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People

Posts on the power of people, relationships and getting the best out of both

The Oracle — Reading Time: 3 minutes Welcome to Part 3 of Leadership Styles: The Oracle The late, great and inspirational Steve Jobs made a statement that neatly introduces The Oracle leadership style: ‘Leaders are fascinated by the future, you are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply [...]

The Oracle – Leadership Styles – Part 3

October 19, 2011 in Leadership / People tagged Apple / Communicator / JFK / Leader / Martin Luther King / Oracle / Passion / Steve Jobs / Vision / Visionary / Winston Churchill by markconwayuk

Coaching Team — Reading Time: 4 minutes Welcome to Part 2 of Leadership Styles: The Coach Author, educator, and motivational speaker, Dr. William Arthur Ward wrote a phrase that I try to remember. It gives me personal strength to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing – ‘The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. [...]

The Coach ~ Leadership Styles – Part 2

October 15, 2011 in Leadership / People / Teams tagged Career / Coach / Coaching / Communication / Feedback / Leadership / Listening / Relationship / Success / Team by markconwayuk

Leader Terminator — Reading Time: 3 minutes Leadership style is something I’ve been pondering for a while now. I’ve been lucky to have met and worked with many great leaders over my career and I’ve also met and worked for some that, shall we say, could have done with some development and coaching. I don’t like putting people into [...]

The Terminator ~ Leadership Styles – Part 1

October 7, 2011 in Leadership / People / Teams tagged Autocratic / Leadership Style / Team / Terminator by markconwayuk

Word Cloud - Elephant in the Room — Reading Time: 7 minutes I see two distinct types of ‘Elephant’ in my line of work…and two ways of tackling them. The Management Elephant and the Leadership Elephant. This blog focusses on the latter. If you missed Part 1 – An Elephant in the Room: Management breakthroughs, and are wondering what on earth I’m [...]

An Elephant in the Room Part 2 – Leadership Breakthroughs

September 20, 2011 in Business Skills / Leadership / People / Teams tagged Accountability / Business / Feedback / Goals / Honesty / Leader / Leadership / Relationship / Results / Success / Team / Vision by markconwayuk

Listening for the unsaid! — Reading Time: 4 minutes To paraphrase Wikipedia – An “Elephant in the room” has become a management saying meaning an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. It applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss and based on the idea that an elephant in a room would [...]

An Elephant in the Room Part 1 – Management Breakthroughs

September 18, 2011 in Leadership / Management / People / Teams tagged Discrimination / Elephant in the room / Feedback / Leader / Leadership / Performance / Relationship / Sabotage / Success / Team by markconwayuk

Listen to your People — Reading Time: 3 minutes For a while now I’ve worked with developing my direct team into being more… More focused, more passionate, delivering more and being more commercially and customer focused. And to a large degree we’ve succeeded. I’m really proud of them and what we’ve achieved so far. But to really succeed and make a step change in our [...]

Stop listening …. and give up!

September 2, 2011 in Business Skills / Leadership / People / Teams tagged Feedback / Listening / Passion / Team by markconwayuk

Mark Conway — Reading Time: 5 minutes Thanks to those of you who took the time to complete the recent Top Leadership Challenges poll. The top 3 challenges as voted for by Think Oak! readers are: 1. Creating a high performance culture How leaders believe things should get done is a key driver of culture. Leaders establish [...]

Top Leadership Challenges – The Results

June 4, 2011 in Leadership / Management / People tagged Culture / Customer Services / Innocent / Leader / Leadership / Public Sector / Raving Fans / Team / Walt Disney by markconwayuk

Bullying — Reading Time: 3 minutes A very wise lady, the late Blanche Eldon, told me something when I was about 15 years old, that has stayed with me ever since. I was in my first management role – a Patrol Leader in a local Boy Scout Troop. We were mid-way through our ten-day summer camp and one of [...]

Feedback: A teaspoonful of criticism, and a bucketful of praise!

May 9, 2011 in Business Skills / Management / People / Teams tagged Behaviour / Coaching / Development / Feedback / Jack Welch / Relationship / Team / Teamwork by markconwayuk

Reading Time: 5 minutes You would be amazed at the number of people who still don’t understand the importance of networking. Building relationships is crucial – there are many smart, talented people who don’t progress as much as they would hope in their career because they are not visible to the “right” people. Use every opportunity to build relationships with [...]

Business Networking – It’s not ‘what’ you know…

April 25, 2011 in Business Skills / People tagged BNI / Bondholders / Business / Business Networking / Chamber of Commerce / Communication / Confidence / Face to Face / Hull / IoD / LinkedIn / Plaxo / Relationship / Sales / Techmesh / Twitter / Yorkshire Mafia by markconwayuk

, Tree, Mark Conway, Oak Consult — Reading Time: 5 minutes In my experience, over performance in business can’t happen consistently without building powerful relationships. Similarly, if you look at underperformance in your team, you will often find that it is the lack of powerful relationships or broken relationships that are the cause. There is no quick fix….sorry. BUT, if you invest time, honesty, passion and [...]

10 ways for building powerful relationships

April 16, 2011 in Business Skills / Leadership / People tagged Business / Coaching / Feedback / Myers Briggs / Relationship / Success by markconwayuk