TPC Leadership develops leaders with a heart for leaders AND their organisations. They are engaged and passionate in what they do. They focus on the individual, but will always keep the vision and objectives of the organisation into account.
Janna Kramer, Learning & Talent Development Leader
EY – NETHERLANDS
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In this series we have been talking to some of our Partners who have been sharing their Top 5 Leadership Lessons. In this blog, Andrea Cardillo, Managing Partner of our Italian office shares his.
Power is given not taken
Power is given to leaders by others when they act in ways that improve their life. Therefore power is gained and maintained through a focus on others. Your ability to build trust in your aims is key, and being guided by noble purposes is a pre-requisite for authentic leadership.
Watch out for signs of self-importance
Once leaders have power, they may fall prey to their own self-importance, believe they are special, and rationalize unethical or selfish actions with narratives about their intellectual or moral superiority. If this is what you experience, you are entering a danger zone.
Exercise empathy and deep listening as antidotes to self-importance
Self-importance, especially when coupled with hybrid and remote working, can easily lead to loss connection of empathy. When this happens, contributing and creating value for others becomes more difficult, and abuse of power is a risk. Keep on listening to your people, and try to understand how they experience life in your organization from their framework of reference, not yours.
Watch out for signs of disempowerment in your organization
Often, abuses of power (even unwilling) create powerlessness. When people feel disempowered, their brain goes in to a stress response, which leads to loss of engagement, performance, and results. To avoid this, keep on asking yourself: do people in my organization feel their ideas and needs for change are seriously taken into account?
Develop a sense for when it is time to let go of your role
Keeping empathetic and purpose focused is hard, let’s face it. And sometimes, even with the best intentions, our ego, our stress, our limits can make us blind. When people lose trust in your intentions and capacity to serve, sooner or later they will take their power back. There is no shame in letting go of your role when you have a sense you are not the right person anymore to make a difference. It is actually often the last and greatest act of leadership.
Have a leadership challenge? Feel free to contact us, to see how we can support.
In this series we have been talking to some of our Partners who have been sharing their Top 5 Leadership Lessons. In this blog, Tom Van Dyck, Managing Partner of our Belgian office shares his.
Serve
The leaders who have impressed me most are those who serve. Whether they serve their teams, their organisational purpose, their own values, the people who elected them to power… the notion of seeing leadership as privilege & duty, rather than struggle & merit, seems to create a force that liberates at all sides of the equation. Something along the lines of ‘we don’t inherit the Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children’ So my question would be…what or whom do you serve?
Show vulnerability
I’m not one of those people who pleads for showing ‘love’, just like I personally do not think co-workers are family (except for family-run organisations of course!). Such terms as love and family imply such a level of emotional unconditionality, which we simply cannot expect (we can hope to find it, but cannot expect it) in a professional context. That being said, I am a big believer in vulnerability. Show and accept it, be authentically and imperfectly you and allow others to do the same – and great things might happen. If I can help bust one myth, it’s this: vulnerable is not the same as weak.
Be the first to give
Based on the notion of reciprocity, which implies that people have a tendency to return the favour; I have found that it can be very powerful to choose to be the first to give. To give information; to give feedback; to give a bit of your time; to offer help; to share an idea; etc. Whether you see it as a selfless act of generosity, or instead as a cunning trick to influence the other in order to obtain what you want; the impact can be the same: you are likely to set something in motion. So beware!
Accept
I find that many people seem to struggle to find inner peace, let alone happiness. Be it at work, or in their broader life. People resign in great numbers, strive for physical rejuvenation & perfection, swallow drugs in unprecedented numbers, run rat-races, and so forth. I would like to offer some really simple, almost Buddhist-like antidote to that: accept what is, instead of chasing what is not. You missed that promotion? You didn’t get a raise? You didn’t get chosen to run that project? Someone turned you down, or let you down? Oh well…as long as you put in all that you had to give, the rest becomes irrelevant.
Build an inner circle
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. In the ten years since I started as a leadership consultant, I have invariably found that the strongest individuals were actually rarely alone. They excelled in self-awareness, knew their talents and shortcomings, and knew how to complement these (rather than ‘fixing’ themselves) with those of others, whether inside or outside the organisation. Strong leadership is often (though not always visibly so) a symbiotic team effort, more than individual star quality. In that sense, I find that leadership development is not merely a quest for individual growth, but also a journey of finding the right partnerships.
Have a leadership challenge? Feel free to contact us, to see how we can support.
In this series we have been talking to some of our Partners who have been sharing their Top 5 Leadership Lessons. In this blog, Christian Scholtes, Managing Partner of our Romanian office shares his.
Regulate your Ego
Leadership increases inherently the exposure to complexity and of tension, while the amount of genuine, straightforward feedback is likely to decrease. As such, it creates ideal conditions for your defence mechanisms to get activated, and for you to take yourself all too seriously. Hence why it is crucial to undergo some personal development processes, which will allow you to become aware of your deeply-rooted assumptions and scripts, and to de-structure them, for a cleaner, less polluted, interaction with your ever changing environment.
Be Alive
What’s bothering teams is not a leader who is necessarily a tad too demanding, or too friendly, but one who is rather absent, a foggy presence, a ‘forwarding emails’ kind of an individual. It’s a key part of your role as a leader to have a lively presence, to bring energy into the room, to laugh and to suffer with your team. Your people need to know that you are a three-dimensional human being, who enjoys interacting openly with other complex, difficult, lovely human beings.
Normalise Debate
If we keep being all too well-behaved during meetings, we’re only going to share what we’re really thinking after the meeting. Hence why it’s important for you as a leader to normalise the presence of debate and disagreement, to embed it structurally in the flow of key decision-making meetings. Your people are usually well connected to the day-to-day realities of the organisation – what you have to do is to create premises for their diverse opinions to be openly expressed. Chances are, the outcome of the meeting will be a wiser and richer one in the end – a decision that accepts that the truth is usually a multifaceted, complex construct.
Dance with Ambiguity
Given that we’re part of a highly turbulent world, where traditional patterns are disrupted and existing habits become the new limitation, you may as well accept that pretty much nobody knows what’s the right way forward (even though some may pretend so). Not being able to define even what the problem actually is, is by itself highly liberating – you might as well enjoy the agile approach of testing hypotheses in open-ended experimentation (something you used to be really good at, when you were still a child).
Avoid Compromises
It may be tempting and it even sounds reasonable to accept the half-measure. The candidate who isn’t quite there in terms of attitude, but has some impressive technical skills in their CV. The decision that doesn’t address the root cause, but brings some really nice cosmetics to the situation. The budget that’s neither here nor there, which doesn’t actually cover the needed resources, while still pretending to do so. It’s highly likely that the cost of the longer-term problem will by far exceed the momentary relief. As such, by accepting compromises, you’re only reinforcing the system’s dysfunctions which invited you to do the compromise.
Have a leadership challenge? Feel free to contact us, to see how we can support.
In this series we have been talking to some of our Partners who have been sharing their Top 5 Leadership Lessons. In this blog, Marcus de Vasconcelos, Managing Partner of our Swiss office shares his.
Authenticity
Be yourself, the great and the not-so-great. Moderate your behaviours, but build trust through authenticity. Be vulnerable, not invincible.
Awareness
Cultivate your understanding of yourself. Constantly push your boundaries while not forgetting to be grateful for who you already are. Know how you impact others and aim to treat them in the way they want to be treated.
Belief
Believe in yourself, believe in other people, believe in new ideas, believe in lifelong learning, believe in humanity’s innate potential for good.
Humility
Remain curious and open-minded, yet accept you can’t know it all. Surround yourself with people who complement your talents and let them be themselves in pursuit of change. Listen and serve rather than tell and be served.
Passion
Let your purpose shine through you in all its glory. Rally likeminded people to create bold movements that can make a better world. Accept ongoing change and ambiguity as part of your journey.
Have a leadership challenge? Feel free to contact us, to see how we can support.
In this series we have been talking to some of our Partners who have been sharing their Top 5 Leadership Lessons. In this blog, Frouke Horstmann from our Dutch office shares hers.
Know thyself. Leadership starts with self-awareness
Someone on my path once asked me: ‘Frouke, if you do not know your strengths, how can you leverage them?’ I was touched by this question. Until then I had valued modesty. I’ve learned that modesty goes hand in hand with knowing your strengths, but also with being aware of the impact you have on others, learning how can you grow in inspiration and being more intentional and mindful of your influence for the greater good.
Learn to manage contradictions and ambiguity
Today’s world has become highly interconnected, complex and fast. Simple solutions to problems are rare. Running business as usual, innovating & preparing for a future which no one knows what it will look like. People today are very divided in their opinion of what is the best way forward. This has also crept into organisations.
Being comfortable with the tensions and contradictions this creates, and elevating the not-knowing to an art, are the leaders who sleep well at night and are experienced as inspiring.
Listen, Listen, Listen
How many people have been on a communication or presentation training course? How many people have been on a listening course? First question, many people raise their hands. Second question, maximum 1-2. Listening with an open mind, an open heart and not being attached to the solution that you believe is the right one, creates connection and real insights. That is what we need in today’s business and world. New answers.
Help others grow
When we ask questions about leadership role models, people remember others who have made a difference in their lives, big or small. By believing in them, giving them a chance, seeing them, listening to them with head and heart, giving them wisdom and support.
Embrace continuous development
Staying curious, not pretending to know everything and being open to the unexpected. Surround yourself with people who think differently, are wired differently, have different experiences and knowledge. Provide an external focus. Experience how the world is constantly changing, don’t jump on every new trend, but feel what is emerging.
Have a leadership challenge? Feel free to contact us, to see how we can support.
In this series we have been talking to some of our Partners who have been sharing their Top 5 Leadership Lessons. In this blog, Charles Brook, the founder of TPC Leadership shares his.
Get Creative
It’s very easy when you have leadership responsibilities to just be in the ‘doing’ mode. How many of us take time to step back into a creative space, to really look at what the future could look like and create a vision to work towards? In my opinion, that’s where creativity comes into a leadership role. It’s about envisaging the future, you can then focus your energy and the energies of the people around you to move towards that vision, add value and make a difference along the way.
Evolve Your Leadership
It’s important to evolve your leadership as it’s a real danger if a leader stays static. For example, when you’re leading new teams, initially you may have to manage them more closely to make sure they’re delivering the detail and data required. As people develop, your leadership style needs to adapt. If not, all you’re doing is disempowering those around you and stopping them from developing their own personal leadership. The way you operate with people is always shifting as you grow into leadership itself.
Have a Whole Life
I strongly believe that as a leader you have to demonstrate that when you’re not working, you’re not working and that when you are on holiday you’re on holiday and that you have a life outside of work.When leaders do not do this, everyone thinks they should work like that, so if you’re working at 10pm every night you can bet other people feel that to succeed in the organisation they have to do the same. I think role modelling the whole life, not just work life is really important for sustainability for you and your organisation.
Embrace Diversity
Embracing diversity in its many forms as a leader is really important because most of us find it easier to work with people that are most like ourselves, the challenge is that you land up in group think. If you can encourage diversity of thought, ways of doing things and diversity of people and then find ways to leverage that, I think you get a much better outcome. It’s not an easy task to do because working with diversity means you must flex more as a leader. You can’t just be yourself and expect everyone else to configure around you. Being flexible in your leadership style so you can embrace diversity in your leadership is very important.
Encourage Quality Thinking
To be successful as a leader it’s about encouraging quality thinking, quality planning and quality execution. One of those three things is nearly always missing when a leader is not as successful as they could be. It is important to hold space for these discussions and inspire your people to take ownership and place a high value on how these activities can bring growth to the organisation.
Have a leadership challenge? Feel free to contact us, to see how we can support.
