Our Leadership Approach
The focus of our approach is on the behaviours you have and those you choose to enable to be both the irritant (the grit that becomes the pearl) and also to create the environment to address the leadership challenges resulting from divergence. By its very nature, we will be exploring how you approach leadership in the workplace. This is not through the adoption of a specific model but through many personal micro-adjustments. You will note that the language here is around the environment and approach. It is not a process or set of instructions that enables us to channel our teams in response to the divergence we are seeing. We are going to look through the grit lens to uncover four layers in the diagram above where you have differing levels of choice.
01
Ground Zero Behaviours
Ground Zero is the very core of us. If we strip everything away it's what's at the centre? It's the experiences that ground us. You don’t choose those experiences they happen to you.
-
The worst thing to happen to you is the worst thing to happen to you. People around us will all root back to a different level of worseness and react differently.
-
The way we portray ourselves is often not a choice. How we arrive, what we wear and how we carry ourselves should be conscious choices in the workplace.
We need insight into ourselves and those around us to understand why we react differently to the same thing. We have to allow for some ingrained behaviours across the generations.
02
Rooted Behaviours
These are the behaviours very close to ground zero that we can change.
-
Diversity starts with understanding our own biases and remember we all have them. Work on removing the wrong ones.
-
Champion diversity of thinking. Do not chase the rainbow for the sake of it.
-
Be aware of mental health and the impact of our actions on others.
-
Take guidance from the ten really personal things.
o Define your shadow.
o Lose the ego.
o Resilience.
o Coping mechanism.
o Clear mind.
o Authority not power.
o Know your triggers.
o Kindness and its role in the workplace.
o What’s my energy level?
o Be curious.
Proactively managing our rooted behaviours is a giant step forward in creating the right environment for success.
03
Imperative Behaviours
These are behaviours we should learn and adopt. They are less mandatory than the previous layer in the model but ideally, we should take these on. You should also be helping your teams to adopt these too.
-
Coaching is a way of life in our leadership model. It is a simple habit to follow and cascade though your people.
-
Accept that some people will never change. We refer to these as horrible people. understand how to spot and deal with them.
-
We outline 25 core principles you should adopt and proliferate. These create the culture and environment for success.
These are all behaviours and principles that are very easy to learn and adopt. They create the habitat for diverse teams to perform well together despite their core differences.
04
Behaviours we can Tailor
These comprise two lists of simple things you can do to change the environment and culture. They are optional but some are big signals in engaging the diverging population.
-
Ten things not to do is a broad church of thoughts and practices some of which seem counter intuitive. Try them and you will be surprised - they have weighty impact.
-
Ten things about meetings is very specific. Most meetings are badly managed from thinking about having one through to what happens afterwards. This simple list will again change culture in a big way.
Whilst these are optional, make them habits. Once they are the productivity uplift is huge. They drive positive engagement across our diverse populations.