Welcome to the very first 'Towards Leadership from Leadership Letters' with Lizzie Bentley Bowers

For me, an effective, curious, compassionate, decisive, resilient and successful leader is able to serve the needs of their organisation, their community, themselves and indeed the wider world in a way that is about thriving and about sustainability in both the individual energy sense, and a global sense. It is leaders that are equipped to go towards anything and everything their world of work presents to them with that will contribute to better, happier, sustainable and empowered workplaces and it’s our mission to help you do that.

I'm passionate about the fact that hearing insights, inspiration, approaches and experiences from our guests on Leadership Letters is an important and rich resource. And I’m equally passionate that in sharing those ideas, it’s important to equip you, if you need it, with a sense of how to do those things; some ways to get there. Towards Leadership is where we will chew over the ’how to’ of Leadership and where you will find resources in our read, watch and listen to section, as well as tools, techniques, reflective exercises and thinking to support and challenge you as a leader, whether you have been in the C suite for many years, or are just starting out in your career with an eye on your future as a leader.

The focus of this episode is listening and relationship building, inspired by insights from Tanya Marwaha in S3 Ep 05 of Leadership Letters. We share the impact of distractions and not paying attention to others, and go on to take a dive into how to listen better and ways bringing our attention back when it wanders. We also look at hope to prepare to listen better, particularly to the people you disagree with.

In our section offering recommendations of resources for leaders in the form of something to read, to watch and to listen to, we begin by looking at the value of a book by an old favourite of the Towards Leadership podcast, Susan Scott. We then draw insights and skill building exercises from Melissa Reiner’s talk at TEDX London Business School. Finally we start a conversation about ADHD with the help of Grace Timothy’s podcast.

“Our work, our relationships, and our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to transform a company, a relationship, or a life, any single conversation can. Speak and listen as if this is the most important conversation you will ever have with this person. It could be. Participate as if it matters. It does.”

Susan Scott

RECOMMENDATION LINKS:

• The talk How to listen like a musician by Melissa Reiner
• The book Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott, which you can also find in my Library!
• The podcast Is It My ADHD with Grace Timothy

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.