Caroline Donaldson, Executive Coach, delivered a fascinating talk on how you can push expectations, achieve more and be a more effective leader. She demonstrated how to inspire a much better performance from our teams by identifying when you’re in the ‘zone’ and what derails you .. the critical role of vision and goals and how to identify what sort of leader you are and how others perceive you.
George Boag, Chief Executive Officer of Targeting Innovation and Digital Director of Skills Development Scotland, led the session on increasing sales, reducing costs and boosting efficiency by accessing digital innovation tools which are available to all companies in Scotland. Delegates learned how new technologies and digital innovations are transforming business models, customer experience and organisational efficiency. George outlined how to assess your own business readiness, explore digital opportunities and identify avenues for return through digital implementation within our own companies. He provided action plans aligned with digital innovations for immediate implementation.
Lucy Wills, Site Director at Finsbury Food Group, Hamilton, hosted our December event with a fascinating talk on the Leadership Change Programme which she is implementing at the Hamilton site, along with a super site tour to see their operation in action. Lucy shared her recipe for performance through SWOT analysis, putting in the right structure, people and vision to enable changes which are leading directly to profit improvement.
Brodies hosted CfEL in October, with Heather McArthur, founder of Raeburn Career Coaching, sharing information on how to identify your unique skills and articulate your brand – How to market yourself effectively and how to apply this thinking to the team to increase their engagement and maximise their performance.
Christian trained as a lawyer and became a judge before setting up her own coaching business, Elements of Wellbeing. Her skill is to identify that everyone has inner resources which they often vastly underestimate – she demonstrated how to utilise this untapped resource by illustrating how the mind really works in controlling our thoughts. Christian gave us a taster of how, through the phenomenon of insight, we can realign ourselves with the optimal operation of our minds. Clarity, resilience and resourcefulness are the outcomes. What a session – wonderful!
Liz is the Founder of Positive Qualities – she delivered a talk on 5 Principles of Leadership in her own inimitable manner: full of positive spirit, boundless energy and inspirational style. Liz focussed on the importance of enhancing employee engagement and boosting staff morale in order to significantly increase customer satisfaction and drive up sales.
Paul Fletcher, one of Scotland’s foremost experts on Innovation: “Every company and organisation succeeds or dies by the way it deals with the process of Innovation”. Paul outlined how strong motivators for Innovation, such as profitability, productivity, efficiency of problem solving and perpetual improvement enable future protection, competitive survival and maximum engagement with the team and customers. We enjoyed a site tour of HCC’s operational activities, followed by the afternoon session of highly successful peer-peer confidential problem solving.
Robin MacGeachy and Fiona Taylor of Peak Scientific Instruments delivered absolutely fascinating talks at SD Worx on 24th May. Robin, one of Scotland’s foremost entrepreneurial leaders, focussed on his experience of the challenges and rewards of leading a growing team (currently numbering 450 across the world) from Peak’s manufacturing base in Inchinnan. Culture and values featured with great significance as well as hard work, tenacity and teamwork. Fiona (Global Head of Recruitment) then provided an insight into the skills and techniques which she uses in order to ensure that team members joining Peak are a really good fit with the ethos of the organisation.
Jim Mather, Visiting Professor to the Universities of Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt delivered a tremendous talk on Conflict Resolution at Brodies in Glasgow. Jim Started by outlining a range of ‘messy realities’ – people’s thinking, their personalities, their preconceived ideas and their behaviours. He then went on to relay some unifying approaches and techniques and finished on identifying a variety of conflict resolution and mediation ideas from such eminent writers such as Mary Parker-Follett, Dee Hock, Charles Ehin, Barry Johnson and Goldratt. This was followed by a highly stimulating group discussion. An extremely thought-provoking leadership learning day was enjoyed by all.
Dr David Fraser led this fascinating session on ‘Great Leaders – Great Lessons’ which drew on his vast knowledge of naval history in order to illustrate how leaders’ positive personal attributes are vital to securing and maintaining the following and loyalty of their teams. Embedding the confidence to choose correctly between implementing one’s own initiative versus obedience to orders have resulted in both wonderful historic victories and appalling, unfathomable disasters with massive loss of life. David discussed some fantastic examples of the very best inspirational leadership learning which we can apply in our every-day leadership roles back at the ranch!