"This movie - Rise of the Planet of the Apes, through it's engagement with creatures emotions via the very clever replication of eye contact has the ability to impact the psyche of the human race and encourage a change for the better"

Grant Crossley, founder Responsible Leadership

Are your leaders connecting with the inner desires of your staff - a willingness to connect with our environment, community and nature...

How are your leaders engaging staff?

Are they communicating sincerely - looking them straight in the eye?

Are they still tied up with the antiquated historic style of management - ruling by Carrot and Stick?

So your staff always need to watch their back...

Do your leaders leave staff distant?

Wanting to start an Uprising?

Or, do your leaders engage with compassion...

Encouraging engaging conversation...

Building an environment of collaboration

Is your business encouraging engagement with community, staff and our environment as is an underlying theme for Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

Think about how your leaders are engaging with staff? Do they need a helping hand?

If so, Contact Us to discuss Responsible Leadership

And make sure you check out this Movie of The Year:

http://www.apeswillrise.com/

All images above sourced from http://www.imdb.com

The other day I caught up with Lanning Bennett - founder of the COI Group which is a highly regarded diagnostics provider based in Sydney with international clients. Lanning provided some interesting insights into how 'Responsible' and 'Effective' leadership could be seen as contradictions - though are still measured using the same diagnostics...

Image Source

Responsible and Effective Leadership

Is there a contradiction in these terms? Many would say so. Sometimes to be effective certain responsibilities may be forfeited. Responsibilities require compromises to maintain effectiveness. The balance between these two are in constant review.

Lets talk about measurement – how do we know a leader is responsible. How do we know they are effective? Do the measures change depending on the circumstances – the type of leader, their role, their challenges. Of course situational leadership would say so. I would agree.

However this is not to argue that different situations require different measures, simply a different balance of the same measures.

Lets look at this further.

Leader A is running a bank branch with an established team and a well known bank branch. What makes this leader responsible and effective? An attention to detail? Good people skills? Good infrastructure? Compliance? Yes to all of this.

Leader B runs a creative team in an advertising agency. What does she need? Creativity, innovation, responsiveness? How does she balance responsibilities – to her team, client, organisation? 

As we all know these two situations require totally different leaders, but do they require different measurement systems, systems to asses their effectiveness?

I would say no.

In business we use one reporting system for all companies regardless of their size, product, market etc. Same with leadership. We measure the same things but assign them different priorities depending on the circumstances.

A good leadership diagnostic will take this into account and report accordingly.

Lanning Bennett
Founder
COI Group 

The other day I had the pleasure of catching up with Kelly Magowan - CEO of Six Figures Executive Recruitment.

Over a coffee we spoke about the definition of Responsible and Effective Leadership and where we were heading.

Kelly pointed out we are now moving into a new area where executives are considering more and more about 'Protecting People' versus 'Protecting Profits'.

And how this was brought about by the concept of loyalty dissappearing...

Image Source

For me, the most interesting feedback was to learn how now...

A Longer Term vision is much more important...

The Tenure of Leaders is getting short - such as the 10 week Country Road Chief Executive example recently published in The Australian

What is becoming ever more obvious is a longer term vision and succession planning is the key to a successful business.

"You can't expect staff to follow a short term leader" Kelly explains.

Focusing on Leadership is key to empowerment of staff. They must be allowed to make mistakes.

If everyone is focussed on the short term - as are their leaders - the future is frowned upon - staff are immobilised and the business stagnates.

Image Source

Leaders need to give people opportunity to try things. As a leader this is part of your responsibility...

Let them make decisions...

Help them be innovative and creative and competitive...

The Executive Monitor Report conducted by Six Figures shows these are not just simple thoughts.

The top of executive desires is to be driven from the top - 'Leadership'

People are happy to be brave and fearless.

Responsible Leadership is not about 'holding the fort' - it is about leading the way forward - let everyone else catch up - if they can.

Recruiting executives is about finding the best people who want to try and do new things.

Despite being in the business of recruiting, Kelly believes companies should look internally more - plan for succession - hire - but also firstly retain and promote.

Many staff also like to have a little skin in the game - so don't be afraid of providing share options for staff.

And when it comes to performance review time, if someone isn't performing well - look for the cause - where is the engagement? Why are they not engaged?

Executives on boards are the same - how can they be further engaged?

Technology also came into conversation as we discussed the age of technology and capturing peoples hearts and minds with knowledge.

How many organisations are doing that wonderfully? How many are still stuck in the 'industry age model?'

Both of these models can collaborate - together with staff - to provide better futures.

Six Figures

You may recall a while back when we published some videos with Kelly speaking here - worth a look