BLACKPOOL HEALTH LIBRARY: At the Heart of Quality Information on the Fylde Coast! Management Update from your Library: a collection of interesting articles focusing on leadership and management.
Level 5 Leadership: Achieving “Greatness” as a Leader
What makes leaders great? Is it their courage? Their business acumen? Their expert knowledge? Their ability to organize?
Truly great leaders have a specific blend of skills. But they also possess something else; certain characteristics which are harder to define.
If you’re in a leadership role, then you’ve likely wondered how you can move to that “next level,” going from good to great leadership.
In this article, we’ll examine “Level 5 Leadership” – a key idea that helps you do this. We’ll explore what it takes to achieve greatness as a leader, and we’ll discuss strategies that you can use to move up to this top level of leadership.
Second Level Thinking Skills: Going Beyond the Obvious and Avoiding Unintended Consequences
Have you ever made a decision that you were sure was fool proof, only to discover it had unintended consequences further down the line?
For example, imagine you’re a team leader for a goods manufacturer. To boost flagging productivity, you set your team an ambitious target to create 20 percent more product in the next six months.
Inspired by this stretch goal, your team end up producing 30 percent more – a great result! Or is it?
Once the celebrations die down, you realize that things are starting to unravel. You discover that the warehouse team isn’t equipped to handle the influx, and it’s creating a backlog. Not only that, but an unexpected fall in customer demand means sales are dropping. Your seemingly good idea ended up costing your organization money.
Your initial decision appeared reasonable on the surface (and did have a good outcome locally), but you didn’t foresee the potential wider impact – and that’s what “second level thinking” is all about.
What Are the HALT Risk States? Understanding the Risks of Working on Empty
Do you ever feel like you’re “running on empty” at work?
Maybe you skipped breakfast before working on a big presentation, or you struggled to speak up in a meeting after only a couple of hours’ sleep. Perhaps you’re emotionally exhausted because you feel like you just don’t “fit in.”
If so, you’ve probably encountered the HALT risk states.
HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. The model was first developed to help addicts in recovery see when they were most vulnerable to relapse. Since then, it’s been useful for other people, too – both in the workplace, and in their personal lives.
This article examines when you need to “call a HALT,” and how to act quickly on the warning signs.
The Little Things That Affect Our Work Relationships
Interactions with colleagues can often be confusing, not to mention a source of stress. This is a phenomenon we’ve seen regularly in the almost nine years we’ve each spent studying work relationships. After all, how you relate to your co-workers can make or break how you feel about your job. When you identify with them, for instance, you’re much more likely to be happy with your organization.
People tend to think about work relationships in the wrong way, however. Evolution wired humans to appraise situations as either “good” or “bad,” so they could act on threats and opportunities. Instinctively, we assess our relationships with colleagues in similar either-or terms. The problem is, there are many types of work relationships — good, bad, and everything in between. A large body of research not only confirms this but shows that individual relationships often include a mix of both positive and negative aspects.
When Life Gets Busy, Focus on a Few Key Habits
We’re constantly optimizing — identifying our most essential priorities and activities while reluctantly and painfully cutting things that are important but not urgent.
Maybe you’re facing a life event that forces this type of radical prioritization. Whether it’s changing jobs, taking care of a sick parent, relocating, or facing a diagnosis, disruptions in life can make it hard to maintain moment-by-moment focus and well-being, much less think months or years in the future. Long-term goals remain important. But in the fog of life’s most intense moments, long-term focus can be hard…
To Come Up with Better Ideas, Practice Paying Attention
We live in a world where virtually every business is an “ideas” business. Executives and entrepreneurs are desperate for insights that allow them to amaze customers, reimagine products, and otherwise separate themselves from the crowd. But it’s hard to see new things if you don’t know how to pay attention, how to cut through the endless meetings, messages, and emails, how to really listen to and begin to decode what’s happening in the world that truly matters to your organization…
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Victoria Hospital
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