Welcome to Episode 108 with Liz Kislik of Liz Kislik Associates.  She is a management consultant and executive coach based in New York and will have run her practice for 35 years next month.

Liz has seen it all, she has been witness to all types of behaviour from great and wonderful to very perplex!  Liz enjoys working with people who want to lead other people.   She loves the challenge of figuring out how to maximise their capacity to be good leaders.

So, what does this episode cover?

We start by discussing what good behaviour looks like for leaders and where that can then go wrong.  Liz feels that the elements of high performing leadership that really matter are about business acumen and curiosity.  Leaders need to have some sense of economics and how the industry works too.  Interest, and having an open mind are important over a fixed mindset.

Self-awareness is also good.  Liz explains that being aware of how you operate, what your actions are, and how you react to situations, is crucial.  As is knowing what’s important to you and when you’re not at your best.  Hand in hand with this is self-regulation.  Being able to manage yourself so that even when not at your best you can still communicate effectively with others.

We go on to unpack this further by discussing how individual leadership qualities and skills must be backed up by the appropriate application of these skills in order to support the potential for succeeding well as a leader.   If you want to be the one to cause things to happen you’ve got to be able to look around and size up where and how you make your mark!

What did I learn?

We chat about the effects of Covid and how it has created a level of insecurity and instability for leaders who are trying to do their best.  Business owners who operate solely on their own suffer the most. None of us have all the skills to run organisations that are more than ourselves.  We need other people.

We discuss how useful it is to get other people’s views in order to strengthen your own.  Good leadership should allow opportunity for good, sustained discussion, as well as the integration of the ideas arising from it.  That will strengthen the business as employees feel part of the process over just being told what to do.

This is an interesting episode.  Liz offers real insight to the way you solve problems and how that can produce real results