Blogs & Insights

As leaders, so much of our impact is derived from the type of conversations we enable. On one hand, conversations can shut us down, exclude and trigger us, on the other, they can lift and nourish us, expand and generate new thinking. Adopting different leadership stances and the subsequent conversations they cultivate can profoundly impact team dynamics, sustainable performance and wellbeing.

Real-world case studies of leaders who have navigated their leadership journey by understanding and leveraging their primary drivers.

Different psychology theories point to three core human drivers underpinning our personality preferences: Autonomy, Bonding and Certainty. Whilst these drivers may have different names, they are all primal drivers or needs that have developed over time within our psyche structure to essentially help us survive and thrive as a species.

We integrate personality profiling into our leadership development practice to provide a common language and framework to help individuals and teams understand what their preferences are; how to read others’ preferences; and most importantly, how to expand beyond their own preferences to meet what the situation needs from them.

Our development doesn’t happen overnight, rather it is an ongoing, intentional and, at times, challenging journey that takes practice.

The level of consciousness or developmental stage of leaders play a significant role in shaping an organisation's success and performance. The higher the stage of development, the higher is a leader effectiveness, capacity and bandwidth to meet complexity.

Our level of adult development determines our level of impact as leaders. It shapes how we see the world and what we pay attention to, how we interact with others, how we deal with ambiguity and the meaning we make from our experiences.

Embodiment refers to living life grounded in the body, expanding our awareness to include our bodily experiences. Grounding through embodiment helps us come back to the present moment, the here and now where action is available to us, instead of wandering into the past or future like our mind.

Acknowledging and embracing our emotions in a safe and supportive space creates incredible opportunities for leaders and leadership teams. It can release and redirect the energy used by our nervous system to hide or block uncomfortable emotions; foster deeper connections with ourselves and others; and allows us to pause to appreciate the intelligence and wisdom behind our emotions, uncovering what are they trying to tell and teach us.

In our current context of unprecedented complexity, ambiguity, vast opportunity, and uncertainty, the answers can’t always be available to us and a rush to certainty would deny the scale of the challenges before us. So, the opportunity here is to fall in love with the questions themselves and live our way into the answers.

As we reflect on 2023, we celebrate the opportunity for all leaders to hold the beauty and the pain, the possibility and the challenges, the promise and the burden of leadership, and are grounded in the remembering of our unity - there is more that unites us than divides us.

Mindy Leow is currently the Director at B Lab Australia and New Zealand. She “walks the talk” when it comes to purpose driven leadership and social impact, inspiring and supporting business to shift the behaviour, culture, and structural underpinnings of capitalism to address some of societies most critical challenges. If you missed our November Newsletter, please enjoy this beautiful short interview featuring her sharing her perspective and relationship with purpose in her leadership.

We see purpose as a fundamental aspect of leadership. A guiding force. Providing direction, alignment, inspiration, commitment and resilience to stay the course. But for many leaders staying purposeful can be fraught. Oftentimes we create high expectations on ourselves around the scale of our impact, be hard on ourselves when we don’t achieve this impact or feel helpless in our ability to stay aligned and connected to purpose when “life shows up” and the daily pressures take over. To avoid this pitfall, we encourage leaders to take smaller steps toward staying aligned to purpose and view this alignment to purpose as an ongoing journey.

Kate Harrap is currently the Head of People and Culture at Baptcare. We have witnessed and experienced Kate's leadership impact firsthand. From leading CFA's Volunteer Strategy co-design, advocating and supporting women in leadership across male dominant industries, to building high performing HR functions. If you missed our October Newsletter on Personal Leadership, here is what she has to say about how cultivating self-awareness, self-regulation and self-care has supported and grounded her leadership impact.

Mainstream movies and pop culture will rarely portrait leaders in a way that captures the messiness and less glamorous work that goes on behind the scenes in real-world leadership positions. In our real world we can’t expect to lead others effectively and sustainably unless we invest time and energy in the ongoing humbling process of cultivating self-awareness, building self-regulation and prioritising self-care. We call this Personal Leadership.

Rohan Charrett is currently the GM of Customer Experience at Greater Western Water. His passion and commitment to cultivating team effectiveness is both humbling and inspirational. If you didn't catch our September Newsletter, be sure to read this brief interview featuring him sharing his journey and experience in leading team effectiveness.

The magic of the truly effective team is something that has fascinated us in our work for many years. We’ve gradually developed and refined our understanding of what it is that underpins effective teams, and how they can be built. Source Image: LittleBlinky at Flickr.com

2022 was a year where we witnessed leaders and leadership teams navigate the challenges and opportunities of our times with a renewed sense of purpose and meaning enabled by an inner growth that only extraordinary challenging times can ignite.

As 2021 comes to an end, we share our gratitude for all the people we have walked alongside this year. As we pause before we head into 2022, and continue our journey in developing purposeful, conscious and connected leaders, we offer an invitation to join us in acknowledging and attending to our individual and collective healing.

As we reflect on and appreciate what brought us meaning in 2020, we invite you to watch this short video co-created with some of those who have journey with us. We thank you for your support in 2020 and look forward to continuing to contribute to the rise of Purposeful, Connected and Conscious leaders in 2021.

These are times that require us to more deeply connect, understand and take care of ourselves and others and to make space for vulnerable and purposeful conversations. In doing so trust in ourselves and each other will RISE. And when trust rises so does creativity, experimentation, engagement and people’s ability to reimagine new ways forward.

As we sit here writing this from our separate home offices in Melbourne, Australia, we find ourselves in stage 4 restrictions as we all do our part to slow the spread of COVID-19. For many of us, our homes have become the space in which we work, learn, rest, exercise, nurture, connect, celebrate and recharge. Holding open hearts and open minds we are called to ask ourselves - What is needed from leaders at this time?