Gestalt is a German word. The closest translation is ‘whole’, ‘pattern’ or ‘form’. It has the sense that meaning cannot be found from breaking things down into parts but rather from the appreciation of the whole. In other words, Gestalt is a holistic process. It...
Writing in the Harvard Business Review recently, chart designer Scott Berinato proffered a vivid example of the profoundly misleading influence that clever chart visuals can exert. In emails, engineers from the leading Japanese airbag manufacturer Takata allegedly...
There is widespread agreement that the art of building effective teams involves being clear about collective and individual objectives. What happens to sustaining and building effective teams in times of anxiety-inducing change when mergers, new roles, new processes...
Last time, we summarised the three major sources of team conflict identified by leadership expert Annie McKee (insecurity, desire for power and habitual victimhood). I’d like to explore what can be done to prevent these patterns from undermining and sabotaging the...
When leaders want to make their organisations more efficient in realising strategic goals, many of them resort to behaviourist, carrot-and-stick approaches. However, there’s a big problem: despite all the scientific-sounding talk of “measurable” KPIs and clearly...
Conventional wisdom holds that leaders who “walk the talk” – who demonstrate consistency and congruence in what they say, do and believe – set the best examples for others. There’s a lot of truth in this, but I’d like to make a plea for the opposite: talking the walk....