Julia Middleton's Thoughts on Leadership

It’s been a pretty big week at Common Purpose, with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom paying our emerging leaders course a visit in Bangalore.
The occasion has me thinking about what is emerging for leaders in India – and Hinglish leaps to mind.
It’s the language of the future I am told – a combination [...]

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When UK Prime Minister David Cameron asked a participant in Bangalore what had shifted in his thinking by being on a Common Purpose course, the participant said:
“I knew I was a leader at work but not for a minute had I thought of myself as a leader of Bangalore”
This says it all. What Common Purpose [...]

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I regularly misjudge situations because of pride. Especially situations when I am working with people from many countries. Partly because I don’t have much pride.
I reckon I did once. But that over the years I have made so many mistakes – sometimes bad judgements, sometimes because I was over-stretched and didn’t make a judgement – [...]

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I attended a revolt recently. Many many middle managers were being asked to think different, stretch, lift, work together, jump fences, go the extra mile. And not a single senior manager was there to do it with them. This was an organisation that must adapt or die, there was not just a burning platform, it [...]

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An investment banker explained the problem of their culture to me. He was not from Goldman but he knew “but for the grace of god…”
He said that there was a “deep commitment to intellectual excellence in a bubble”.

We went back through the words:
Deep, don’t underestimate how deep and in the depth lies the apparent [...]

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There is a lot of discussion and commentary at the moment in the UK about boards and governance following the Financial Reporting Council’s publication of the UK Corporate Governance Code (formerly the Combined Code).
It’s all about how you ensure that the boards of the future protect us from the disasters over the last couple of [...]

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I have always deeply rejected attempts to draw distinctions between how men and women lead. Mostly in defence of my sons.
Just because they grow up to trust their instincts, use words with values in them, take the trouble to build relationships with colleagues and judge situations through a feel for people and not just facts, [...]

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When I went on the board of Common Purpose India a fellow trustee sent me a dictionary of Indian terms. There is one that he has to keep re-sending to me because I forget it every time and get all excited.
It’s “yes” means “maybe” and “maybe” means “no”.

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I was at a Common Purpose Quest last week. Participants from the UK and Germany went to Essen in the Ruhr to have their prejudices undermined. They expected grim dirty polluted industrial decay and instead – found green regeneration.
We were at Zeche Zollverein all day. It used to be the biggest coal refinery in Europe, [...]

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With everyone (colleagues, media, stakeholders, customers) asking you for leadership – can you drown in it? So that you become only a reflection of what others want of you? I sat with some students on an MBA last week and the big thing they seemed to be asking me was how not to drown? They [...]

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