Tales from our Leadership Stories Roundtable event

Yesterday, we hosted a Leadership Stories Roundtable event at The Hoxton in Shoreditch. We were joined by an intimate group of senior HR and L&D professionals from a variety of organisations and industries for an action-packed morning of learning and networking followed by lunch. The event was led by t-three’s Samantha Woolven, with further facilitation from a number of other t-three consultants.

For anyone working in HR and L&D, getting your leaders to lead in the right way and making it easier for them to flourish within your organisation can be challenging. This event was an opportunity to get people talking about their own stories and experiences and by learning from how others have faced similar challenges, come away with clear, actionable takeaways to test out in their organisation the very next day

What great leadership looks like

The first part of the morning took the form of a group discussion focussed around three key topics:

• What does great leadership look like to you?
• How can we help to accelerate a future leader’s journey up through the organisation?
• What are the blockers in this future leader’s journey?

This opened up a really interesting discussion about what great leadership means to different people. There were key differences between different industries, particularly as we had individuals from both public and private organisations in attendance. There was also a suggestion that in deciding what great leadership looks like and identifying leaders of the future, we must be aware of our own unconscious bias in wanting to select leaders similar to ourselves.

There were self-awareness exercises, with guests being asked to identify their superpower – one thing they do just that little bit better than most other people. This was followed by activities engineered to get people thinking about the leadership in their own organisation, as well as trends and the future of leadership as a whole.

Some of the main themes that were discussed throughout the morning included how to build successful working relationships between the different levels of leadership within your organisation, and whether it is right to try and accelerate the leadership journey of more junior individuals, or whether they should be allowed to naturally accumulate the wisdom that comes with longevity in a role.

Practical ideas to directly impact the leaders in your business

For the last part of the session, we asked all attendees to write on one post-it note something they can offer, and on a second post-it note, something that they need. Then over lunch, we encouraged people to network and find someone in the room who they could help and someone who could help them. There were actually more offers of help than requests for assistance, and some of the services offered included expertise in L&D specialisms, help with resilience training and an offer to hear a first hand experience of implementing Truth Teller within an organisation

People were really open and honest about the obstacles that are stopping their leaders from reaching their full potential and everyone came away with exercises and activities to work on with their teams back in their organisation. As well as learning tips and techniques from t-three's facilitators, delegates were able to learn from the recommendations and experiences of their peers.

Overall, it was a really insightful and eye-opening morning and everyone in attendance went away with new ideas and a fresh enthusiasm for helping the leaders within their organisation to thrive.

Watch this space…!