Leadership development is often spoken about as a skill acquisition. This is horizontal development. Vertical development is when we see and value more of the bigger picture and can navigate complexity. It’s hard and essential work. Here’s an overview.
Zoë Routh Leadership Podcast
Podcasts
202 Storytelling for leadership effectiveness with author Gabrielle Dolan
One of the most underrated leadership skills is storytelling. If you’re building a brand - what people say about you when you’re not in the room - storytelling is the best way to be memorable. Best selling author Gabrielle Dolan shows us how.
Read More199 Leadership skills and energy with author Ginny Whitelaw
What leadership skills do you get when you cross a NASA scientist with a Zen Master? Amazing, novel strategies for better leadership effectiveness. Ginny Whitelaw is a remarkable human being with fabulous insights from her latest book, Resonate: Zen and the Way of Making a Difference. Enjoy!
Read More143 Productivity and leadership effectiveness with Ishan Galapahty
Do you have too much on your plate? Looking for ways to cut costs and boost productivity? Do you have 26 projects going at once? Ishan Galapathy shares his approach to solving these chronic workplace stressors.
Why you should listen:
Learn how to qualify your problems before you set about solving them
Learn how to identify the four types of problems and how to resolve them
Learn how to ask better questions to solve complex problems
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Read MoreCanberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh on feedback
Do you do annual anonymous culture reviews? Do you subject people to anonymous 360s? Should you do any of this? Here’s the better approach than letting people hide behind surveys (and also when they might be good).
Why you should listen:
What needing anonymous surveys says about your culture
4 things you should look at instead
Two situations when you SHOULD use anonymous feedback
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Read More135 Craig Dower puts his leadership effectiveness down to focussing on people first
I met Craig Dower through LinkedIn when he commented on one of my articles about culture. I was intrigued by his global accolades as CEO: President of Avanade Asia Pacific out of Singapore, CEO Salmat, CEO Xenith Ip, and now CEO of Qantm IP. It’s not the titles but the work he did: growing the business three-fold at Avanade, leading the largest transformation program in the company’s 40-year history at Salmat, and leading through a period of substantial change and steady earnings growth at Xenith IP. His secret? Focus on People First.
Why you should listen:
Why you need to reward values and behaviour as well as outcomes
How to transformational change fast, at scale: Get the people right, then identify three priorities: Focus, Simplify, Grow
As the CEO you need to be the chief change sponsor and chief storyteller
The hardest part about building high performing teams is getting the people right: a fit for behaviour and values, performance can be coached, but performance without values and behaviour is toxic
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Read More134 An incredible leadership journey from a trailblazing woman with Marene Allison
Marene Allison is the Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Johnson & Johnson. Previously she was head of Global Security at Avaya where she secured the World Cup network in Korea and Japan in 2002. Before that she was an FBI Special gent, working on undercover drug operations, terrorist bombings, and a mock nucelar terrorism exercise. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Military academy at West Point in the first class to include women.
With a long list of firsts, in a stellar and remarkable career, Marene shares her insights and lessons on leadership and people.
Why you should listen:
Why moving from command and control style to collaboration is a key move to thriving as a leader in a corporate environment
Learn strategies of a highly successful leader who garners fierce loyalty and commitment from her teams
Secrets from FBI interrogation to tell when people are lying
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Read More133 The keys to leadership success are passion, perseverance and purpose according to Frank Fiume II
What does it take to build a wildly successful business? Author and entrepreneur Frank Fiume shares his deeply personal story on the highs and lows of creating a business based on passion. What looks like a linear journey is rarely that clearcut: Frank shares how he worked his way through each low and the lessons about life and leadership along the way.
Why you should listen:
Learn from Frank’s experience of turning adversity and a life in poverty to an advantage in shaping his ambitions.
Three strategies to make through the tough times: hire for your weakness, restructure to make sure you get the balance right and join a group of peers for sounding board and advice.
Anticipate the three stages of entrepreneurial growth: hunger, resilience, and fulfillment.
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Read More130 Do leadership responsibilities extend to making the world better? With Tim Collings
Leadership expert Tim Collings joins me in sharing insights on his leadership path, and core tips for leadership that makes a lasting difference, and transformative leadership.
Why you should listen:
How to find your leadership calling that will sustain you through tough times
Steal Tim’s insights on how to lead mixed Gen X and Gen Y teams
What to implement to be a transformative leader: imagine, ignite, immerse, and inspire.
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Read More118 How diversity can impact your leadership effectiveness with Christina Ryan
Imagine in the lift at the end of the day, being asked for the 8th time, ‘so, what happened to YOU?’ People with disabilities are confronted daily with intrusive questions about the intimate details of their physical condition. Something we would not dare ask others. This is but one of the challenges people with disabilities endure every day. Disability leader and advocate Christina Ryan wants us to get beyond the discomfort of visible difference and get on with the job of talking leadership: how difference offers more viewpoints.
We explored disability as identity, disability disadvantage in employment, vertical developmental leadership through the lens of disability, the core attributes of disability at the leadership table (inclusion, collaboration, resilience, and innovation), how acknowledging the whole self including disability is fundamental component of spreading perspective and inclusion in workplaces and community.
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Read More110 Canberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh on persuasion
How do you convince someone to change their perspective? If you want to move hearts and minds for a cause that is deeply meaningful to you, how do you do that? Sometimes the most passionate advocates end up doing more harm than good.
Don't be fooled: passion is the worst form of persuasion
Pressure does nothing for changing opinions. All it does is push people farther in to their own perspective.
Curiosity and compassionate inquiry leads to persuasion.
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Read More109 Canberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh on avoiding the three C's
Leadership can be a volatile experience. There are some seriously difficult situations - and people - to contend with.
Cockups are what we fear most: failing and letting people down. Mistakes that are costly. Hurting people inadvertently. Perspective is the gateway to compassion: just because you cock things up, doesn’t make you a c*ck - at least not permanently!
Crackpots are a bigger concern. The biggest challenges is dealing with PSYCHOPATHS. Not all psychopaths are violent! Many are successful players in the corporate world. We need to know how to spot them, and how to deal with them.
Conniptions are a surprise when they happen. When a crackpot pushes our buttons and all of a sudden we lose the plot, and default to behaviour that is out of the norm. Conniptions are rare occurrences, and yet we can learn from them.
#boundlessleadership
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Read More108 Canberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh on culture traps
‘You don’t know how good you have it until it changes’. This was a CEO talking about his culture after a new Chairman is on the scene. A change at the top can certainly spell doom (or boom!) for culture. There are other aspects at play too: systems and shadow. We go through two recent articles - one on Facebook and how its culture is slipping, and one from the Navy SEALs - a Special Operations Chief is arrested for war crimes.
Culture is your operating system for people. Know and set the code.
Systems drive behaviour - review yours.
Every strength has a shadow - are you aware of your own culture shadow?
#boundlessleadership
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Read More107 Canberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh on expanding perspective
WARNING: This solocast is a bit of a rant. A call to action. To do more. To do better. To have a bigger impact. There’s a lot going on. There’s more work to do than ever before. There are more problems to solve. We need to work BETTER. We also need to avoid the traps of Achiever: achiever disease and overwork, goal sickness and sacrificing our values at the altar of results.
Signs and symptoms of Achiever Disease
As an Amplifier we can amplify message, motivation, and results
How perspective is the key to empathy, and how empathy expands perspective
#boundlessleadership
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Read More105 How to increase your leadership effectiveness with Daniel Kilov
Edge of Leadership UnConference speaker Daniel Kilov reveals some amazing tips and tricks to enhance memory for reading books, recalling information, committing information to knowledge, and remembering names at networking functions.
Daniel shares critical mnemonics (memory) techniques, explains how these techniques are the single best predictor of top performance in any field and how we can create generations of geniuses.
How memory is the alchemy for human creativity
Using ‘memory palaces’ to retain vasts amount of knowledge quickly
Why memory is the true distinguishing feature for people at the very top of their game - geniuses - and an even better predictor than IQ
#boundlessleadership
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Read More99 Canberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh on leadership KPIs
What KPIs should CEOs have? Should they have KPIs at all? Performance measurement specialist and business consultant Mark Hocknell says they shouldn’t. At least not in the way we currently understand KPIs - ones developed by gut feel instead of a thorough and rigorous process. We also talk about the perils of performance bonuses and why legal and accounting firms should stop measuring staff performance based on billings alone.
How giving people targets to meet is a surefire way for people to manipulate numbers or jimmy the system
How a CEO increased a company’s bottom line by multiple BILLIONS by focusing on safety, not revenue
The best way to develop comprehensive measurement plan that generates teamwork instead of divides it.
#boundlessleadership
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Read More97 Canberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh reviews 'The 25 Minute Meeting'
Habits and meetings: how we can move the dial 1% for more energy and more time. An update on implementing James Clear’s Atomic Habits and a book summary and review of Donna McGeorge’s 25 Minute Meeting.
Cement identity with visual cues and celebrating small wins.
Meetings for business as usual: 25 minutes,no more than 5 people, no more than 3 agenda items.
Use Scan, Focus, Act as the formula for meetings.
#boundlessleadership
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Read More93 Canberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh on how to improve productivity and focus
Do you jam your day with back to back appointments? Do you have a crushing sense of not enough time in the day? Do you rush from one thing to the next? This is not helping. You don’t optimise productivity by squeezing more in your calendar. You become more productive when you manage the gaps better.
The Boundless Leadership paradox: no borders and no barriers means we also have to work with limitations
5 reasons why gaps - and naps - help your brain defrag
How to take an effective break
#boundlessleadership
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Read More92 Canberra based leadership expert Zoë Routh on the importance of language
Ever been told that your behaviour was having a negative impact on others? This kind of feedback is confronting! None of us intentionally try to be a jerk. And yet we might be coming across as less than our ideal selves. There are important people reading maps to be mindful of, and language patterns to navigate.
Dig below the surface and map read human emotions with this change trigger tool
Be mindful of language patterns that are aggressive and passive aggressive (3 types to avoid)
WHY you need to avoid dramatic and downplaying language
#boundlessleadership
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Read More89 Canberra based leadership expert Zoe Routh reviews 'Joyful'
Ever read a book that changed how you see the world? This book did that for me. Now I understand compulsive tidying, and why some people match their clothes peg colours when they do laundry (and why I want to do that too now!)
4 environments that you can use to engineer your evolution
10 principles of joyful environments
Why plants are the secret to joy
#boundlessleadership
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