Kieran Doherty

There are 2 varying perspectives of empowerment across industries, organisations and business literature.  From one perspective, empowerment is when employees take ownership of their own strengths, motivation, development, goal setting and search for opportunities to progress. From the other, it is when the organisation’s culture and leadership behaviours actively develop trust, share power, create opportunities for growth and […]

Throughout recent posts we have been touching on a few different elements from our 6 core domains of organisational leadership. 👥 We’ve looked at PEOPLE, with respect to beliefs, attitudes, and behavioural observations.💬 We’ve touched on COMMUNICATION in the scope of listening, feedback and feeding-forward.🧭 We’ve briefly observed LEADERSHIP through the lenses of people and

Something that can plague leaders is a default assumption that everyone else already knows what you know. (Indeed, there are also leaders who assume the opposite or fluctuate.)
This can lead to a range of unhelpful perspectives on reality.
There are certainly times when professional and/or external services for development should be sought. However…

It is a simple function of being human and holding responsibility for a task, and it can be debilitating. It happens often, in all kinds of situations. In the midst of an activity, during a meeting, alone on the drive home. Even in safe, trusting and fun practice environments: An activity is not working, progress has stalled, or a problem is not getting solved.

Why wait to feedback on the past? AFTER the fact. A lot of the time, that’s how we operate. Responding to situations that have occurred, fixing things and putting out fires. An interesting example of this is feedback. There are some useful models around to help us structure feedback to establish common understanding between people about a past situation.  This ideally leads to a meaningful positive impact or a constructive growth opportunity for people.

Don’t be fooled, leadership versus management is not a thing. Discourses using this language to describe and assess varying interpersonal behaviours do little for anyone looking to understand how to best lead a group of people towards a collective goal.

Focused on leadership styles? You might be missing the point.
You may hear and read comments like “command and control has no place anymore”, or “authentic leadership is the key for performance”. But this type of rhetoric can be confusing and sometimes completely misinformed.

Chances are, you suck at it. But it’s ok, our brains are just dumb and need some guidance. Making connections is something our brains are wired to do, but it doesn’t necessarily help our ability to really listen well to others. The meaning we establish from what people say, and what they actually mean can be vastly different.