Leadership in Tough Times – Wavelength100 Day

On Monday, I participated in a one day workshop event titled ‘Leadership in Tough Times’ hosted by Wavelength100 www.thesamewavelength.com/pg/leadership.php and attended by approximately 100 people from diverse backgrounds and organisations, cross-sector and cross-industry.

This was an engaging, useful and timely event which included brief (20 minute) insightful ‘key note’ speeches by four session leaders; Martin Narey, CEO of Barnados and former chief of the UK prison service, Garvis Snook, founder and MD of ROK, the UK’s ;largest local builder, Sophi Trenchall, CEO of Divine Chocolate and Gerald Ratner, founder and former CEO of Ratners the Jewellers and Gerald online Jewellers.

The day encompassed four key themes under the Leadership in Tough Times heading; holding it all together, turning it around, holding on to your values and rising from the ashes. The day was an engaging mix of speaker led sessions, small group discussions, conversations in pairs, a world café type session and a ‘Tough Times’ clinic with a panel Q&A, it was energizing and thought provoking and I have pulled some key points and conclusions together on ‘Leadership in Tough Times’ as follows:

Don’t lose sight of your organisations primary purpose and vision even if you have to put in place some short-term reactive strategies, strategies must always connect with and support your purpose and long term vision

Remain visible and accessible, regularly and consistently communicate where you are going, what you are doing and why

Remain true to your company values, they are what you are, your company DNA and not to be abandoned to serve a short-term need

Ensure your people have a voice and can be heard

Wanting things to be ‘how they were before’ may in itself be limiting – new models and ways of working aren’t bad, it doesn’t have to be how it was before!

It’s ok to ‘not be sure’ and to ‘know you do not know’

And finally the only limitations are the ones we impose on ourselves

I came away with lots of nuggets, thoughts and questions to explore even further….

Research in to resilience begins

For more than three years circleindigo have had an ongoing relationship with the Business Psychology Centre at the University of Westminster, this is one of the country's leading academic bodies for Business Psychology programmes and is home to Stephen Benton, the UK’s only Professor of Business Psychology.

This relationship has seen circleindigo as part of the visiting lecturer team on the Business Psychology MSc programme, delivering sessions on managing change and transition, building resilience in individuals and teams and facilitation skills.

This year circleindigo have sponsored two research projects as part of the current MSc student cohort’s end of programme dissertation work. One of these sponsored projects is a client facing research project on ‘What makes individuals (and teams) resilient or adaptive to major change?’ and during this project the student will carry out qualitative research through a short face to face structured interview with a small number of circleindigo clients in each of the sectors we support. The 2nd is “Investigating individual/team resilience & adaptability models/frameworks”.

We are looking forward to seeing what emerges and using the outcomes and conclusions of final report to support our clients in the current tough climate, to help build resilience and to manage major change.