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What people REALLY want from bosses will surprise you
The power to make work better is ours.
The big question this week is: why aren’t we stepping up?
Especially when the Gallup data we touched on last week shows that, globally, 65% of us experienced a lot of stress (44%) or anger (21%) just yesterday.
Vital: 5 Game-Changing Leadership Insights!
Last week‘s HR Technologies Conference at ExCel was like HR Disneyland—a rollercoaster of information that it took me two days to come down from.
What I wish someone had told me about leading a team
We are now on our 100th episode—🎉—and hitting numbers that we hadn’t dreamt of two years ago…
Stop. Using. These. Two. Words.
Flexibility and Balance? Give me a break
🥱 Blah blah ‘flexible’ work, work/life ‘balance’, blah blah blah.
These two words have become utterly overused and totally meaningless. I’m just so over them.
Time to get tough with your board!
❌ 74% of managers says they don’t have the influence or resources to make change for employees (Microsoft Work Trend Index)
😒 54% of managers believe that leadership is out of touch with employees.
Bosses: Gods, Monsters, and Mortals
One of the best compliments I was ever given was from someone who thought I was a pain in the arse.
He was the FD at a big agency who said to my then-boss, ‘You can say what you like about Christine Armstrong’—clearly he did—‘but you can’t deny that people really like working for her.’
Toxic leaders, Amazon rumours & my mistakes
Ten years ago I resigned from a workplace that made me anxious and miserable.
From the first Monday morning meeting on my first day, I knew it wasn’t for me. The most senior person in the room belittled a dynamo of a woman I’d already clocked was a radiator of great energy and insight.
Hybrid: how bosses are struggling
Obviously Boris WOULD announce a work from home order as soon as I get these findings, but I’m just ignoring his dead cat bounce for the moment.
2/3 of your colleagues don’t trust you
This morning my husband said sorry to me… for something that happened ten years ago, inspired by a conversation we were having.
Need time to lead? Don’t give a monkey’s
Happy Birthday to me!
To celebrate, I am sharing an idea based on an HBR piece published the year I was born called Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?
Authority: it’s a man’s world.
This week, two women asked for my advice on how to tackle being talked over at work. This made it the perfect time to ask journalist and radio presenter Mary Ann Sieghart about her new book, The Authority Gap. Why women are still taken less seriously than men and what to do about it.
Don’t waste limbo: there’s much to be done!
The government has delayed the end of restrictions: 28 days later indeed.
For me this extra time drifting between the end of lockdown and reopening feels flat. Like the time between A-levels and results when you’re waiting for life to start. Interspersed only by dramatic announcements from the likes of Morgan Stanley chief, James Gorman, threatening to “change his tone” if people don’t return to five days a week in September.
The most powerful leadership advice I was ever given
15 years ago the ad agency I was working at, BBDO, flew a bunch of us to LA to talk strategy for three days in a cavernous hotel. My main memory is of escaping a formal dinner for a bar crawl in stretch limos.