Ducidium

23/05/2023

What you might be missing about leadership.

There is a very deliberate choice we all have, to make our leadership transcend ourselves as a solo ‘leader’.

Leadership exists for the purpose of realising the desired successes of a group of people.

When you only focus on the attributes or qualities of the ‘leader’ you miss the most important part of leadership:

People, and the successes they’re working towards.

You can be the most charismatic, courageous, curious, competent, confident and continuously learning individual but….

that will not guarantee your effectiveness as a leader if you don’t transcend yourself.

Because leadership is not about you.

It’s about a group of people.

A group that you are a part of.

16/05/2023

“Surround yourself with people who ….” isn’t always an option.

And that can be really tough.

From my experiences with people, workplaces and across countries, this option to surround oneself with the right people may be a privileged “let them eat cake” type option.

There are many people who just don’t have those kinds of options for a myriad of reasons:

Social conformity and conflicting values.
Discrimination and prejudice.
Isolation and lack of access to social opportunities.
Financial limitations and unstable living environments.
Cultural and language barriers.
Anxiety, fear, and other internal challenges.

So what can you do if surrounding yourself with the right people is not an option for you?

Start small, start within.

Build the language and labels that describe your dreams and desired experiences and impacts in a way that means something to you.

What do you dream of? What do you want to experience? What do you value that other people do? What do you value that you do? What might others value that you do? How would you like to make a difference for people? What might you need to learn to help make that difference?

10/05/2023

What can you actually measure to make a real difference?

👉 You’ll need to use your words…. and maybe even pictures.

Measuring the effectiveness and success of you, your team and the organisation can be a bit clumsy.

📊 Sure, measuring hard tangibles like sales numbers, likes, money spent or saved, followers, time wasted, safety incidents etc, is pretty straightforward.

But these things are at the end of a lot of other, often intangible, contributions.

🔍 And it is these preceding contributions and their impacts where accurate measurements can lead to more meaningful and sustainable outcomes and improvements.

For example,

📈 We can track quite easily the input and output of a process and take a whole range of tangible measures such as time taken, issues rectified, resources consumed etc.

And then we can deliberate for ages and brainstorm more limits and restrictions to make gains or reduce costs.

🚩 But behind any process there is: purpose, objectives, planning, capabilities, attitudes, motivations, cultures, values and beliefs, to list a few. All of these contribute to, and impact on the process.

Are you measuring these?

Hats off to you if you are, and not surprising if you are not.

These intangibles are hard to understand in the first place, let alone know how to measure them.

So where do you start?

💬 Start by using your words (and pictures)… with others, to describe these contributions and the impacts you (collectively) want them to have.

Just pick one. Maybe it’s ‘planning’, and describe it, illustrate it, understand it.

❓ What does ‘planning’ look like today?
❓ Who is involved and allowed to contribute?
❓ How well does it connect purpose and actions?

Once you have a baseline or “as-is” picture, how now, do you want it to look?

✅ Who should be involved and enabled to contribute?
✅ What will the impacts be of planning?
✅ What will be different because of it?

Then we can measure how far we’ve come, where we need to get to and what we can do to make a difference.

03/05/2023

In the leadership and management spaces we’re often bombarded with perspectives such as great leaders:

🌅 Have unwavering clarity.
💬 Are brilliant communicators.
🚧 Treat every obstacle as an opportunity.
✅ Are always strategic and decisive.
👥 Surround themselves with the right people.
🔥 Maintain such high levels of drive and determination that people are simply inspired by them.

While the imagery this conjures may be appealing. It might also paint the picture of an unattainable superhero 🦸

🚩 Great leaders aren’t always pristine.

Fog can cloud their minds. They trip over obstacles. They second guess themselves. They fall victim to paths of least resistance. They can’t choose their teams. They don’t always have the answer. And sometimes they feel like s**t.

Regardless of this, great are willing and able to acknowledge and learn from it.

👉 But even more importantly: they are willing and able to understand the people and the environments they are navigating, so that they can identify how to best bend, flex and adapt to create the conditions where people can, and want to perform.
The success of leadership is when the group of people achieve their desired outcome/s.

🦸 And sometimes, an , and person can do exactly what is needed to help a team realise its purpose.

Because it's not about them.

It is about the people and the environments they are navigating.

12/04/2023

Management. It gets a bad rap sometimes.

👉 But it has a critical role to play in enabling teams and organisations to achieve their desired outcomes.

In navigating teams towards success, need to be equipped with a range of practices that ensure the accurate and transparent management of the activities a team performs.

One of the five key practices included in our Organisational Leadership programs is:

✅ Presence and Observation.

Whether you’re executing, directing, managing or supervising, the success of the team you are leading can be significantly impacted by your Presence and Observation practices.

⚠ Too little and the team disconnects.
⚠ Used as an inspection or audit and any trust will dissolve.
⚠ Too much talking from you and you’re just wasting their time.

04/04/2023

Transient organisations. Be aware... they are everywhere 😁

✅ Transient: lasting only for a short time.
✅ Organisation: a group of people with a shared purpose.

Think about you and your client/customer or supplier (i.e. not a team member, not a partner, not a boss).

Can you identify and label accurately the shared purpose behind your transient organisation?

👉 On the surface, you might want to sell something and they might want to get something.

Without thinking much we focus purely on the exchange and in particular, the fairness of that exchange.

⚖ For us humans, with our diverse interpretations, beliefs and experiences, the idea of fairness can be a slippery fish to keep steady.

Try now instead to find the shared purpose behind the transient engagement. For example:

💡 You want to sell something - why?
➤ Because you want to make money. Why?
➤ So you can do/buy x,y and z….
➤ Sure, but let's go deeper…
➤ Because you want to see the business/service succeed. Why?
➤ Because you believe the business/service can make a difference for people.

💡 They want to buy something. Why?
➤ Because they need to fill a gap. Why?
➤ Because filling the gap will solve a problem/challenge/desire.
➤ Why is that important?
➤ Because they want to make a difference in their life.

This isn’t so much about a fair exchange now but rather a shared purpose for making a difference.

🌅 What then might that purpose be? Maybe...

👫 Jill will contribute her broad expertise and unfailing drive to help people so that Jack can realise his desire to give an unforgettable speech to his investors.

📈 The procurement team will leverage their innovation and creativity to secure the fastest possible supply of parts so that the production team can deliver their product on time, every time.

What benefits can you imagine coming from such perspectives and purpose labelling?
➕
What opportunities does this present for collective intelligence?
________
Want to delve deeper into your organisations and leadership? Let us know and we can arrange a call.

29/03/2023

We can perceive leadership as a range of behaviours.

The effectiveness and appropriateness of these behaviours are determined by a host of variables, including but not limited to:

🔬 Internal beliefs, values, attitudes and accepted norms, and
🔭 External systems, environments, resources and expectations.

Understanding the entire landscape enables leaders and their teams to navigate it successfully.

24/03/2023

Ahh… coaching. It is a term that is used prolifically and yet practised with such varying degrees of interpretation, understanding and more critically… intention.

I have a decent amount of experience in the space of coaching.
✔ I’ve studied coaching and completed accredited training.
✔ I provide coaching to individuals and groups.
✔ I have been mentored and supervised in coaching.
✔ I deliver training and development on coaching behaviours.
✔ I’ve led and managed global pools of 200+ coaches.
✔ I’ve collaborated with coaching accreditation bodies like EMCC and ICF.
✔ I’ve assessed coaches and established standards and codes for coaching engagements.
✔ I’ve designed and implemented organisational wide coaching strategies and services.

👉 More importantly though, I’ve exchanged, shared and learned with all types of coaches. From uncertified natural coaches, to MCCs, to highly qualified and experienced psychologists who apply coaching practices when appropriate to help their clients.

🚩 What has stood out was that regardless of the number or hours, tools in the kit, or badge level behind the coach, if there were inconsistencies with the intentions of the coach then the success of people can be jeopardised.

Our intentions can become skewed without us even being aware of it. Sometimes coaches:

💪 Are convinced that a particular technique or methodology is the bee's knees and apply it unerringly.
🔗 Latch onto something innocuous a person has mentioned, believing it is the key to their success.
😓 Are determined to ensure they ‘challenge’ people, insisting that it is the only path for growth.
🗫 Aren’t braced to listen to diversities from their own interpretations of logic, emotion and experiences.

Great coaching can come in many forms and sometimes it only exists in a particular space at a particular point in time.

When coaches intentionally prepare themselves to sustain open, flexible and adaptable perceptions they create the space for people’s success.

And it can happen within a five minute chat, walking down a street.

Cheers,
Kieran

14/03/2023

❓ Remember that TV series from years ago ‘Lost’?
A plane goes down on a ‘deserted’ island and the group of people strive for survival and rescue?

👉 That scene helps paint the picture for the role and application of leadership, specifically, the positioning of leadership.

The circumstances created an organisation: A group of people with a shared purpose.

🆘 In this case that purpose was their survival and rescue.

They were a diverse group of people with different strengths, talents, values, experiences, limits and biases.

How do you lead that?

👉 Bend, flex and adapt to best meet the needs of people and the environment/conditions they are navigating.

👮 For some, command and control can provide the certainty they need in uncertain times.
💁 For others, they need the autonomy to do what they do best so that the purpose can be realised.
👭 Situations may require collective leadership brainpower and creativity.
😓 Emotions may need a smile, space, or just breaths and time.
🗪 Information needs to flow regularly, transparently and in all directions.
📈 Lessons need to be learnt and built upon.
🌅 Purpose needs to be kept alive.

Regardless of the purpose or environments, if there are people involved, leadership needs to bend, flex and adapt.

10/03/2023

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20/02/2023

Purpose, in its simplest form, is the reason for which something exists.

While that may sound deep or even intangible, the definition holds true for everything from life, to an organisation, to a project, to a meeting, to an object, to a single experience.

This becomes more apparent when we describe different purposes based on the contributions and impacts that form them.

For example:

🏢 The company exists to provide boundary-pushing, user-friendly development tools that enable people to build their dream platforms.

📅 The meeting aims to capture the latest updates and obstacles from each team so that every member understands what has been achieved, what needs attention, and what actions are to be taken.

🍹 The glass exists to hold liquid conveniently and transparently so that users can see its contents and drink without the contents going up their noses.

Defining purpose for your team or organisation does take effort though.

When groups of people start to label the contributions and impacts for their team’s existence, it often starts with the most tangible, easy to describe things.

“We fix cars, so that they work again”
“We design training solutions to meet your competency needs”
“We crunch your numbers for your tax return”

While factual, these descriptions are not often associated with inspiration, motivation, nor a reason to be a part of the team.

For that, you need to dig deeper.

Purpose needs to reflect the collective beliefs, virtues, strengths and abilities that contribute towards the experiences, feelings, outcomes and impacts.

And importantly, ‘purpose’ must hold meaning for each member of the group.

How will you know you’re getting close to accurately defining the purpose for your team?

Goosebumps.

16/02/2023

We’re thrilled to share that Ducidium Pty Ltd has been awarded Approved Supplier Status with the Queensland Department of Education for the provision of Professional Development Training for Staff.

What does that mean?

It means eligible customers including, but not limited to, Queensland State and non-State Schools and
Queensland Government departments and agencies can access our leadership development and coaching services through a Standing Offer Arrangement (SOA).

This SOA provides eligible customers with streamlined purchasing processes, competitive discounts and buyer protections.

So, if you’re in the Queensland education or government spaces, and looking to enhance leadership capabilities you can check out our offering on your OnePortal as well as at ducidium.com.