I derive immense pleasure in speaking to global cross-cultural groups. But how does this help the people I address? I remember an incident where a sailor once asked me on board a large crude oil tanker, “I have never cheated anyone in my life, do you think I can become a good leader”?, to which I had replied, “The issue should not only be if you have cheated someone else, the main issue is whether you have ever cheated your own self as I feel the only liability you should have is to be true to yourself.” After many years, I received a small ‘thank you’ note from that very sailor after he had worked up the ranks to become the ‘Captain’ of a ship.
A typical ‘Team Talk’ session is around 60 minutes with no restricting on the audience size. Target Audience for these sessions are anyone from the top and Middle management levels including students and management trainees.
Some of my popular talking subjects on the “Team Talk” series are as follows:
Leading in the Middle of Atlantic
This is a popular talk on motivational leadership model where I share my experiences as a seafarer while transiting the Atlantic and experiencing extreme bad weather. The talk revolves on situational leadership and decision making models and the essence of trust building within teams. It also teaches us how our responses are affected by the environment around us and how teamwork is put to the extreme test of individual skills and traits.
An enchanting one hour of motivational talk which energises and creates bonds within teams and highlights the power of leadership
Value Focussed Thinking – how leaders use values to take decisions
Values are a major motivating force for people because they categorise how people attach meaning, worth and importance to things. When a person’s values are matched, they feel complete and satisfied. If values are not met, there is a sense of dissatisfaction, unease or incongruity. This is something to bear in mind during persuasion and negotiation.
Examples of values are health, pleasure, recognition, safety, integrity, achievement and honesty. These are all quite subjective terms, which mean that they may mean different things to different people. Or even different things to the same person at different times.
So how are personal values and decision making related? Our personal values very much determine our goals and outcomes in life. The goals we choose are the outer expression of our personal values. And decision making is similarly based upon our core values. For a start, even choosing your goals is a decision!
Know yourself!
A person’s identity and personality is ‘held together’, you could say, by their values and beliefs. And we know your personal values and decision making are intimately connected. Knowing how to make decisions that satisfy your personal values means that your sense of self is strengthened by every decision.
Leadership in a Disruptive Environment
With a backdrop that the whole world today is undergoing a drastic change and transformation, Organisations are now looking at exponential growth through a leaner structure, sometime often becoming ‘meaner’. Change is becoming the one and only constant in the industrial world today.
Modern day businesses are thriving on disruptions and taking a nonlinear approach to enterprise architecture. (EA)
Big disruptions can be hard to predict, seem to happen more frequently than ever, and often have a complex ripple effect, impacting the whole ecosystem of customers, partners, suppliers and even societies. To cope with this, 55% of Organisations will have a continuous and integrated business and IT strategy planning effort by 2020
“EA leaders must be engaged in trend spotting”
When everything is running smoothly, this approach works well. But when disruptive, rapidly evolving events occur, organisations must already be in a position to capitalise upon the disruption. In other words, the key to capitalising on disruption is the ability to quickly pivot toward the optimal business outcome.
This means EA leaders must be engaged in trend spotting. Trend spotting allows enterprise architects to help their leadership teams quickly assess rapid changes. In turn, this allows for insightful considerations and options to enable a rapid change of direction.
With the advent of new technology in every aspect of our lives, the present human resource need to develop ‘skills for the future’ and be able to prepare themselves for the jobs that do not exist at present. The key to successfully transition into transformational roles lie in the keen aptitude of individuals to embrace change as a constant metabolic phenomenon of life, and thereby raising the necessity to develop the skills to collaborate, communicate and lead effectively.
Other ‘Team Talk’ Topics
- Managing Self and others’
- The common myths of Life
- Mentoring Cycle
- Everyone can be a Leader – Guide to path breaking leadership
- Taming your Mind
- Things which you know but do not see – Assessing the daily risks of life
- How to understand your leadership traits
- The Art of Selling