Permission to fail

Creating a culture of innovation means giving people permission to fail!

We recently held our first Leadership Symposium in London, which was very exciting for us! Fourteen great business professionals with backgrounds ranging from recruitment to finance to academia, met to exchange views on the challenges and opportunities posed by a new decade and to share ideas on how to successfully manage those challenges and opportunities.

This was just one message that came out of the discussions – that in order for your business to be innovative, your people need to be allowed to try different things that may work fantastically, but may not. Our delegates concluded that emotional intelligence is a key skill needed by today’s leaders to allow this innovation to take place.

Here is what some of the attendees had to say:

Working with Generation Y

 

 In today’s employment market, there are three distinct generations:

1.   Baby Boomers (born 1946-1960) who live to work
2.   Generation X (born 1961-1979) who work to live
3.   Generation Y (born 1980-mid 90’s) who live then work

 

There’s been a lot of talk about Generation Y being known for their sense of entitlement, their outspokenness, their inability to accept criticism and their technological abilities. Whatever your opinion is Generation Y is the new unpredictable talent pool.

The rules of engagement are changing

You may have seen me quoted in Recruiter talking about the key issues that recruiters must focus on for 2010. So here is a run down of those issues and what we need to be doing!

Extreme economic conditions have left recruitment leaders with smaller, stronger teams but anticipated growth, albeit minimal at first, will mean they need to attract the best talent out there to join them.  These new teams will face greater challenges than ever before. So what are the main challenges leaders/managers will face in 2010? How can we help and resource our people as leaders?

This burning issue should be high on the agenda in our boardrooms right now.  Whilst each individual company needs to thrash out the specifics, three overriding themes will be common to us all.