Positive Leadership

Positive Leadership: The Scottish Independence Referendum - #NoThanks #indyref

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 14:52:00 +0000

Now is not the time for Scotland to sleepwalk into 300 years of separation, isolation, idealism and insecurity.

Instead now is the time for realism; the time to build on a Union of over 300 years; the time to ensure Scotland punches above its weight in the global political and economic landscape of the 21^st century.

This is the unique opportunity afforded Scots by voting No in next week’s independence referendum.

Instead of adopting the negative underdog mantle, where everything is someone else’s fault and where we relish in glorious failure, now is the time to exert our confidence as a proud and responsible people within the framework of a Union that, albeit not perfect, has nevertheless served us well through thick and thin.

Nationalists have a convenient way of inventing history to argue for separation and isolation. However, Scots can come together next week as a proud people, supremely confident in our role within the UK and within the wider global economy and build a robust future together with our friends south of the border and beyond.

In an ever more competitive and dangerous world, now is the time to secure our friends and allies, whether they are in Westminster, Brussels or Washington. It is not the time to isolate ourselves within the rUK, Europe, the Commonwealth and internationally.

The spirited idealism and tribalism of the Scottish nationalists is founded on quick sand. It is nationalism flawed and defenseless in its lack of detail and in its enormous risks. Who really wants to become the next Spain, with youth unemployment of over 54% – and that’s without the sun.

Voting No to an ill-conceived and not even negotiated separation from the UK is the only sensible course of action for those not blinded by the emotion and unsubstantiated claims of the nationalists.

We are already a proud, confident and successful nation within the Union; a Union that is built on common decency, trust and integrity and guarded by a monarch descended from a Union of two Crowns.

We do not need a badly conceived strategy of separation to reinforce the success of Scots through the ages.

Instead, we can secure a safe, inclusive and prosperous long-term future for a self-confident Scotland by voting No in next week’s referendum.

Positive Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: The Nature of Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 15:30:00 +0000

As the CEO and vice chairman of HCL Technologies, Vineet Nayar embarked on a journey to re-imagine and reinvent the nature of power, leadership, and value creation inside a vast organisation.

Driven by the belief that the traditional management model—built to serve control-obsessed managers rather than to support customer-obsessed employees—was broken, Vineet launched a series of experiments in promoting transparency, opening up the realm of strategy to all employees, and reversing accountability so managers served frontline employees.

During his tenure, HCLT grew from 30,000 to 85,000 employees and from $750 million to $6.3 billion in revenues. In this keynote from the inaugural MIX Mashup, Vineet unpacks his adventures in inverting the pyramid and distributing the work of leadership. It’s a master class in reinventing a large, traditional organisation and a short course in how to launch a management experiment.

Positive Leadership: Forces Fueling Values Based Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: How Great Firms Motivate Employees

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Research shows that workers who are actively disengaged outnumber their more motivated colleagues by 2 to 1.

The good news is that the companies that defy this trend do similar things – which you can use to build a more spirited workforce.

• Hire stellar HR people. The best HR people have a gift for influencing, teaching, and holding executives accountable. They're crucial guides for leaders and managers trying to develop employees.

• Use straightforward performance management systems. Companies with the highest engagement levels use recognition to develop employees and encourage them to reach their highest potential.

• Don't pursue engagement for its own sake. It's increasingly possible to measure and track engagement, but don't start "managing to the metric." Keep your eyes on the business goals that greater engagement can help you achieve.

For more, see: http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/seven-things-great-employers-do-that-others-don’t/

Positive Leadership: Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Tue, 20 May 2014 15:58:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: What is Success?

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Fri, 16 May 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Athletic Motivation

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Thu, 15 May 2014 15:30:00 +0000

When we see a top athlete, we see someone who has dedicated thousands of hours to the pursuit of being titled number one.

Whether we can understand their drive is one thing, but we can all admire their commitment.

How they stay motivated is something we can all learn from.

1. Talk through the stress – A 1993 study of athletes identified 158 unique strategies for coping with stress. The most common (used by 76 percent of interviewees) was ‘rational thinking and self-talk’. You've got to learn to coach your mind to work through the tough times and think like a winner.

2. It’s all for love – You don’t persevere for the money. Most, even those at a national level, aren’t even duly compensated. It is the sheer love of sport that motivates them to train and play again and again - and again.

3. Optimism – In a study of Commonwealth and Olympic athletes, “having an unshakeable belief in your ability to achieve competition goals” was a common definition of mental toughness. You need to believe that you have it within you to be the best.

4. Anticipation - Our brains are built with an insular cortex, the more finely tuned it is the better we are at anticipating pressures and adapt to these quickly. It also gets better with practice.

5. Good support – Whether it’s a coach, a parent, a partner or a boss, having solid support is the bedrock of success.

6. Mindful - It’s not only being aware of what you’re doing, but how you’re feeling, how you’re breathing and accepting these without judgement.

7. Thinking ahead – Keep your eye on the prize. Create short term goals to reach long term goals. Small victories keep you motivated to continue improvement.

Positive Leadership: Patience and Attitude

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Stop and Think

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Great Leaders

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Talent Management by Doug Conant

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Entrepreneurial Advice

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Fearless

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Followership

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Easter Message

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Even before Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Judeo-Christian tradition stressed the importance of having a set of overarching values embedded within the financial system if we wish to have a sustainable market economy.

This cannot just be codified in the hope that controls will compel wider ethical behaviour. It won’t. Ethics have to be taught as well as caught.

What the recent Co-op debacle in the UK reminded us (appropriate for an Easter reflection) is that we all fall short of the mark.

So, while we are all capable of acting on the prompting of our consciences but we also need to practise a new calibration, away from legacy laissez-faire, moral setting and towards an enlightened sustainable self-interest.

The key message of Easter is that good can come out of bad situations.

Positive Leadership: Purpose

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: The Little Book of IDEO

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

IDEO decided to put their values in writing.

The result is a slim hardcover called The Little Book of IDEO.

The Little Book of IDEO: Values from Tim Brown

Positive Leadership: Barriers to Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: The Coaching Payoff

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

"Business coaching is attracting America’s top CEOs because, put simply, business coaching works. In fact, when asked for a conservative estimate of monetary payoff from the coaching they got… managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies.” ~ FORTUNE Magazine

Positive Leadership: More is Less

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Greg McKeown saw first-hand how success can lead straight to professional and personal failure, during his career evaluating and coaching Silicon Valley executives.

The heart of the problem, he says, is the insidious idea that we can do it all. As entrepreneurs and executives find success, they're often overwhelmed by expectations and options, and end up losing the single-minded focus that made them successful in the first place.

Taking inspiration from legendary designer Dieter Ram's philosophy of "less but better", McKeown outlines an antidote in his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which features practical tips on how to figure out what's most important, eliminate the trivial, and establish routines for effortless execution.

Positive Leadership: Great Insight from @DougConant

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Positive Leadership: Life

noreply@blogger.com (Graham Watson) — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000