Fierce Leadership

I just got back from a breakfast at the Australian Institute of Management where Susan Scott [website], author of the books Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership, spoke for an hour.

Here are my brief notes from the talk.

The Top Six "Best Practices" that stand in the way of creating a functional organisation

1. 360 degree anonymous feedback
2. Hire for smarts
3. Holding people accountable
4. Employee engagement programs
5. Customer-centricity
6. Legislated optimism

This is not the age of information.
This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

--David Whyte

Facebook and Twitter are symptoms of the need and desire for connection.

The conversation is the relationship.

We need to hold "fierce conversations" - conversations where we interrogate reality and describe reality without laying blame.

"What we do not make conscious arises later as fate" - Carl Jung.

Weak leaders are looking for agreement. Strong leaders are looking for truth - and there are more than one. (Even in an absolute sense this is true: ref SB. 11.9.31.)

Leadership is a behaviour, not a title.

On "Holding people accountable":
Accountability is an attitude - it's a choice. You can't mandate accountability - if you want to see it in your organisation you have to model it.

On "Hiring for smarts":
"We should take care not to make the intellect our god: it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." - Albert Einstein.