No Bullsh!t Leadership

Episode #27 // This week's episode is a de facto part 2 of episode 19 Execution for Results, so if you haven’t listened to that one yet I highly recommend doing it before you get stuck into this one!It focuses on how single point accountability is the most critical factor in being able to successfully execute on your plans, and sets the ground work for where we’re going today with Unleashing the Power of your People.This episode is all about empowerment, which is the flip side of the accountability coin. Accountability and empowerment should be inseparable, but often leaders don't understand that. Let's face it, execution is tough, but there are a few secrets that aren't often spoken about.So, I’m going to unpack those today!In this episode I start with a quick flyover the top of what accountability is as a refresher, and then I’ll cover the following:Why culture matters so much, and why a bad culture is inextricably linked to weak accountability leadersWhy crystal clear accountability is the key to successful executionWhat I believe the key elements are that need to be entrenched in the DNA of a high performance cultureI’ll then go through my ‘Nine Ways to Empower and Support Your People’ which you can download for free below - these are worth printing off and keeping handy so that you can refer to them as often as you needThis episode should create at least one ‘pie in the face’ moment for you, but I’m pretty confident that you’ll reflect on these and realise that there are quite few that could use your attention!You can use this episode to first evaluate your team and what you actually practice as a leader, and then rank which of these elements you should start implementing in order of where you believe the most value will come from.I would love to hear what you thought of this episode, and whether it enabled you to see your culture and team in a different light, so please send me your feedback at hello@yourceomentor.com.👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode #26 // This week is Part Two of The Roadmap to Exceptional Leadership!I've taken my 30+ years of practical leadership experience, a LOT of trial and error and lessons from some incredible mentors, and have distilled these learnings into a model, my 'secret sauce'; the 7 Pillars of Leadership Performance, and this is what today’s episode is all about!These 7 pillars are designed to unlock the real, practical strategies and focus areas that we believe will make or break your leadership journey. These are the things that, in my experience, differentiate leaders from the incompetent, through the mediocre, to the great.In this episode I talk through the 7 Pillars of Leadership Performance in detail, covering why I believe they are so important, and what you can do to develop yourself in each of the below pillars:Deliver Value - This is the object of the exercise and this is where it all begins and ends for a leader, with a value creationHandle Conflict - Conflict aversion is one of the biggest career killers and it will basically dilute your effectiveness in pretty much everything you do as a leaderBuild Resilience - As we know, anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. You don't find out what a leader is made of until they're put under pressure and many leaders foldWork at Level - It's so common to see leaders through all levels of an organisation working at the wrong level, sub-optimising their performance and effectively crippling their peopleMaster Ambiguity - One of the foremost jobs of a leader is to sit comfortably in ambiguity and to translate that into certainty of direction and action for their peopleDrive Accountability - If you want your people to execute well, nothing enables this more than clear, well-defined, single point accountabilities.Make Great Decisions - Leaders get paid the dizzy dollars to make hard calls and being a leader who can make timely, well-informed decisions, will put your team and organisation in a winning position.Together these 7 Pillars of Leadership Performance are what make up our online leadership program, Leadership Beyond the Theory, and hopefully you can see after this episode why that is!Enrolment for the program closes tomorrow, but we’ll be opening doors again in June for a mid-year cohort!Check out more details on the program at courses.yourceomentor.com👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode #25 // This week’s episode is a big one! Once again I've developed a two part episode to deal with what I think is one of our larger topics, The Roadmap to Exceptional Leadership. Shoehorning this topic into a couple of brief podcast episodes is going to be tricky, but I am up for the challenge!This week in part one, we'll start by looking at common leadership attributes and competencies, the best place to start when we’re defining what an ‘exceptional leader’ actually is, without all the fluff! In this episode I’ll cover:The ideal leadership attributes that we so often hear are ‘important’, but are also strangely intangibleThe difference that personal perspective makes in creating meaning around leadership attributesAn example of how when I was CEO of CS Energy, I used key descriptors to explain certain attributes to my organisation, providing greater understanding of what behaviour I expectedWhy I think that leadership competencies are far more tangible (and relevant) than leadership attributesSome of the competencies of senior leadership that I learned from my time at Harvard Business School - you can download these competencies for free at www.yourceomentor.com/episode25 to self-evaluate, and evaluate those in your teamI’ll touch on The 7 Pillars of Leadership Performance which will give you an insight into next week’s episode where I’ll give away my ‘secret sauce' to becoming an exceptional leader!My hope is that this episode gets you thinking about what leadership attributes and competencies you currently have, and which ones you want to develop. Becoming an exceptional leader takes time, patience, discipline and an unwavering commitment to improving. It’s not easy, but the payback is incalculable.If this episode has given you a new perspective on leadership, and you feel as though you want to dive deeper into what it actually takes to become an exceptional leader, I strongly encourage you to check out our 7-week online leadership program, Leadership Beyond the Theory. Enrolment is only open for another 8 days before we close the door to this cohort.I’d love to know if this has helped you reframe your perspective on what great leadership is, so please send me an email (hello@yourceomentor.com) with your feedback!👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode #24 // Did you listen to last week’s episode? If you haven’t, it’s well worth the 17 minutes to listen to it - it’s part 1 of Building Organisational Capability and it will give you a much better understanding of this episode!Today we’re onto Part 2: How do you build capability into your organisation and culture? We’re going to carry on from last week’s episode, by talking about how to build a competitive advantage into our culture - one of the toughest things to do.So I’ll start with a very short recap on last week's episode (remember our favourite acronym, PROFIT?), then I’ll cover the following:The career path dilemma between technical and leadership streaming inside an organisationSome ideas on how to create technical role streaming from my experienceHow to build technical capability in your organisation, with a big focus on how to take a methodical systematic approach to building leadership capabilitySome incredibly interesting stats from a McKinsey survey from a few years ago that looked at how companies build organisational capabilityAn important question that you need to ask yourself and spend time contemplating before you continue your career as a leaderMy four steps to building organisational capability (these are CRACKING, if I do say so myself!)A BIG mistake that many leaders make when trying to build organisational capabilityI’ll give you a sample performance standard (you’ll need to listen to the whole episode for context) as a free downloadable, which you can grab at www.yourceomentor.com/episode24The question on building organisational capability from our keen listener in Bucharest, Radu, has been quite challenging for me to answer, to be honest. I found it quite difficult to take such a vast and complex topic, and simplify it sufficiently to make it useful in a couple of short podcast episodes, so please feel free to let me know how you think I did.Send me an email (hello@yourceomentor.com), and pass this on to anyone you think who could benefit from delving into this topic!👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode #23 // Today’s podcast deals with the vast area of building organisational capability, so I’ve split it into two episodes. This week, I’ll give you the context for what organisational capability is, how it fits with strategy, and where leaders most often put their focus. Next week, in part two, I’ll delve into what a leader should be doing, at any level, to build organisational capability through their people.Now before I get started, you may have seen on our social channels or received an email with the exciting news that our 7-week online leadership program Leadership Beyond the Theory, is now open for enrolment!Emma and I have been working on this for the past year, and are really proud of the final product. Leadership Beyond the Theory is a 7-week program, with class starting 4th March in a cohort format, that covers what I think are the seven core areas of leadership success - create value, handle conflict, master ambiguity and so forth culminating with the final module, on making great decisions. Like this podcast and the Leadership Level Up Masterclass, the content is designed to be simple and time effective, with readily implementable and practical steps. If you’re interested in checking it out, you can find more details here.Ok onto the episode! So in the first part of our discussion on organisational capability, we'll start by defining organisational capability (complete with a nifty little acronym that covers six key areas or categories that we like to focus upon). Then at the risk of oversimplifying all of this, I'm going to take a quick fly over the top of business strategy because there's years of study and learning in this area to be had. I’ll then go on to cover:An imperative question - where does competitive advantage come from?Some key findings on this subject from one of the world's foremost thought leaders in strategyWhere most leaders focus their energies (and what they should really be focusing their energies on)A few really great framing questions from Andrew McDonald to help you with your business strategyA note on competitive advantage and how long you can maintain it from the perspective of Harvard Business School’s David YoffieMy hypothesis as to why we aren’t necessarily good at building organisational capabilityAfter listening to this episode, you should be excited and waiting with bated breath for next week’s episode ‘Building Organisational Capability Part 2: Making it part of your culture’, where we look at building organisational capability through our people and leadership.Let me know by sending me an email to hello@yourceomentor.com if you had a lightbulb moment (or moments) while listening to this episode, I’d love to hear your feedback!Links to Other Useful Resources Referenced in the Episode​Just a reminder; I have no affiliation with any third-party resources recommended in this podcast. Any recommendations are for the benefit of the No Bullsh!t Leadership audience, as a way to better emphasise or expand on the concepts mentioned in the relevant episode. Here are a few that we mention in Episode 23. Podcast: HBR Ideacast // Episode 554 // Released 8th December 2016The “Jobs to be Done” Theory of InnovationContent by: Clay Christensen, Kim B Clark Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business SchoolBook: Good to Great by Jim CollinsAmazon Link 👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast episode focuses on mastering the skill of giving feedback to your team. It covers the importance of difficult conversations in leadership, conflict aversion, and the seven key elements of a great feedback conversation. The hosts provide practical tips on preparation, scripting, and promoting dialogue with individuals. They also highlight the importance of focusing on the individual and self-evaluation to continuously improve feedback skills.

Episode #21 // Formal and informal education plays a critical role in any leader's development. Having said that, we need to be realistic about the role that education plays in our career paths and ensure that our experience and achievements are commensurate with our qualifications. Not all education is equal!When I talk about education, I'm going to completely ignore the realm of specific competency certifications. So that's things like undergraduate disciplines (law, architecture, commerce etc.) and professional certifications or tickets required by tradespeople to certify their competencies.So I start this episode talking about why education is so important, and the different types of education I’ll be referring to. I’ll then cover off:The 70-20-10 principle, which I’m sure you’ve heard of before but it’s a good reminder to check your percentagesThe role that education plays in your careerWhy not all MBA’s are equal and some reasons why I think it’s worth doingAn analogy that'll help you to think through the relative value of your experience in education to work at where you need to go from here (this is one of my favourites and should make it crystal clear for you!)For those of you who are interested, I finish this episode by sharing an overview of the educational choices that I've made throughout my career, including why I made them, and what I think the result wasSome of my ‘everyday’ education recommendations - an overview of the things I read and make sure I do as a discipline, to increase both my hard and soft skillsMy answer to one of our most commonly received questions, “Should I do an MBA?”This episode should give you a really good understanding of where you’re at, and get your brain working on where you want to go and the types of education you think you’re missing in your toolkit.Em and I created a great little quiz that should help you figure out which professional development option is best for you this year, so spend 30 seconds doing it here at www.yourceomentor.com/quiz and find out what your education path could look like this year.To further support this, if you’ve got a program or course that you’d like your organisation to pay for, but you’re not sure how to discuss it with your boss, we created a really simple business case to help you put it together, including a full email script! You can download the free business case here at www.yourceomentor.com/businesscaseI’d love to hear if this has helped you choose an education path, and what your thoughts are on education vs. experience from your personal journey, so please send me an email to hello@yourceomentor.com with your thoughts!👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode #20 // There are so many factors to making great decisions. Some of these factors are technical and analytical, but many are based on your leadership skill. In today’s episode, we deal with the fundamental question of how to get the most from your people, to enhance and improve your decision making capability.I start this episode by asking the question, ‘Why all the fuss about diversity and inclusion?’ From there I go on to cover:How great leaders set an appropriate decision making cultureWhy it is so important to foster a culture where robust challenge is the normSome key questions that will help you to reflect on your behaviour when faced with robust challengeThe five ways to drive better decisions through your people - these are simple but powerful, and will make a huge difference to the quality of your team’s decisions if you have the patience and will to implement themWhat I believe the ‘perfect template’ for great decision making looks likeThree 'traps for young players' that I see many leaders unwittingly fall into - there’s no reason to fall foul of these once you’re aware of them, so make sure you write these ones down and check in with yourself every now and thenThere are so many great gems in this episode! Most of the strategies I talk through require you to step outside your comfort zone and reflect honestly on your behaviour, but if you can do this, you’ll be able to create a culture of confidence and speed in decision making.If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast - it means a lot to us and it gives us an idea of what you are getting the most value from, so that we can make more of it!👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode #19 // It’s no secret that any number of things can sub-optimise execution inside an organisation. One of the most insidious, in my experience, is a weak accountability culture. So whereas lack of strategy, planning, and resourcing are relatively obvious, a weak accountability model is not always apparent to senior management and this will work against virtually anything you're trying to achieve.So in today’s episode, Execution for Results: Driving accountability in your team, we're going to kick off by talking about what a weak accountability culture looks like, because if you can’t recognise it, you can’t fix it. I’ll then go on to cover:Management vs leadership - what I really think about these two concepts and how they fit togetherThe key issues you’ll come across if you have a weak accountability culture - hopefully there are some lightbulb moments for you hereWhat drives this weak accountability culture? The 5 key drivers that I talk through will likely give you something to reflect upon when you look at your own organisations cultureMy experience of having to turn around CS Energy’s culture from weak accountability, to full accountability - one of the toughest things I had to overcome as CEOThe principle of one head to pat, one ass to kickThe six ways to get superior execution through setting up the right accountabilities inside your organisation - these are GOLD so make sure you download the free PDF ‘Six Steps to Creating a Strong Accountability Culture' from www.yourceomentor.com/episode19 where I summarise all of these points for you - even if you don’t listen to the whole episode, I strongly encourage you to download this and use it as a framework in your businessThis episode is pretty meaty, but if you commit to reflecting on and evaluating you team, your organisation, or even your own personal behaviour in light of these points, you will be so much closer to driving exceptional results through team accountability.I feel so strongly about this being a success driver for leaders, that I dedicate an entire module of Leadership Beyond the Theory to it. In ‘Module 6: Drive Accountability’, I spend 5 lessons talking through all the strategies and techniques I use to create a really strong accountability culture, jam packed with real world examples from my own experiences. I highlight the struggles just as much as the successes, so that you can really get a 360 degree view of what it takes to drive accountability successfully in your organisation as an exceptional leader.If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast - it means a lot to us and it gives us an idea of what you are getting the most value from, so that we can make more of it!I’d love to hear your stories of creating an accountability culture within your organisation, or any of the pitfalls you’ve come across while trying to do so! Shoot me an email with your feedback at hello@yourceomentor.com.👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode #18 // As the New Year's hangover subsides, we need to start thinking about what we're going to makehappen in 2019, and it is absolutely up to us to make it happen. For ourselves, for our team andfor our organisations.So in today’s episode, the first of the year, I’m going to start by talking about why New Year'sresolutions don't work - so I hope you made all those yesterday, because today's the 2nd, youcan forget about those and move on!From there, I’ll cover:• Why having a great year is all about setting up better habits - I’ll give you some examples of the habits I practice in my life• Why paying attention to what you’re doing, is going to make the difference between reaching your goals, and not• Some questions to help you reflect on where you’re going, both long term and short term• A technique that I use with senior leaders that is extremely powerful in working out what these goals are (this is the gold of this episode, and you’ll want to spend some time on this before you head back to work!)• Why modelling what it looks like to take personal accountability for your growth as a leader is so important• How you can hold yourself to account and actually achieve the things you have committed to for 2019• The free downloadable for this week is the Five Steps for Setting Yourself up for Success in2019, which you can download at www.yourceomentor.com/episode18 - I encourage you to download this and spend an hour or two with a pen and paper, working through these questions and getting your plan really clear, so that you can deliver on it throughout the yearI also talk about Leadership Beyond the Theory, our 7-week online leadership program that iskicking off in February. If you know that 2019 is your year to accelerate your leadership skills andbecome a leader who stands out from the pack, I strongly recommend getting on the waitlist forthe program. We’re only taking limited entries for the February cohort, and it won’t open againuntil July, so head to www.yourceomentor.com/program to work out if it’s a good fit for you.I am really looking forward to 2019. It's going to be an incredible year. I'm going to be ridingshotgun with you on your journey all the way through. Em and I will continue to release apodcast episode every Wednesday morning, and we're going to continue to deal with the issuesthat we think are most going to be able to improve your leadership performance - with some helpfrom your fantastic listener questions of course!As always, if you're enjoying this podcast series, please share it with your leadership network,because we want to reach as many leaders as possible, and help them through their leadershipjourney.I’d love to know what you thought of the tips and strategies that I covered in this episode, and ifyou’ve got any strategies of your own that you use in the new year to get yourself on track forsuccess! Shoot me an email with your feedback at hello@yourceomentor.com.👉 Doors are open for Leadership Beyond the Theory. Be the boss you wish you had.🔗 Enroll now at leadershipbeyondthetheory.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.