested in how to develop their
Mistake #6 Micro-management beats trust Some leaders unintentionally take a leaf from Lenin’s playbook (“trust is good, control is better”) and control every single step
There is a lot of good literature on how to develop a high-performing team, e.g. The Wisdom of Teams by J.R. Katzenbach and Gordon K. Smith. In
We all remember those bad days when nothing works out and it seems as if the world is against us. On such days we need a special tonic to pick us up. Here’s a recipe:
Record successes (no matter how small), compliments, praise and positive feedback and keep it in a private notebook.
Sprinkle those entries with the rays of sunshine that come out unexpectedly: the loving attention from the neighbour’s dog, the lovely and impromptu dinner with friends, and whatever else brings a smile to your face. Now, whenever you feel down and discouraged, you have a bit of lovely to bring more of a balance into the mix.
Lack of clarity about our own performance as leaders is about our own filters, misconceptions, or lack of self-confidence. Self-reflection is an antidote — and coaching provides support for this, as well as for your performance, and that of your team.
Leadership often brings with it a lack of clarity — not just about the performance of others, but about ourselves. This uncertainty can stem from
Daniel Goleman became well-known through his book Emotional Intelligence (EI) in the mid 1990’s. There he explored the impact and importance of emotions and –
Every happy family is happy in the same way” –Anna Karenina. And every high-performing team expresses the same eleven qualities:
Assertiveness is not aggressiveness. It means meeting the world with an attitude of “I’m Ok, you’re Ok”, and treating others as adults, asking out loud for what we want, and being able to hear their no. It’s a good base state for a leader.
Assertiveness is often misunderstood. It’s not about dominating a conversation or overpowering others. Instead, assertiveness is rooted in balance — a confident expression of one’s
Stuck on an issue? It takes for you to enjoy a coffee together. Try and run it by someone with a completely different perspective – just for inspiration. It takes as long as it takes for you to enjoy a coffee together.
Did you know that as people, we tend to have an unconscious focus on one of three things:
Ensure you have someone to cover that on which you focus least.
Using effective tools from coaching, leaders can help their people to GROW — in performance, as researchers and as people. The first effective tool is an open-ended question. And the second effective tool is two open ears.
Coaching your people to solve their own problems (monkeys), frees up a lot of your time for the things only you can do (unicorns)!
“Between stimulus and response lies a space.
In that space lies our freedom to choose a response.
In our response lies our growth and our happiness.” — Stephen R. Covey
And in this also lies our resilience.
(Covey popularised this idea in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, drawing inspiration from Viktor Frankl’s teachings)
This is a natural time of year to reflect, to assess oneself, and to think about the future. Therefore, we are offering a complimentary leadership assessment and debrief session in January to the first five leaders who contact us directly.
Are you uncomfortable with conflict? Remember that disagreement is not necessarily conflict. It’s just disagreement. Talk about it before it becomes a conflict – before unpleasant emotions are added into the mix.
Not addressing conflicts is just as much a part of research as designing experiments or analysing data. In my experience, most researchers hope the conflicts
Understanding the difference between what constitutes a conflict and what does not, is crucial in scientific research. This understanding is fundamental to effectively managing or
Effectively managing a conflict starts with accurately identifying its source. Leaders who can diagnose issues correctly are better equipped to implement appropriate strategies, fostering a
Conflicts are a natural part of our work as researchers. However, the way we approach managing and resolving these conflicts can make all the difference.
Congratulations on making it this far! As a small gift from us, we would like to offer you discounted access to our first self-learning, short-video-based course, “Resolving Conflicts in Research: Leadership Skills for a Harmonious Team.”
Sign up now, and we’ll send you the details in January.
We at Leadership Sculptor wish you a joyous and safe Christmas season, and look forward to seeing you again in 2024!
As the year draws to a close, I hope you’re looking forward to a break and also some time around children, who seem to imbue this
Sign up now and, as a bonus, you’ll receive our report “R&D Leaders’ Top Concerns about Leading Themselves, Their People, and The Organizations” to help you on your journey.
