1. Adaptability and Resilience: Leaders need to be adaptable and resilient in the face of uncertainty and rapid change. This includes the ability to pivot quickly, make decisions in ambiguous situations, and bounce back from setbacks. Read more.
2. Emotional Intelligence: Understanding and managing emotions, both one’s own and those of others, is crucial for effective leadership. Empathy, self-awareness, and the ability to build strong relationships are all part of emotional intelligence. Read More.
3. Digital Literacy: As technology continues to advance, leaders must be digitally literate. This includes understanding emerging technologies, data analytics, cybersecurity, and the potential impacts of automation and artificial intelligence on their organisation. Read More.
4. Remote Leadership: The rise of remote and distributed workforces has required leaders to develop new skills for managing teams and fostering collaboration in virtual environments. Effective communication and the ability to build trust without in-person interactions are key.
5. Inclusivity and Diversity: Leaders are expected to create inclusive environments where diverse perspectives are valued and everyone has a sense of belonging. This involves not only promoting diversity but also actively fostering an inclusive culture. Read More.
6. Purpose-Driven Leadership: Stakeholders, including employees, customers, and investors, increasingly expect organisations to have a clear sense of purpose beyond profit. Leaders who can articulate and align their teams with this purpose tend to be more successful.
7. Change Management: Change is constant, and leaders must be skilled in managing organizational change effectively. This includes understanding the psychology of change, communicating a compelling vision, and guiding teams through transitions. Read More.
8. Collaborative Leadership: Hierarchical leadership is giving way to more collaborative approaches. Leaders need to be skilled at working across teams, departments, and even organisations to achieve common goals.
9. Data-Driven Decision Making: Leaders should be comfortable using data and analytics to inform their decision-making processes. This involves not only collecting and analysing data but also using it to drive strategic initiatives.
10. Ethical Leadership: Ethical considerations are paramount, and leaders must make decisions that align with moral and ethical principles. This includes addressing issues such as sustainability, social responsibility, and ethical governance.
11. Agile Leadership: Agile methodologies, originally developed in software development, are now being applied to leadership. This involves iterative and adaptive approaches to problem-solving and project management. Read More.
12. Global Leadership: In an increasingly interconnected world, leaders often have to work with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and navigate global markets. Cultural sensitivity and global awareness are essential skills. Read More.
13. Crisis Management: The ability to lead effectively during crises, whether they are related to health, economic, or environmental issues, has become a critical skill. Crisis communication and rapid decision-making are vital components of this skill set. Read More.

Leadership skills are not static; they evolve as the world changes. Successful leaders will continue to adapt and develop their skills in response to the evolving needs of their organisations and the broader society.

The post Evolving Your Leadership Skills appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

You enter a BRAND new world when you leave a company and your job, often at a timing not of your choosing. A key aspect to getting that next successful career move is ‘personal branding’. Branding is a mix of how you portray yourself and how others see you. Tom Peter’s assertion is that individuals have to act as head marketer for the brand called ‘You’!

In the burgeoning world of social media, an AVG study showed that 92 percent of children under the age of two already have a digital footprint, so some form of brand already exists. An interesting exercise is to Google yourself, see what comes up and what this is telling you about your brand. Nowadays, thinking about how you want people to think about you and speak about you is a necessity, not a ‘nice to do’ item for some later date. It’s a core piece of the jigsaw and will help you with marketing yourself via LinkedIn or a CV, and selling yourself in an interview situation.

If you think of some big brands such as Coke, Kelloggs, Heinz, Nike or Richard Branson, and jot down what their qualities are and what differentiates them, you start to unpick their brand message. It is also a good starting point for you. Your challenge is, in under 20 words, to figure out your brand qualities and differentiators.

What are your greatest strengths?

To help get started, think about what your colleagues or customers think of you, and what they would say are your greatest strengths. Also consider what are the success patterns behind your peak achievements and what do you do that you are most proud of? For example,

• Are you one of those rare people who deliver projects within budget and on time?
• Have your creative and problem solving skills created new business opportunities or fixed issues and kept customers happy?
• Maybe you are a brilliant strategic thinker or alternatively, well regarded for your pragmatic outcomes.

Think about both hard skills (e.g. fluency in a foreign language, knowledge of a particular software) and soft skills (e.g. communication, teamwork and problem solving). This will help you start identifying what’s called the ‘transferability of skills,’ things that are portable and can travel with you when you make a transition to a new role. Transferable skills are the talents and abilities that you can bring to any job in any sector.

Once you have everything written down, also consider if there are any gaps you need to address by getting supplementary training and experience.

The process of listing what is great about being YOU is important: it reminds you of what you have achieved, and then the discipline of trying to encapsulate this into 20 words, helps you work out your pitch or core message. Tom Peter’s notes that the pitch of great brands doesn’t sell the steak, but sells the sizzle; basically they promote the benefits rather than focus on features. I think it’s not an either/or situation. In today’s competitive market, individuals need to sell both the steak and the sizzle. But, beware, one bad steak can sink your brand fast.

Invest quality time in building good relationships

Everything you do, or don’t do, communicates the value and character of your brand. It can be as simple as how you handle a phone call, reply to an email or what you tweet. Your brand ambassadors are your network of friends, colleagues, clients, and customers. What they say about you and your contribution can open doors and add brand value. It is critical that you invest quality time in building, nurturing and maintaining good relationships with your network.

I remember a client ringing a contact to tip him off I was job hunting and when we met, I realised his assumption as I walked through the door was that I was a very good candidate. He trusted his contact. If she said this BRAND is a good one, he accepted that. Luckily or sadly, perception is reality. It’s important that you also make sure that any tweets, LinkedIn profiles and CV’s all carry the same message.

One final tip, personally, I keep Facebook for friends and not business.

Written by Executive Coach Claire Dickson “My experience, intuition and authenticity help people get “unstuck” to realize their hopes, conquer their fears, realise their potential and make sustainable change.”

Read more blogs from Claire: Frank the Frog and your Career Direction

The post Personal Branding – How do others see you? appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

In this case I am working with an extremely impressive and successful Senior Director. (I love work at this level but hasten to add that I equally enjoy working with those ‘on their way up’.) She is notably self-aware – our first session being dominated by an interesting amount of detailed reflection on how she ‘is’ with others and the impact she can have.

In every coaching relationship I work hard to create the conditions, the space, within which we can both operate in a state of relaxed concentration. This was easily achieved here and I noticed that there was the potential for the player to be highly self-aware but then not to have examples of how she actually used this awareness. Analysis without action you might say. Interesting.

Given our agreed coaching objectives I was pleased that, after I shared this thought with her, she readily decided to focus our second session on developing ideas which she could then go and try out.

Read more blogs from Tony: Which choice will you make to develop your leadership impact?

The post From self-awareness to sustainable change appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.