Management Café: February 2023
Looking for a podcast about leadership and management to accompany you during your coffee break? Join Pilar Orti and Tim Burgess for 20 minutes (more or less) of informal chat about leading teams.
From this page you can listen to our Management Café February episodes - but we recommend you subscribe to the show on your favourite podcast app, or subscribe to the Management Café blog, where we post the show notes, sometimes with illustrations.
We’d love to hear what you think of the show, so feel free to drop us a note with your comments, or suggestions for new episodes.
#44 the value of being an “authentic leader”
For a long time the dominant narrative of leadership has been of fearless leaders who move from triumph to triumph without serious flaws or doubt. But in recent years there has been a move towards authentic leadership. Leaders who show vulnerability and who share their weaknesses as well as their strengths. Over coffee Pilar and Tim dig into authentic leadership, the benefits it can deliver for leaders and companies. And also why it isn't for everyone.
#45 The dangers of focusing on productivity and metrics
Metrics are very alluring for managers. Our software tools are full of data and reporting... with just a few clicks we might get the magic mix of numbers that will give us control.
But for staff it's a different story. Too often metrics are used as a kind of straight jacket. Work becomes narrowly defined, devoid of nuance and complexity. Targets creep ever higher. And as the pressure mounts, inevitably people will try to game the system.
Over coffee Pilar and Tim try to imagine an environment where managers and teams are aligned on how to use metrics thoughtfully to make their work better.
#46 Proactive wellbeing
The pandemic changed workplace awareness of physical and mental wellbeing. So what does it look like in 2023? We discuss what managers can do to pro-actively improve wellbeing for their workers. This can be a challenge for leaders as wellbeing is something we experience at an individual level, but it is influenced by factors inside and outside the workplace. What is a manager to do?
#47 Can WE be "too authentic"?
Following on from episode #44 where we discussed vulnerability and authenticity, today in the café we go deeper on how much of our true character should we show at work. Is it entirely our choice? Are there parts of ourself that shouldn’t be in our workplace?
This is such a nuanced topic as we have to juggle our level of self-awareness, our assessment of our work environment, the degree of comfort that we feel and, of course, our highly subjective interpretation of how others perceive us. For us as managers, and especially for the people we manage, there is a world of difference between our workplace embracing or rejecting our true character and values.