Expectations

Globally (only) one in two employees know what is expected of them at work, says a research report. This means half the employees worldwide don’t know their role well enough, and if they’re succeeding or failing. Not knowing what’s expected causes confusion, anxiety, higher levels of stress, loss of sleep and disappointment to the team […]

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Soft is Hard

In business softer aspects seem harder to execute. Research shows only 1 in 3 strategies is executed successfully – the key reason being that change generates resistance. In businesses, especially the ones on scale-up phase, getting the soft stuff (aspects relating to people and culture) right can be hard stuff. As a leader, am I

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Brevity

Brevity enhances one’s Leadership Presence. Using precise, concise language in speech and writing, significantly improves clarity, articulation, and effectiveness. Mark Twain once said ‘If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter’. Brevity is a leadership priority, as it not only makes the communication impactful, but also demonstrates respect for others, and

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Accountability

Aligning accountability with ability to influence outcomes (read as authority) is critical for high performance. Therefore, it needs to be factored into the roles, responsibilities, measures and metrics in our business. This also means people and teams need to be goaled and measured on metrics and expectations that they influence, that results from their actions;

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Listening

Great Leaders are good listeners. Listening has always been an important constituent of good leadership. It continues to play a significant role in enhancing one’s leadership presence, and thereby the leadership impact. Leaders who listen find themselves closer to the realities. They tend to see things as they are, than what they think they are.

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Curiosity

Smart Leaders are Curious, Open, Life-long learners. Jeff Bezos observes that the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they had already solved. They are open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking. Michael Dell once said ‘I would

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Scale-up Efforts

Successful business scale-up happens through deliberate effort, hardly by accident. Our time, attention, resources and efforts therefore need to be focused on things that enable business scale-up; things that really matter to facilitate accelerated business growth. Are we deliberate with our scale-up effort? Are we investing enough, in terms of our time, attention and resources,

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Listening

Most people have a marked preference for speaking over listening – Jonny Thomson. A leader needs to listen. It enhances one’s leadership presence significantly. It works at all levels. Interestingly, researchers analysed more than 25,000 sales calls and found salespeople made the most sales when they spoke 43% of the time, and the customer spoke

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Focus

In trying to do too many things, you will fail to do any of them well – anonymous. Focusing on what to do, and more importantly, what not to do, is therefore critical. In a recent interview, Tim Cook (Apple) said ‘We believe in focus. And, so, we think that we can only do a

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Simplifying

Simplifying is one of the key elements for enhancing one’s Leadership Presence. One of the ways to simplify is to think in terms of first principles. Getting the basics right, before moving on. Breaking things down to its elementary parts, and working forward from there. It unravels complexity, provides clarity as to what to do,

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