Reflective

Work is not just about making brilliant decisions. It is also about how we manage our time and energy, individually and as a team. Almost everyone feels there is not enough time in a day, but there are days when we feel “Wow, we got a lot done”. How do we make that happen more often?

Sometimes the problem isn’t lack of time at all, it’s lack of energy. When we are at our best we can zip through a project, but when we are tired or uninspired the hours go by but not a lot is accomplished.

The pressures of managing are constant, not temporary: in other words, pressure in this job is business as usual.

This topic looks at the popular myth of the manager as fully in control and replaces it with some of the facts about the characteristics of managing: the hectic pace, the fragmented work, the orientation to action. How is anyone supposed to think, let alone think ahead, amidst all this?

In this session, you will gain insight into leadership styles by extracting valuable lessons regarding power and empowerment from Eastern and Western classical literature. Two extreme models—autocratic, top down leadership and a more participatory, empowering leadership style—are vividly illustrated by, respectively, the political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli and the ancient Chinese thinker, Lao Tzu.

Leadership is an important aspect of managing. But what does this mean in your day-to-day work? As you will see, leadership is a complex interplay of factors which requires balance.

This session explores the three key factors which contribute to leadership: qualities, behaviors and context.

How often do you wonder not just about what happened, but why it happened and how it differs from other happenings?

Today’s session introduces the importance of reflection in managerial work.

Reflection is about getting the meaning from everyday experiences where managers may too easily allow ‘doing’ to drive out ‘thinking’; and ‘thinking’ might miss out on the clues provided by feelings and intuition. By bringing conscious awareness into the moment, the result will be more informed action.

This session introduces you to the power of foresight and shows you how foresight can be carefully cultivated by re-educating your attention. Foresight is the ability to be finely tuned in to the undercurrents of events and happenings all around us. It involves the cultivated ability to see what is unseen or overlooked. The ability to 'read', or 'interpret’ the undercurrents and the changing moods of markets, popular opinions, customers, and employees are vital capabilities that no forward-looking individual or business can afford to ignore.

In this session, you will:

• Come to appreciate the essence of managing.
• Consider your own approach to managing and how you can improve it.

Note: Please bring your agenda to this session, or at least notes on what you did over the past week.