Common Purpose Blog

Fifty senior human resources, talent,  learning and development specialists met last week at St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace & Reconciliation. This was an appropriate setting given that the theme of discussion was on the need for organisations to reconcile the meaning of the organisation with the personal needs of employees. The debate raised far more [...]

I love the idea of inherent conflict (positive) in all leadership decisions and styles. The idea there isn’t and can’t be one way. It’s refreshingly different to the proposition that there are a set of learned behaviours that can be applied.   Twenty years ago a friend gave me the Tao Of Leadership. By reading it [...]

“Time was when anyone who slacked off, back-pedalled, loafed around or otherwise failed to add value at work knew they were in for a good old-fashioned telling-off from the boss. It cleared the air and allowed everyone to get on with the task in hand. Nowadays, though, bureaucracy and the tyranny of balanced feedback rule.”  [...]

I was engaged in a fascinating conversation in the office the other day. Julia had been asked to write her opinions on whether there is a difference between male and female leaders for one of the broadsheets. I often hear this kind of debate coming up but don’t pay too much attention to it. I’ve [...]

I had this conversation yesterday with Simon. It was a rambling one where we went from topic to topic but we covered many of the issues that have been ongoing for me for a few months now. One thing that struck me was the continued need to define the kind of leadership behaviours and characteristics [...]

Is it just me or are people always saying the world is changing faster? Can it get any faster? I started reading about the world changing faster about 16 years ago. I’ve spent the rest of those 16 years (aside from hanging on so I don’t fall off) trying to work out how you lead [...]

Can you separate these two out? I’ve never thought of leadership as not being linked to change. Is it the sum of your interactions with other entities? Whether we like it or not things change by the fact we interact with them (or if we choose not to they are changed by our absence). At [...]