Action-centred leadership asks managers to juggle three priorities: the team, the task and the individual. and in this conversation Pilar and Tim discuss one-on-one meetings, one of the best tools that managers have to work on their relationship with an individual employee. Over coffee we talk about the nuances of this style of meeting and… Continue reading #62 Getting the most out of one on ones as a manager

Going deeper into their exploration of different leadership styles, and inspired by this article on the MindTools blog, Pilar and Tim look at the Emotional Leadership Theory pioneered by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee. It ends up being another therapy session in the café as Pilar and Tim talk about their own preferences,… Continue reading #61 Emotional Leadership Theory

There are far too many leaders who don’t really want to be managers. Given most workers cite their manager as their main reason for leaving a company, this is a big problem. It’s hard to love your job when your boss hates theirs. How do so many people end up as managers when they shouldn’t?… Continue reading #60 Who ends up in management positions?

Continuing with our discussions on leadership frameworks, Pilar and Tim discuss John Adair’s Action-Centred Leadership which was first introduced in 1973. Adair uses three overlapping circles to illustrate that effective leadership happens at the intersection of the task, the team and the individual. And it is this deceptive simplicity which is a big part of… Continue reading #59 John Adair’s Action-Centred Leadership

Inspired by the article about leadership on the Asana blog, Pilar and Tim discuss Kurt Lewin’s 3 leadership styles. In a seminal study conducted in 1939, groups of 10 year old children were given a craft task and assigned an adult leader using either an authoritarian, democratic or laissez-faire leadership style. They concluded that democratic… Continue reading #58 Leadership on a spectrum: Laissez-faire and authoritative styles

Inspired by Liz and Mollie’s wonderful book “No Hard Feelings” we talk about the role of emotions in our work, especially when hiring. One of the key principles in this book is that our emotions are a part of who we are at work and they impact our behaviour. Being aware of this helps us… Continue reading #57 The role of emotions when hiring

One of the pressures we can feel as a manager is the pressure of attention. We watch our managers closely. We analyse their behaviours and motivations. We guess at their intentions. And this informs our judgements about cultural norms and which behaviours are encouraged or discouraged. In fact, the attention of our team gives us… Continue reading #56 All eyes are on you: Role modelling behaviours as a manager

For this episode we used a different format. Pilar and Tim spotted a question in a community they’re members of, and with the permission of the poster, we’ve chosen to discuss it over coffee. This was the question: “Remote workers are faking enthusiasm.As a manager, I struggle to assess the motivation and engagement of my… Continue reading #55 The risk of remote worker disengagement

We reference this book all the time. In today’s conversation we learn why Radical Candor resonates so much with us and how we’ve used it in our own work. The core principles of the book shouldn’t really feel radical, it should be commonplace to care about the people we work with and tell them our… Continue reading #54 Why we love “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott (and why implementing it is so hard!)

As a manager our success is really dependent on the success of our teams. Yet there is something a bit topsy-turvy about the idea that managers are responsible for the motivation of our people. Much of motivation is intrinsic, most people inherently want to do good work. In fact often times work, even the work… Continue reading #53 The problem with motivating others