When should you be Determined versus Flexible?

Folklore contains numerous sayings underpinning the idea that leadership needs to be firm, decisive and above all, resolute.

The myth goes that changing your mind is a sign of weakness and it leads to vacillation when you and a team are working to a set of objectives.

However, how valid is that model?

As any structured leadership training will confirm, much work needs to be done by way of analysis prior to an important decision being made. Decisions that are made in haste are frequently repented at leisure. Yet once all the analysis has been completed, sometimes a leader needs to make a decision and do everything in their power to help ensure that it proves to be the correct one.

It is true that leaders who suffer from constant crises of confidence will be inclined to keep changing their mind and that encourages others around them to wonder whether there is a firm hand on the tiller.

There is though, a significant danger in taking the ‘strong determined leadership’ stereotype too far.

One of the key attributes of a successful leader is also the ability to recognise that, in spite of all attempts to prevent it happening, a wrong decision has been made. This can sometimes be painful to accept and perhaps result in some personal reputation damage but it is essential to have the courage to recognise that a bad decision has been made and to take steps to correct it with the minimum impact possible on whatever the enterprise is.

Leaders who lack this attribute can become guilty of fixation and egoism to the extent that they are incapable of recognizing that they are leading things in the wrong direction. That’s sometimes best more plainly described as pig-headedness.

Sometimes a bad decision cannot be corrected by injecting more resource or more energy in to make it right. It simply has to be either reversed or a radically different decision made to replace it.

Being able to critically self-evaluate your own decisions and identify those that are not working out is a prime characteristic of mature leadership.

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How Do You Identify What’s Important?

Almost every individual occasionally has conflicting demands for their attention and need to prioritise where they spend their time as a result.

This, of course, isn’t easy!     

Even in our private lives, trying to juggle our time can be a major challenge and in a professional environment it can be 10 times harder.

There are a number of techniques that can be used to try and help identify which of the demands on your attention are in fact those that are critically important and which can be at least temporarily deferred to second-priority status.  In leadership development programmes this is called, technically, an impact assessment.  It is all about trying to identify those things where you have the greatest risks or the greatest opportunities and which you should attend to first of all.

Space doesn’t permit a quick run through of the technique but if you do find yourself needing to sort things out, here are a few dangers you may need to guard against. 

1.    The “He who shouts loudest” syndrome.  All of us may be subconsciously inclined to give priority to someone who is making a lot of noise about their particular issue.  It may not, in reality, be that important.

2.    Your pet subjects or friends.  Giving priority to an activity because it is one you are particularly interested in above all others or because you like the person concerned, might not be an objective decision.

3.    Brownie points.  Try to avoid assuming something should be given top priority simply because it is the one that offers you the most scope for personal positive publicity.

4.    Easy-peasy.  We are all vulnerable to subconsciously parking the difficult challenges and dealing with the easy ones.

Don’t risk making decisions that you will subsequently regret based upon some of the above influences.  Instead, get yourself on a leadership development course and learn some of the techniques associated with identifying priorities.   

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TOP TIPS for Keeping People’s Attention!

If you are running any form of seminar, lecture, workshop, training course or youth leadership development program, keeping the attention of your audience can sometimes be a challenge.


Even if the attendees are attending voluntarily, there are some aspects of human psychology you need to be aware of if you are to avoid people potentially mentally ‘switching off’ and disengaging.

•    If you are presenting something, try not to talk for more than 20 minutes without some sort of break to give people a change from needing to listen to just one voice.

•    Try to throw the session opened to questions, comments or group exercises at least once every 30 minutes.  This can help avoid people mentally dozing off.

•    It is an extremely good idea to stop for some sort of physical out-of-the-room break every 45-60 minutes.  Try to get people on their feet and moving around for a coffee or something else, even if only for 5 minutes before the session re-starts. It gets the blood oxygen flowing.

•    Try to speak spontaneously rather than reading verbatim from prepared notes. 

•    Make sure you use plenty of visual or other aids.  Looking at somebody’s face and listening to them speak for extended periods can be extremely tiring.  Projections, flip charts, and other graphical aidsall help stimulate people’s visual interest.

•    Ask the odd spontaneous question.  This isn’t meant to intimidate people and your questions should be open without a right or wrong answer.  It is an old technique but if delegates suspect they may be engaged with a question at any time it can be effective in keeping their adrenaline levels up.

•    Keep plenty of fresh air circulating.

•    Share the podium and avoid ‘grandstanding’.  A change of face, voice and delivery style can help freshen up a session and stop attendees becoming stale.

These are all basic tips but can be very useful in helping to keep your youth leadership development program or other sessions on course and delegates firing on all cylinders! 

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Leadership Development and Training – The Role of Failure

For some people, failure is one of the great non-subjects.

Common speech is littered with platitudes on the subject, including things such as describing failure as an opportunity or being something that one should never admit to.
Much more worrying is the occasional suggestion that somehow the peoples of the First Nations are fatalistic about failure and simply shrug it off with indifference. This, of course, is simply wrong and shows a marked lack of understanding of the cultures and individuals concerned.

In fact, members of the indigenous communities are just as determined to achieve success as anyone else and don’t welcome failure lightly.

Here at the Stars Institute of Learning and Leadership, we know a thing or two about leadership development and training.  We also, as you might expect, understand how to apply that in some of the very specific cultural circumstances of the Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples.

However, we also understand that things in life don’t always go according to plan.  Sometimes in spite of the best endeavours of the individual or organisation concerned, things simply fail to materialise in line with our expectations and efforts.

One of the primary objectives of leadership development and training is to try and reduce the possibilities of such events occurring but it is also extremely important to understand the techniques for dealing with problems when they arise.

One of the first things to try and break is the association of things not going to plan with ‘failure’. Failure has extremely negative semantic connotations that often imply fault and the allocation of blame to an individual or group.  In fact, problems should be seen as no more than problems and strategies need to be adopted to deal with them without recrimination and blame – particularly when it’s self-inflicted.

Our leadership development and training programmes aim to instil confidence into individuals and teach them how problems need to be used as a platform for learning and improvement rather than destroyers of self-confidence.Out of that will grow the realization that failure isn’t inevitable and rarely is it ever total or irredeemable.

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