I wanted to know if people who were identified as effective leaders had more self-awareness than people who were identified as ineffective leaders. I also wanted to know if the answer would be the same across the five job levels of the Welsh public service. I looked...
Leadership
Reflections on 2020
As the year draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the changes we’ve been through. We’ve been through fear, loss and sadness. We’ve been agile, we’ve flexed and become virtual. We’ve had division, incredulity and unacceptance alongside kindness, compassion and...
Discovery Series – Part 4
One of my research questions was: do strategic level leaders have more self-awareness than leaders at any other level? The literature suggested yes. My research said no! In the questionnaire, people had to give responses for themselves and their manager. I grouped...
Discovery Series – Part 3
The second part of my research involved doing eight interviews. Similar themes kept coming up and what people told me, backed up my questionnaire findings. Five particularly strong themes came through the interviews. They’re listed below, in order or importance:...
Discovery Series – Part 1
My research focussed on self-awareness, leader effectiveness and leadership at all levels of the Welsh public service. I asked Welsh public service employees to complete a questionnaire and I carried out some interviews. My findings told me that there was a...
Keeping Up Momentum
Six months ago, we were talking about a requirement for a new leadership. We talked about crisis management, flexibility and agility. We talked about emotional intelligence and a need for leaders to recognise the importance of staff wellbeing. It seems like we’ve...
Women in Leadership
Whilst casually scrolling through Facebook over lunch today I saw a video about an all female car garage called Spanners with Manners It instantly caught my attention and jolted me into taking notice. I felt an incredible sense of pride both because of what the owner,...
Passion for your Job
Talking to someone who’s passionate about their job is a real gift. Today I had an unexpected conversation with someone I’ve never met from an organisation that’s completely new to me. His passion for his role, his organisation and the people he works with were...
The Self/Other Ratings Studies
In researching self-awareness (SA), the self/other ratings studies (SORs) appeared as key research in both defining SA and working out how to assess it and improve it. Essentially the SORs carry out research on ‘what do I think of me, what do you think of me’. If you...
The Crossroads of 2020 & 2021
Does it feel like we’re at another crossroads to you? The end of a terrible year is almost upon us and the second wave of lockdowns are over. Everyone is looking forward to what January will bring. In looking forward it’s clear that they’re not ‘looking forward’ at...
Empathy and Outcomes
Yesterday I blogged about EI for execs. I mentioned the need for empathy to help inform outcomes. The London School of Economics says that one of the three principles for using design thinking for business, is empathy (along with expansive thinking and...
Emotional Intelligence for Execs
A few years ago, I set up a daily newspaper called The Self Awareness Daily, via Paper.li, auto-populated from Twitter. It draws from accounts that post about emotional intelligence, self-awareness and leadership news. Today, it shared an article from inc.com...









