TesseTalks

She thinks about quick wins and works really hard as she proves herself. People who are experienced and seasoned have a bit of a leeway because people know what they can bring to the table but they have to continue to be valuable to the company and always evaluate what it is that they are bringing to the table.

Agile Transformations Max Ekesi is an Agile Transformational Leader at Paypal. Max is a problem solver and leads agile transformations. He is pragmatic, energetic, energising, bags of fun and a magnificent Chair. He leads transformations by working with agile mindsets.

Changing mindsets is the hardest thing to do. Agile coaches are guides through the change.

“If you want to be Netflix rather than Block buster. If you want to be Apple or Samsung rather than Nokia, it matters. You have to adapt to survive. We have to be nimble, agile, adaptive, because our customers need to continually get value and we have to adapt to their needs“ says Max.

A year ago my beloved brother Tony suffered serious injuries in Dover following a suspected hit and run . He had gone to the Care Home to collect Covid Samples for testing and was walking to his car when the incident occurred.

Tony has joked and smiled with the staff and wished them a Merry Christmas. It was the Care Staff who found him. He leaves behind four children, the youngest who was eight years old at the time. Always a man of duty, loyalty and kindness, Tony served his country to the very end.

He set up informal walking clubs, he was active in Slimmers world, he supported poor people, served as a special constable and simply loved people. His legacy of love and service will never be forgotten.

Leadership through a Creative lens can be defined as when you're in a leadership role and you feel that the whole team is pushing in the same direction. It's a very rewarding feeling. Rob McCrea reminds us that understanding that in a leadership role, you have to serve the people who work with you. You have to make sure that they have everything that they need in order to be able to do their jobs properly. But also for them to feel fulfilled, to feel part of something that's important to feel connected. As a leader, that responsibility sits with you, how you structure the organisation that you're leading will actually either allow that to happen or not allow it to happen. If it doesn't allow it to happen, your organization or your company won't be as successful and you'll have a high turnover of staff.

Self-care is not weakness. It is being human says our guest Nancy White, an entrepreneur of 35 years. It is being accountable to ourselves first and foremost. Not yo-yo diets, but more of the sustainable, healthy lifestyle with choices will keep you well as you age, mature and weather each season. Everybody needs to be lifted and acknowledged for the good things they're doing. The power of negativity should not ever go unnoticed or taken for granted. This matters because it takes seven positives for every one negative that we either speak to ourselves or somebody speaks to us. We are impacted by what see on the news, or we hear.

Esua Goldsmith has always been a writer. Her memoir "The Space between Black and White" Illustrates the painful, lonely existence of a mixed race child growing up in Britain as an “only “. That child was Esua.

Life can seem like a whole series of random events that don't make any sense, but it's only when you write them down that you can see that they form a pattern. It was almost to tell her story to herself that Esua wrote her memoirs. As a child she was lonely and felt a need to to explain her “onlyness” In a book full of voices she sowed in the threads at different stages of her life.

As an advocate, Esua campaigned for a special category in the census of 2001 for a mixed race category. 20 years of data shows how mixed race is different from other racial experiences. For example , in the UK, there are more mixed race kids in care of social services which may be an indication that people do not know where to place children with mixed heritage.

At the same time, bi-racial people are reconnecting with their roots, discovering their communities and finding out who they are and what it means to experience a sense of belonging. Esua explains that this journey of discovery “ means absolutely everything to me. I looked in the little picture books that you get when you're a kid and all the early readers and so on, there was just nobody who looked like me. I felt very much like an only. So not only are you dealing with racism, but you're dealing with onliness which is different from loneliness. It's a sort of feeling that you have no kin and no place in the world. And that's a very hard thing for a very small child to learn”.

Design thinking helps you to understand people’s needs to look holistically at interactions and constantly iterate the way forward. Focusing your efforts on the most impactful design moments  creates new and sticky experiences.   Imagine meeting and exceeding your customers' needs and expectations.  Imagine what  you can achieve by understanding  the interactions people have,  surfacing problem areas,  exploring opportunities through designing a more  accurate, updated and relevant customer journey map.        

You can make happy people even happier.  Their joy can lead them to become  advocates.   Design thinking can  remove  frustrating barriers.  By visualising and isolating negative moments,  brainstorming  and ideating ways to improve the experience, there can be increased positivity experience.

According to Sade Marriott host  of the Banana Island Podcast, standing out is about standing in! Sade's personal take on life and wellbeing is thus

" I'm happy about being comfortable in my own skin now and being a bit more self-aware and a bit more conscious of other people's emotions and less careless of other people's emotions. Yeah not tangible material stuff, I mean those are transient. But I want to be able to look in the mirror and not be embarrassed at what I've become. I don't want to be that person who's self-congratulatory and look at me and yeah, I think that's about it.

I'm actually more sympathetic because you can only really appreciate it. I understand compassion. I've volunteered in a prison where we take food, I can make people happy. "

Capsule environments are environments that are isolated and confined – a challenge to leadership. The external conditions of capsule environments are harsh and dangerous.

Our guest Binna Kandola talks about this. The typical features of a capsule environment are social isolation with the same group of people with sensory restrictions. Star Trek, Voyager, Dr Who, the Big Brother House and Space Travel demonstrate the features of capsule environments. This becomes relevant to leadership who need to consider the impact this way of working has had on us.

Due to lack of sensory stimulation people can start to narrow down the people they're communicating with; restricting the amount of information that they are sharing and begin to develop stronger relationships with a smaller group of people. With remote working and people returning back to offices, leaders need to start looking at inclusion and making sure that diversity and inclusion is at the top of our priorities.

Leaders need to start consciously looking at the way groups of teams can be working together, encouraging their teams, their individual team members to network with other teams in the organisation. Connection is key.