Michelle is currently the CEO & Founder at IDEAction, previously to this she was the Chief Organiser and Manager of StartupWeek Sydney in 2015. She is a highly skilled strategist, facilitator, connector and communicator. Sydney StartUp Week: Sydney's largest start up event. As well as leading the biggest start up event in Sydney, Michelle has
Author : Sunnie Giles What makes an effective leader? This question is a focus of my research as an organizational scientist, executive coach, and leadership development consultant. Looking for answers, I recently completed the first round of a study of 195 leaders in 15 countries over 30 global organizations. Participants were asked to choose
“There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” - Peter Drucker The Challenge On a recent flight back home, my neighbour and I got chatting. He was an experienced, retired CEO who was now passionately spending his time and energy mentoring and guiding others involved with SMEs.
In her remarkable book, Daring Greatly, Brené Brown remarks, “We are psychologically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually hardwired for connection, love, and belonging.” It’s a deep primal call to be part of a group, a tribe, that nurtures us and protects us. That’s how we managed to evolve and survive successfully as a species: tribes helped
It’s 2036. 20 years ago we were all waiting with baited breath for virtual reality, artificial intelligence, driverless cars, nano medical technology, replaceable organs, and robots to help us make dinner. That seems so archaic now… My friend and thought leader extraordinaire Mykel Dixon believes that “The Future Belongs to the Artists”. Whereas I agree
Do you sometimes feel that your communication flows easily and at other times it is like pulling teeth? As a leader or manager, would you like to stop getting resistance to your requests, proposals, ideas and suggestions? A Natural Flow When there is a natural flow between people in business, they feel totally comfortable expressing
On a leadership program a woman asked, “When did we stop being able to speak the truth?” I asked her what she meant. She explained in her organisation you can rank applicants for a job as ‘suitable’ or ‘less suitable’. You cannot rank them ‘not suitable’ or even ‘not yet suitable’. She said, “Some people
When I think about the moments that matter most in leadership, these are the moments when we need to be most fully ourselves. Like when a colleague is having a meltdown. Like when our integrity is being challenged. Like when someone rejects our work. Our presence needs to be like a lightning bolt: bright, focused,
“You idiot!” I berated myself for locking the car before taking my bag out. I was a in flap, rushing to an appointment. That morning I had dropped a picture and cracked the glass, dumped half the chicken food bucket over my feet, and slipped taking the stairs two at a time. Breathe. Calling myself
It was getting late. I was trekking with a group of police officers from Singapore, on a leadership training program with Outback Initiatives. We scrambled along a narrow path that dropped away to sharp cliff rocks, pounded by an especially vigorous surf. I kept glancing down, imagining how I’d be able to rescue someone should
