Has your leadership changed?  Are you still leading your organisation in the same way you did before the recession?  Are you ready for change yourself?

Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones propose some thoughts about the challenges facing leadership during a recession in this article published recently in the Financial Times.  Read the article here.

I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

Leaders require effective, authentic relationships with others for leadership to work.  This article – “Authentic Leadership” by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones discusses these relationships and outlines a CASE framework which you can use in a few seconds to help you decide how effective your relationships with others are.

To be an authentic leader you need to be true to yourself whilst working well with those around you.

How do you rate?  What can you do next?

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe – Abraham Lincoln

If it came down to one thing to make a local Third Sector Organisation better, more effective, more resiliant and more likely to be sustainable long term (through the recession), what might it be?

How about a great leader??

What if the leader is busy working in the business, managing it day to day, getting their hands dirty (chopping down the tree)?

Will that leader take time out to ‘sharpen their axe’?  (hone their leadership skills)

If they don’t, isn’t their effort less focused, less effective and less beneficial to the organisation.

Why not stop, sharpen the axe, then continue with a new set of skills?

The Thrive Leaders Network is here to help encourage our local Third Sector Leaders to take time out to Sharpen their Axes.

Will you sharpen your axe?

TED (www.ted.com) allows us all to hear from world leaders, movers & influences from the comfort of our own web browsers.

TED (originally Technology, Enterprise & Design) is a non-profit dedicated to “Ideas worth Spreading”.   The website contains 100s of video presentations from 100s of global speakers.  If you’re looking for ideas, looking for inspiration, new thinking or challenges, looking to understand how leaders think (or how they present) then TED is the place to look.

TEDGlobal 2009 has just finished in Oxford, so there will be even more speeches online soon.

Why not start here – Katherine Fulton speaks on the future of philanthropy, calling for a new generation of citizen leaders.

…coaching, mentoring, training, networking, on the job development, support…

“Learning Circles” is a toolkit developed by Peter Fryer of TrojanMice.  It helps simplify the maze of options that exist for taking Management and Leadership Development forward.  It brings together information about each option, local providers and resources and enables quicker decision making on how to plan your development.

Learning Circles Toolkit

Members of the Thrive Leaders Network will have exclusive access to the “Learning Circles” toolkit to help them lead their organisations and groups forward.  The “Learning Circles” toolkit will be used at meetings to help us choose our subject materials and to help signpost indivdiuals and organisations onwards.  But we’ll be developing the toolkit as the groups evolves too.

If you’d like information about the toolkit and using it, then get involved with the Network.  Contact us and join up.

Our next meeting is Monday 21st September 2009 at 5pm.  Venue tbc (in Grimsby).

If you’re interested in joining the network, finding out more or coming to our next meeting, get in touch.  Or just read on…

Karl – Leaders Network Manager

What do you think leadership is?

What about this?

“Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.”

Is that it?

Or you could look at all the definitions of leadership (try Wikipedia here).  Maybe that’s too complex?

How do you lead?

That’s why the Thrive Leaders Network is not about trying to fix an idea of who a leader is, how they should lead or the techniques or styles they should choose.  What we are trying to do is give leaders of our local Third Sector Organisations a chance to explore their options & their possibilities.

Leaders need to be able to choose how to lead – there’s no doubt others will choose to follow them or not!

Why not share your comments on Leadership & how you define it?  Why not join the Leaders Network to discuss it with others?

It’s a global perspective but many of the thoughts are fresh and challenging for Third Sector leaders looking to raise money for their organisations.

Read his blog here  http://sashadichter.wordpress.com

Or start with his Manifesto (a .pdf).  See whether you agree with him or whether you can change your thinking.

At the first meeting of the Thrive Leaders Network (on 21st July at the Fishing Heritage Centre in Grimsby), we started to explore this topic.

Defining Servant Leadership is one thing (find out more on Wikipedia here).  But it’s another thing working out how that style of leadership might work for you and your group.

The Servant Leader…

values people
listens and learns
heals – accepting and sharing mistakes
gives power away
is self-effacing
and knows that everyone is responsible for leadership

This definition was put to our first Leaders group and a powerful group discussion ensued.  Members of the group were able to share their own viewpoints and experiences, propose suggestions, challenge ideas and generally learn about the concept and decide whether it related to them and how they might apply it in practice.

The group came to no fixed conclusion – nor was it supposed to.

Members left with a new set of ideas, new options for their leadership approach, perhaps inspired, perhaps challenged.

How does your leadership style work?  Could you be a servant leader?

Would you like to open up your thinking on Leadership?

The next meeting of the Thrive Leaders Network is Monday 21st September.  Will we see you there?

Meetings are bi-monthly and future planned dates are (all Mondays):

16th November
18th January 2010
8th March 2010

Put them in your diary.  All meetings run 5pm to 7pm to ensure as little work time as possible is lost.  There will always be food to keep your energy levels up!

Interested in attending?  Contact us to book in.

See you at the next meeting.