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Brown Dog Books - Patricia Weslake-Evans Dr

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57 pages

English

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Dr Patricia Weslake- Evans is a leadership facilitator, supporting organisations to continuously reflect on their leadership requirements, drawing together leadership teams at all levels, to improve performance. With a team of four, Patricia has produced an experienced and well-considered reflection on the leadership debate, its limitations and suggests a way forward through the TOPS Winning Leadership Approach. 'I see skills gaps in every organisation and sector I deal with: there are noticeable trends. Management not leadership is the norm, process without culture the overriding driver. The pace of life imposed on us in an immature technological society is inhibiting leadership reflection.' Who then will be the leaders of the future? Will we continuously be individuals trying to fit a current, reinvented leadership model? Why do we need to work differently? 'I believe we have a national, albeit global crisis, which should be balanced by a different people-orientated approach to leadership.' The TOPS approach encourages leadership teams to work leadership out for themselves and ensures that the real impact of their leadership is found in the workplace to secure work and vision for future generations. This is a practical, challenging book for executives who want to raise the benchmark for themselves, their team and their organisation. It is designed to stimulate thought with meaningful questions, rather than give answers. It will certainly create waves in a still pond.

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Gestion et management

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Publié par	Brown Dog Books
Date de parution	23 juillet 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785452529
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published 2018
Copyright © Dr Patricia Weslake-Evans (Weslake-Evans Limited) 2018
The right of Dr Patricia Weslake-Evans (Weslake-Evans Limited) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk
ISBN printed book: 978-1-78545-251-2 ISBN e-book: 978-1-78545-252-9
Cover design by Kevin Rylands Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK
About the Author
Overcoming a sense of scholastic underachievement and low self-esteem, Dr Patricia Weslake-Evans taught science and religious education in Merthyr Tydfil, led a sixth-form college in Quebec Province, Canada and achieved a bachelor’s degree, a master’s and a doctorate in education. In the 1990s she became a school inspector and held leading roles with business-education link organisations – Young Enterprise and Understanding Industry. Simultaneously she developed a successful business based on advising organisations to improve their performance through people. Her experience extends across all sectors and types of organisations, having contact with 3000 in over 20 years. She has taught, trained business consultants, managers and teachers, coached, mentored, facilitated, governed, chaired, inspected and influenced.
Patricia lives in the Wye Valley near Chepstow in South Wales with her husband, daughter and standard poodle Sherlock.
Acknowledgements
I must acknowledge the persistence of those who have urged me to write – previous clients who appreciated that their and other business need to change for the better, to face the challenging future with improved leadership.
My thanks to Sarah Crawley, Chief Executive of Barnardo’s Wales, who appreciates her need for support and encouragement and Wendy Matthews HR Manager at MotoNovo Finance Limited, who demonstrated her mature leadership discernment as part of a leadership team.
Wyn Griffiths, owner of Pinnacle Limited, a lettings company believes totally in what I am about and Gary Roberts Managing Director and Stephanie Schanzer Office Manager of DCS (Diverse Commercial Solutions) have worked tirelessly to develop the leadership team at DCS and to change the learning culture of the business.
Linda Jones (retired) of the Welsh Government taught me several valuable lessons about stickability and people in business and in consultancy roles. I needed much assistance with motivation to write my book and Jacquie Turnbull (author) provided me with the necessary challenge, guidance and honest friendship.
My thanks to HMP Leicester who gave me permission to include ‘The Smile’ which touches on the vital inclusion of spirituality in the persona.
Last, but by no means least, my thanks and admiration go to my team, Jean Church, Angharad Brown and previously Pam Tanner and to my family Robert and Rhiannon.
This book is dedicated to Rhiannon, who I trust, in business and life in general, will be able to muse on and use the practical insights in this book.
Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Foreword – The Challenge of This Book
1 The On-Going Leadership Debate – Where Are We Now?
2 Role Modelling
3 Burn Out – The Spinning Top Analogy
4 Lift Off – The Rocket Approach
5 A Winning Leadership Approach – Putting People First
6 Strategic Awareness
7 What Should a Strategy for Leadership Look Like?
8 The Importance of Evaluation
9 Developing a Strategy for Collaborative Leadership A Case Study Experience of Barnardo’s Cymru
10 Key Steps Towards a Winning Leadership Approach
Bibliography and Further Reading
FOREWORD
THE CHALLENGE OF THIS BOOK
You will face a choice, to experience burn out or lift off in your organisation.
A Winning Leadership Approach ( Chapter 5 ) is based on an understanding and application of leadership in the workplace and how it differs from a crisis-driven approach. It uses the analogy of an energy propelled rocket driven by reflective leaders compared to a frenetic spinning top epitomising crisis management.
Based on trust, ownership, proactivity and support, a balanced Winning Leadership Approach offers an opportunity for an organisation to design a bespoke strategy for leadership. It encourages you to think and behave differently as a senior team if your organisation is to succeed and create a sustainable future.
Each chapter challenges you as a team to reflect, optimise your personal qualities and apply your thoughts as you agree how to lead. My approach with organisations has always been to challenge through probing questions. I will ask many questions that only you can answer. The book is designed to make you think and work together with your team to achieve clarity, consistency and momentum. Doing this, you and other defined leaders together with your potential successors will develop your approach to leadership and increase your understanding of yourselves and the people you lead.
You will consider in the following pages:

Who are the leaders in your organisation?
Whether you are a management or leadership team
How to be a proactive leader
How role-modelling fits within your strategy for leadership
The culture you want to achieve
The management processes required to support the leadership you require
Whether you are supporting leaders in the most cost-effective way
The importance of continuous reflection
Throughout the book, you will find guided activities to assist your reflection. I suggest you work chapter by chapter to reflect as a team. The above are questions I recommend you ask of yourself and your team as you progress. The end result will be a strategy for leadership which is fit for purpose, guaranteed to improve business performance and the ethos of your organisation. Before being able to build a strategy for leadership, much reflection must occur. This is why Chapters 1 - 6 build team discussion to the point where a strategy for leadership can be formed ( Chapters 7 and 8 ).
Having pondered for many years over the type of book required to put forward my thoughts and findings – the culmination of decades of reflective leadership and learning, I have at last found the courage to put pen to paper. Motivated by clients and colleagues who have urged me to write I have spent years considering the wide audience with whom I have come into contact, along with those who will use this to aid their leadership in the future.
When I was speaking with one of my smaller business clients in the human resource sector, I used just one word to question an action – ‘Why?’ This stopped him dead in his tracks, resulted in a change of approach and indeed a new philosophy for life. This reaction has been common throughout my career. I have come to the conclusion that this book should be based on such simple, practical insight and input. Hence, the many questions.
What type of support do leadership teams need? I am reminded of a person who encouraged one of his managers to think ‘more strategically’. A blank look ensued. It was obvious that how to do that was a big gap in the manager’s knowledge and experience. Much more reflection and guided experience was required. I’ve become an avid reader of blank looks even when people say ‘I understand’. It has made me question my own leadership beliefs and why I lead in the way that I do. This book will assist you to move from blank looks and in some cases from denial to reflective thinking.
A Winning Leadership Approach is not a theoretical model that you follow blindly or a regurgitation of academic arguments, but a journey which results in continuous experiential learning. If you want a tool kit you will need to invent it. This is not a toolbox handbook. Learning by doing is frequently the best way to learn. At the very least, this will help to build stronger and less dysfunctional senior teams. It is not a book for the weak – it requires vision, commitment and stickability. My advice to you is ‘never give up’ – this is too important to overlook or put on a back-burner.
I trust you will find this book challenging yet stimulating. My intent is that it will ensure the future sustainability and growth of your organisation as you drive and live the culture that you and your people create.
Chapter 1
THE ON-GOING LEADERSHIP DEBATE – WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Whilst having breakfast with the world renowned British management guru Professor Charles Handy and his wife in 2011, he gave me a copy of the London Business School Strategy Review Issue 2 (2011), which focussed on leadership. In it, Stuart Crainer (editor) refers to leadership as being ‘an intellectual heavy industry with hardly a day passing without a new theory, treatise or celebration of a leader’.
Authentic, inspirational, transformational, brave, situational and conversational leadership amongst others, are all worthy of consideration. Reward, recognition, motivation and empowerment are frequently used and favoured words. Every debate still centres around ‘what makes a good leader?’ This is a generic question. We are in danger of reinventing the wheel, going round in endless circles and not moving on.
We’ve Barely Started
There is, however, a huge chasm between theory and practice. My experience shows that people at all levels, in organisations of varied sizes, complain of poor people management and a lack of leadership to solve their problems. The complainants have difficulty identifying role models (see Chapters 2 and 4 ) and those at the top acknowledge that they have barely touched on the subject of leadership. In discussion with