Blog

The verdict is in: companies need to get much better at cultivating people leaders.

It’s as simple as this – keeping great staff is a challenge for many organisations. But does it come down to quality leadership, or is there more to it?

Firebrand Talent surveyed 1,225 working employees around Australia (NSW, VIC, WA, QLD, SA) for their Talent Ignition Report and asked about their job role, skill development, career development and progression.*

As a business leader, it’s always tricky to determine the best possible use of your organisation’s resources. While the economy around you fluctuates and shifts, you’re likely juggling the competing demands for greater efficiency, boosted productivity and continuous innovation. Achieving your strategic organisational objectives can often be extraordinarily difficult when you’re dealing with near-constant marketplace disruption and the inherent internal obstacles of any organisation.

A powerful presentation is our most critical tool in an organisation today. We use them to build buy-in with our team members, to communicate our big ideas and connect with employees to inspire them into action. Yet the majority of the time our presentations are bland, boring and the only impact they have is to get staff running for the doors (if they haven’t already fallen asleep in their seats).

As companies strive to keep up with innovation, Design Thinking can’t be missed.

Andy Eklund is a facilitator at the Australian Institute of Management. He’s spent 35,000 hours facilitating 6,500 workshops for 11,000 participants in 24 countries on 5 continents. That’s ore 700 different clients in 75 different industries.

To be nimble is to survive. Innovation will kill the stagnant. We’ve heard it countless times – successful organisations are innovative and agile. We’ve also seen it happen right before our eyes. Uber putting the taxi industry on notice, the end of Blockbuster Video and rise of Netflix.

We invite AIM Business School Faculty member, Dr David Paul to discuss Mindfulness and the innovative new AIM Short Course: ‘Mindfulness: Raise your Leadership Effectiveness’. Dr Paul has over 25 years of experience teaching Mindfulness techniques to some of Australia’s top leaders and Global Executives.

Corporate Entrepreneurship, or more aptly Intrapreneurship, is gaining traction, again. There are many companies quietly embracing and developing this powerful advantage. Steve Jobs credited the Macintosh team as evidence of Intrapreneurship and Richard Branson believes Intrapreneurs are necessary for healthy growth in any organisation.

Money makes the world go round and the same is true for your business or organisation. The importance of the role of accounting in business in ensuring the quality of financial reporting can’t be overstated.

As leaders, we build a repertoire of behaviors that work well for us and then we refine, tweak, refine. In the early stage of our leadership journey, we make mistakes often – mishandle communication, make hiring boo-boos and misjudge the impact of our own actions on others – and then we learn not to do these things again. We carry a library of examples in our heads of things that did and didn't work so we can repeat our successes and minimise our failures. This is all rational and efficient behavior.

In a noisy world, it can be easy for leaders to equate impact with how much they talk. Less is thought about the power of silence. Silence is a communication device, just like listening and talking, which when used wisely can increase a leader’s impact.