eadinehickey

Category: Organisational Change

  • Leadership and clowning!

    Imagine a big room in the attic of a rural hotel in the Swiss mountains. There are 8 people, 2 facilitators (clown/ consultants) and 6 participants diverse in  terms of age and country of origin. This is a leadership lab run by AZck! Learning and Development in conjunction with Tom Greder. I went to this programme as…

  • ‘We want coaching’

    A recent article in the FT by Maxime Boersma entitled ‘We want coaching,’ say high-fliers shows how perceptions of coaching have changed dramatically over recent years. The Head of Learning and Development at a UK organisation describes how “Executive coaching is increasingly sought by senior leaders as a space where they can have reflective conversations about their work…

  • Acknowledging our part of the mess!

    Facing up to an adaptive challenge requires us to put the problem at the centre, depersonalise it and then look at the various the various stakeholders and where they sit in relation to the problem. That all sounds very logical and depersonalised, however it gets interesting when we look at the part that we ourselves…

  • What is Adaptive Leadership?

    Adaptive Leadership is ‘the practice of mobilising people to tackle tough challenges and thrive’ (source: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership; Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky).  The ‘tough’ challenges referred to are adaptive challenges… challenges which have unclear definitions and unclear solutions. New ground is being covered and there are no obvious solutions to the challenge at hand.…

  • Harvard – The Art and Practice of Adaptive Leadership – A Debrief

    ‘Where do we begin?’. The week started with a question and ended with many, which was very appropriate considering we were there to learn how to tackle leadership development in the face of adaptive challenges. We were a class of 62 from 20 different counties and 5 different continents. We were in a leadership laboratory where we…

  • A leadership challenge with a difference

    This is an incredible story by the Center of Creative Leadership. It paints the picture of how a Swedish Executive, Ingar Skaug, took on the CEO role at Scandinavian Air after the top two layers of management had been wiped out by a plane crash. From Grief to Growth

  • Leadership and Lifelong Learning

    I have just finished reading John Kotter’s book ‘Leading Change’. After finishing the book, I went back to the start to see when it was written and was amazed to see the year 1996 mentioned. Many business books are written and remain relevant for a year… this one is as relevant now as it was…

  • Emotional Intelligence and Organisational Change

     Adopting change requires a lot of effort and it requires people to take risks. Successful change efforts start by taking this head on, by creating a shared need for change. During my corporate career, the model I used for implementing change was the GE change model CAP (Change Acceleration Process). The first three stages  of this…

  • Leadership and Followership

    Well I’m not sure if I love this or hate it but I certainly think it is interesting! The key point that I take from this is the importance of the first follower. After all, leadership does not exist without followers and the first follower shows others how to follow. As the guy on the video…

  • George Lee on Myers Briggs

    An interesting 20 minute slot with George Lee on Myers Briggs. It gives a great overview of the tool and how useful it can be for development in an for individuals and teams in an organisational context. I am looking forward to facilitating such a session with a team in a couple of weeks.