Episode 36: Why your leadership style needs to flex and adapt to different needs, with Chris Pearce
42m
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Leadership Amplified by Dr Karen Morley
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Much of my conversation with Chris Pearce centered around being flexible in your style and leading authentically.
Chris started his career in the Army, then spent a number of years in leadership roles in transport organisations such as FedEx, Linfox and MaxiTrans, and is now with ecoDynamics as Group Fleet and Asset Manager.
The connection between flexibility and authenticity is always an interesting one. With some coaching clients, there is a challenge about being flexible in your style VERSUS being authentic.
How can you be both? If you’re being your authentic self, who you truly are, shouldn’t you be consistent; people should know what they’re getting?
Yes. And no.
It’s how you use various styles that is the key.
As Chris reflected on various leadership experiences he’d had, from the military to corporate life, and the impact they’d had on both him, the team and its performance, one of the interesting distinctions he made was between a style, and how you use it.
He contrasts two different leaders he experienced early in his career, who both used the command and control style. He noted a significant difference in his experience as one boss wielded the style with a high care factor, and another pushed hard but you could see he wasn’t his genuine self. The first used the style for the team, the second used the style for control.
The outcomes were quite different – with the first leader, there was better team cohesion, there was never any doubt that they would achieve their goals, the bonds became strong.
This set the tone for Chris - it’s OK to be yourself as a leader, and that works better for your team. When you trust that they’ll achieve the outcome, they are more likely to.
His introduction to corporate life was ‘like walking into a circus without a ringmaster’, as roles were so much less clear. This was his turn to create the clarity, to help the team to work towards a common goal, understanding the parts they played.
Chris concludes our conversation with three pieces of advice for other leaders; keep learning, treat people as people, and have fun.
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Which is now her day job as Principal, Technology and Strategy, at Digital Twin Victoria.
Alena counsels leaders unfamiliar with/suspicious or nervous about AI to take the time to become familiar with the technology tools.
She reassures us that it’s easier than we might think.
Her tip is to use a simple AI tool and ask it all your ‘dumb’ questions about other tech tools to build your understanding of what’s going on.
Her three top pieces of leadership wisdom apply both to leading in general, and leading through technology:
📌 Relationships first – as a leader you have to build the bridge to your people, so psychological safety, reaching out to others, providing support and being empathetic are critical to leading well.
📌 Ask the stupid question – that way you can direct yourself through situations and information that is unfamiliar. There is so much change we’re always beginners so stay comfortable in not knowing and always asking.
📌 Leaders are great communicators, that’s they’re real strength, so use these skills to help technical teams to get cut-through for their work, and to help them understand what the organisation needs from them.
🤔 How does your placein your environment affect the way you lead?
Episode 44: Collaboration is the most powerful style when times are tough, with Glen Sharman
This statement encapsulates much of my conversation with special guest Glen Sharman who is General Manager for MaxiTRANS NSW.
He’s always been in the transport industry and has had the happy opportunity to have a diverse career across different working cultures, with global and local brands, working for large and small companies.
Glen reflects that from a young age he had a diverse mix of people around him who were invaluable for providing him with advice and suggestions, which he greatly appreciated.
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Glen enjoys the creative, innovative side of things and tries to think outside the square. ‘Where are we now and where do we want to go.’
He describes himself as an early adopter, a disrupter.
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‘I’m proud of our team.’
Glen says yes, it was stressful, yet ‘when you have to manage change, you have open communication and good dialogue with your team, a trusting and safe work environment, it can all come together really well. I truly believe we've done a fantastic job.’ Congratulations Glen!
Three key things Glen recommends leaders do for their teams:
📌 Trust your people, have the confidence they'll do well without you looking over their shoulder
📌 Provide ongoing professional development and training for your team, it's an ever changing environment
📌 Self reflect, what did I do well, what could I have done better, and don't beat yourself up!
Episode 43: Why it’s critical to know the environment you’re going into to increase success, with Donna Stace
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This is something that Donna Stace mastered very early in her career. Donna is an Operational Specialist in a Functional Safety Team at Rio Tinto.
Growing up in The Pilbara as she did, she was exposed from an early age to various trades and to the mining industry, and that sparked her interest. She fed her interest by getting out and finding work experience and became known, which of course helped her immensely when she started looking for work roles.
She went on to complete her Mechanical trade qualifications and over her career moved into operational leadership roles and has worked across a range of industries.
Her approach remains a key part of the advice she provides to others, especially young women, to encourage them to find out more about joining trades as career options. She encourages women to get out and find work experience options, and to challenge the people doing the hiring – ‘make sure you find out about culture and leadership style, what they are like and whether they will suit you’, she says.
She’s a great advocate for women in trades, becoming more so after returning to the maintenance area after many years and finding that the dial just hadn’t shifted. To do something about it, because she likes to be active, she co-founded Women in Rail. WIR continues to focus on increasing gender-balance in apprenticeships and trades. There’s been real success there, with numbers approaching parity over the last couple of years. Great work Donna!
Donna’s advice for increasing inclusion at work is for leaders to identify the value that diversity can bring to a team. There are benefits, and leaders should know what they are.
Donna says ‘It’s important to challenge yourself about what are you actually after, what do you want in this team, what are the skillsets, what are the gaps in your team? Do you need another person that looks exactly like the three other people in your team? Everyone wants to hire themselves, it's easier.’
To make it easier for leaders to be more inclusive they need a good support team, including people who’ll challenge their thinking.
Episode 42: How clarity of purpose is instrumental for focus and direction, with Hanli Pretorius
This is such an important piece of advice that Hanli Pretorius offers in this Leadership Amplified episode. Hanli is General Manager, People and Culture – Defence and Social Infrastructure at Ventia.
As she says, while she got into HR by chance rather than design - she took on a job, and found herself a career - she’s had great leadership support and the freedom to play and experiment to implement new programs or technologies.
She’s had experience across many different organisations and industries, both partnering in the business as well as working in a centre of excellence.
Hanli says ‘This year I have shifted in leaps and bounds in my thinking around my purpose.There's such power in having clarity in your own mind and being able to articulate it.’
Since clarifying her own purpose, she’s been very aware of noticing when others articulate theirs and how it conveys their focus and strength of direction. She says ‘When you hear someone else able to clearly articulate their purpose it's quite striking.’
It’s striking to hear the clarity about what they DO want and what they DON’T want.
She says, and I can only agree, ‘The inability of people to say no to things comes from not being clear about whatever contribution you want to make to an organisation or society.’ (Clarity doesn’t always make it EASY, but it does makes it EASIER.)
‘The ability to be clear about my purpose, what I want, to recognise and articulate it, has given me focus, it has been powerful and refreshing.’
These are Hanli’s three pieces of advice for early-career HR people:
- Don't specialise too early on in your carer
- Value in working as both a BP and in a centre of excellence
- Gain experience with multiple organisations/industries
Listen in for access to much more of Hanli’s wisdom.
Episode 41: Why leader self-improvement matters so much the the team’s performance with Rohan Horsley
It was an interesting way to end the latest conversation on Leadership Amplified: getting great performance from others starts with you, the leader, taking accountability for your own performance and self-improvement.
Rohan Horsley made this conclusion after we’d discussed the often-times tricky challenge of team performance and its successful measurement.
I enjoyed Rohan’s take on performance and its measurement: it alternately seems to be pretty obvious and yet is at times – usually the tough ones- a delicate balancing act.
He starts with the foundation assumption that people want to perform well – a very good place to start!
The object is for people to have ownership of their measures, to be clear about what success is, and for their individual measures to be aligned with the team’s and the organisation’s. When people take ownership they naturally achieve and perform.
We agreed that this is something both important and challenging, and that it takes time too.
It’s so easy, Rohan says, to pick up the old measures and roll them forward; they might no longer apply, might not be the best (just the easiest) to measure and probably won’t be terribly inspiring.
He also counsels the importance of trialling measures, as long as you are super-clear that is what you are doing.
When the team can trial some measures and get involved in identifying whether or how well they work it inspires creativity and engagement in the measures.
It’s important to avoid a blame mentality within the team.You should do a root cause analysis of both success and failure; it might be system or process that’s not right.
A lot of relationships and a lot of careers don’t progress as they should because of misunderstandings.
What’s key for the team:
📌 Understand the individuals
📌 Lead them in a way that suits their style
📌 Allow them to contribute to the team in ways they can with the skills they have strength in
📌 Where they want to grow give them opportunities
People want their contribution to be valued and respected.
If you make people compete they’ll find a way to win – that may be within the rules and it may not be, and can have unintended consequences.
✅ Most importantly, measuring performance starts with the leader, with their accountability for the team’s performance, seeking and listening to feedback, and improving their own performance.
#motivation #Personaldevelopment #careers #Productivity #performance