Publications & Articles

Don't miss this Article if you want to discover how some of the latest research and thinking is filling in the gaps in our knowledge about how leaders and organizations can influence others successfully.

In this practical article I explore my Three Influence Steps based on respect, discovery and shaping. i also distinguish influencing from manipulating.

Attached is an Introduction to the book Leadership On Top: How Managers and Others Become Leaders, published by Vivid Publishing in 2016.

In an age when the innovators are giving the elbow to the warriors, and when organisations need to be adaptive, collaborative and inventive if they are to survive and perform well, what is the role of commitment?

In this Article, I argue that if you are not growing as a leader you will be shrinking and sinking - treading water seems best left to sitting ducks.

This is the third and final article in our Way To Go series. We are examining what the Classical Greek and Roman thinkers can contribute to our leadership and lives.

Forget about sacharine sincerity. Forget about lists of values. This latest Article examines what a Waiter and a Bakery Shop can teach us about Authenticity and Bad Faith in leadership and life, not to mention a few other important matters such as Choice and Responsibility.

In this new Article I examine what I am calling the four pillars of great and successful leadership: Being Good; Thinking Well; Acting Committedly and; Managing Skilfully.

Does leadership require us to be a better person? I believe it does - that it is a value-laden activity that does require us to accept new responsibilities and to be bigger than our regularly self-absorbed self.

What can Michael Jordan, doing the dishes, and weeding the garden, teach us about exercising leadership and living a great life?

Much that is written about leadership presence is far too narrow in my opinion, and focuses largely on what I call leadership presentation. There are two other major components of leadership presence which are often overlooked, and this recent article attempts to do them justice.

The trust challenge for leaders is threefold. We need others to trust us and our leadership in order to gain their informal authorization and avoid command and control management.

What useful advice can we give to busy leaders who often need to make important business or organizational decisions in the face of uncertainty, conflicting interests and large consequences?

Trust in our institutions and organizations is in freefall. Humans haven't stopped trusting, but the nature of that trust has become more dispersed and it is proving a major disruptor to commerce and society.

Let's examine the forest of change that is currently occurring in business and society, and let's go looking for maps, satellites or a compass.

Margaret Thatcher once famouslyboasted that "this lady is not for turning". Plenty of her fellow warrior leaders are still roaming the corridors of modern companies and organisations, and the style has become popular again in American Presidents, but they are now competing with a new species - the innovators. Increasingly, organisations are looking for leaders who have strong and flexible minds and who are creative and changeable.

Let's do some cognitive work together, and depending on your disposition, we can try to figure out how we humans got into the fine mess we currently occupy and how we are going to get out of it, or we can marvel at our accomplishments and wonder where they will take us next!

In this Article I argue that leadership is about achieving goals and that my test for true leadership is that it has an impact which is beneficial.

Lots of change initiatives - whether personal, organizational or social - burn up heaps of energy and fizzle out without having too much impact.