A Critical Friend? He or she is an impartial, confidential leadership mentor, someone with wide experience, someone with whom you can share your hopes and fears, bounce ideas around, explore options, assess the risks, identify strategy and then go forward with confidence. And that, dear reader, is what I do.
Uncertainty, disruption, confusion? Join the club. For anyone running a business, indeed any organisation, this pandemic has presented you with a whole new, unheard of set of challenges. None of us has been here before. That is the first thing to recognise. Everyone is in the same boat.
Like you, everyone is suffering from blurred vision – your people, your business partners, your customers, your supply chain. As we all try to grope our way forward, it’s only natural to worry that it’s affecting our judgement. It is so tempting just to delay, postpone, put planning on ice, to see how it all works out.
Leadership has never been needed more than now
If you, the leader of the pack, go into hiding, that’s one sure way for morale to drop, and with that goes productivity, teamwork and performance. You can’t let that happen.
Now must be the time to go back onto the front foot, to redefine your goals and to step forward, with confidence. You know it, your people know it. They are just as worried as you. The only way they will put their back into their work is when they see that the whole organisation is still in safe hands. They’re waiting, waiting for reassurance, for guidance, waiting for calm, measured leadership. From you.
“The single biggest way to impact an organisation is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organisation that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.” – John Maxwell
Leadership means inspiration. Inspiration leads to trust. Successful leaders don’t bark out orders, they inspire their people to exceed their own expectations – because they want to, not because they are told to. They’ll follow you when they understand, they share and believe in where you’re taking the organisation and when they feel comfortable, and involved, with the way change is being tackled.
Because the inescapable truth is that every business, every organisation, every team stands or falls on the quality, the commitment, the shared culture of its people. In times of change, you have to carry them with you or, for sure, you will fail.
Confident? Nervous? A little unsure?
Whatever challenges you are still facing, you know you have to get it right, first time. It’s you who have to make all those important decisions. You who have to find the right balance of hard analysis, common sense and your own gut feeling.
But, hold on, you’ve never been here before.
Ask yourself – is it really safe to rely on your own judgement?
What if you had a Critical Friend?
In every organisation that I’ve led, I had a professional mentor – a ‘Critical Friend’ – alongside me. They were my sounding board; they gave me the confidence I needed to push forward and yes, sometimes, they did haul me back from doing something stupid.
I will never tell you what to do. And I’m not there to polish your ego. I’m just offering you realistic, practical, positive mentoring, challenging you to draw on the essential spirit of your organisation and set yourself on a new path to sustainable success. Helping you and your people to raise your game, as a team; and to re-ignite that passion which, I’m totally convinced, is the factor that differentiates the very best from the good.
Let’s talk
So why not get in touch? Tell me, in broad terms, what you’re looking for. If you’re happy with what you hear from me, I’ll come to your place, take a detailed brief and produce a fully costed proposal, complete with objectives, for you to agree. Until you agree, you are under no obligation.
I’ll probably propose a short programme of tailored 90-minute mentoring sessions, either one-to-one with you, with your chief operating officer, with someone you’ve identified as a future leader, or maybe with your top management team, as a group.
Trust, passion and fun have been my guiding pillars for 30 or more years. I can and will recommend them to you.
So why don’t we talk? Call now or send me a message via my contact page.
