I was fortunate to present at the Future of Leadership Conference in Brisbane yesterday.  It was a great event with over 400 attendees that included Future Leaders, Frontline Supervisors, Middle Managers, and Executive Leaders.

The speakers on the day were incredible.  Mykal Dixon’s presentation (and musical performance) on Creativity, Darren Hill and his message around Being Present as well as learning about research around Generational Leadership Insights. We heard from Ashley Fell around gaining skills and from Nam Baldwin on Peak Performance Conditioning.  As I listened to all the amazing speakers I started thinking about what leadership needs to include.  

It was very apparent that Leaders need 2 key ingredients:  Inspiration and Implementation.

Inspiration:  Moving Peoples Hearts

For a leader to mobilise their people they need to motivate and inspire them.  The days of traditional old school leaders just telling people what to do is long gone.  To be prepared for the future leaders need to find ways to truly connect with their people on a real level.  Leaders need to know what motivates them and how to tap into this. More importantly, this needs to be integrated throughout the culture to create critical mass toward an objective that people believe in.

Implementation:  Moving Peoples Heads (& Actions!)

The other main component is a leader that can get things done.  Staff can quickly see through a “rah-rah” leader that can spout words of encouragement but has no idea of how to implement and make things happen.  Leaders need to have the skills to implement projects and tasks to make things happen. Even more importantly they need to know how to develop the next level of leaders to do the same.  It does not mean that leaders need to be experts in everything. What it does mean is they need to know how to delegate and how to teach others in how to delegate by demonstrating it.  

I would like to invite you to attend the Future of Leadership Series to learn some of these incredible insights firsthand.  The next conference is in Newcastle next week on the 6th of August and Sydney on the 9th of August (We still have Melbourne, Wellington & Auckland to go!)