Thinkers50 Podcast: Four Leadership Ideas

In this Thinkers50 Podcast episode, Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove give 4 challenges to leaders.

Stuart introduces the concept of slow leadership. Leaders today are busy with full schedules, and Stuart says there’s an antidote to that. He recounts a story of when he was sailing on the Atlantic. One of the passengers would make a suggestion on what could be done to go faster, and the captain of the yacht would stall on making a decision. After some time, the wind had changed and they would continue doing the same. Stu says that instead of making rash decisions, press pause, and develop slow leadership.

The second thought is from Des. Courage, he says, is required to be a leader. You need to be brave enough to step forward and say that you’re going to be a leader. You need to have courage to step forward, and that is the first step on your journey to become a real leader.

The third thought is to work on your weaknesses. Many executives and leaders progress thorugh their careers by playing to their strengths and ignore their weaknesses. Stu brings up an Olympic rower he knows, Alex Gregory, who was almost on the British team for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Most of his training was on rowing to improve his technique, but he should have been working on his weakness, which was body strength.

The fourth thought is on the resilience that’s required for when things do go wrong. It’s not the manner of the failure, it’s the resilience needed to get back up and try again.

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