You don’t need to dig deeply into the literature of Leadership Development before you find advocates of ‘learning on the job’. Strong voices tell us that the best way for leaders to hone their skills is through the first-hand practice of leadership itself. I’ve got some sympathy for this viewpoint, there are some parts of leadership development that benefit from an ‘in at the deep-end approach’, it’s a great way of recognising the adaptability and resilience needed to do the job well, and it blows away the idea that you can learn leadership straight from a book. But I’d suggest...

oday’s organisations: flatter, faster, more pressured, more accountable. This situation has created the worrying paradox that every member of the organisation carries more responsibility for ‘getting it right’ yet there is less resource for the scrutiny that protects these members from ‘getting it wrong’. In these circumstances there is ever greater pressure on the individual to exercise the thinking skills that will spot flawed reasoning in the data that they receive, and detect equally flawed reasoning in the data that they generate. Critical Thinking and Logical Thinking are, more than ever, a personal skill set that needs to be employed in relation...

When I work with teams it is also interesting for them to get an understanding of how they communicate. Do they really listen to each other? Does everyone's voice get heard? Do they ensure that they have a common understanding? Are they assuming too much? I love using experiential tools as rather than someone telling them its more powerful for them to experience it and have an 'Aha' moment. I find ColourBlind really effective for this. It was developed in 1991 for training Air Traffic Controllers in the UK to communicate effectively. When you think of it the air traffic...