These days change is a constant, there is always something changing somewhere for some reason. It is almost impossible to work anywhere without going through some type of change. Change isn’t a bad thing and in today’s business world change is necessary to survive. However, if not executed properly change can be damaging to a company, it can negatively impact employee morale as well as disrupting productivity. No matter how big or small the change is, employees will have some type of reaction to it and often it is the …

Also known as democratic leadership, participative leadership is the most common form of leadership practiced in the corporate world and political scene. The participative leadership model favours decision making by a group. In this model, the leader consults his team and seeks their opinion, making the decision subsequently. Compared to the autocratic leadership model, this model allows the views of the team members to be heard and encourages team members to participate, hence its name. It is worthy to note that in this style of leadership, the decision is still …

Ever been in a team or headed a team which seemed to epitomise the very meaning of corporate politics? Chances are that you probably have. Corporate politics represents a culture of a team which just fails to achieve synergy, where behaviours commonly known as ‘backstabbing’ and ‘badmouthing’ are prevalent. The team could possibly contain many talented individuals, but the mutual resentment for each other and fear of being put down results in a lack of trust, which makes productive conflict impossible, leading to slipshod decision making where team members are …

Having discussed about the importance of setting standards and several key traits of the standards we should strive to set, we now move forward to discuss how we can achieve buy-in in the standards we set.
I believe that a major problem faced by many new and untested leaders is that they decide upon and set the standards unilaterally, which means to say, on their own, without any inputs from the other members of the team. As a result, the standards set may be seen as unfair or unachievable by the …

Many less experienced leaders often fall into the trap of creating an ‘ideal’ leadership blueprint, a leadership template which they believe can be applied throughout the numerous teams they would possibly work with. After all, it certainly sounds great to have a holy grail for their leadership journey, right?
This leadership lesson is hence about flexibility, and is written to pre-empt new leaders and warn them against being a victim of the lack of flexibility. All to often, junior leaders and managers possess the belief that by having a ‘template’ plan …