As I get ready to pack my bags and fly to Barcelona to spend the next three weeks, I wanted to reflect, in this last article for 2024, on the year that has been.

Twelve years ago, I was at an event where Greg Ellis, the former CEO of Realestate.com.au, was interviewed. They asked him what the secret to the success of the business was.

Last week, I shared my views on the debate between a culture of comfort versus a culture of performance and suggested that the focus should instead be on achieving a Culture of Learning.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Founder mode versus Manager mode. It’s not a new issue, but one that’s come back strongly after Brian Chesky, the founder and CEO of Airbnb, gave a talk on the topic.

I believe that one of the most important transitions leaders need to make when they start taking leadership positions is going from “achieving” to “setting up a system” where others can achieve.

A few years ago, a Neu21 team member left to start his own business; it is something we celebrate and encourage at Neu21. Before he left, he called me and asked me for some words of advice. I said to him: “As a leader and business owner, not everyone is going to like you.”

There is a word that expresses perfectly, what is possibly the most important quality leaders need to master for themselves, and for the teams and organisations they lead these days. That word is liminality. 

I know a lot of people who read this weekly newsletter, or follow the work we do at Neu21, are what we call the “change agents” in organisations.The people that don’t have to be convinced that there is a better way to lead, run teams and organisations, and who constantly question the traditional and conservative ways of operating in business.

Trust is a word that is everywhere in the workplace these days. We see it in company values, we hear it in meetings and we use it as a reason for things going or not going well in organisations. And for good reason!
Trust is a key foundation of cooperation; and in today’s world of work, you can’t achieve much without cooperation between people, departments and functions.

Recently I have been thinking about the word, legacy. A couple of things made me think about it.

Some time ago I went for a walk with a friend, and she mentioned that she had been listening to a podcast with Matthew McConaughey – the actor. The podcast reminded her of me and some of the ways I approach and think about business. The podcast was about his book Greenlights.

The last few weeks I have been talking about these concepts of Subtle Leadership and Referent Power. Today I want to expand on the latter.

Last week I introduced the concept of Subtle Leadership as first coined by Luz E. Quiñones in her article from 2022, as a way of influencing others through “referent power”

For the last 9 years I have been leading an organisation that has grown into a “successful” business. I use inverted comas around successful because that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.

This week I would like to touch on the causes that contribute to that busyness in organisations at individual level. Those things that we do to ourselves; us the humans that form part of those organisations.