Kathryn Thomas | KT & Associates

Unlock your performance and the performance of your team – How to thrive right now as a leader

Kathryn Thomas — Tue, 26 May 2020 23:36:17 +0000

Your leadership capability counts now more than ever.

Right now – we are all working and leading in a new context with new challenges that place extraordinary demands on how we lead and support our people to be at their best. As a leader its time to carefully consider how you can create a culture and environment that enables your people to thrive. Your role as a leader is to help people to be at their best, so you need to be at your best too. Your behaviour will set the tone across your team. Whilst acknowledging the current stress and the human toll, its important to affirm your confidence in your people and your combined strengths to navigate the uncertainties together.

Right now – is the time to communicate about the certainties and the uncertainties. Clearly and concisely explain both what is known and what is not known. Be comfortable about not having all the answers. When you face a crisis, communication becomes even more important. Your team will have questions, concerns, wild thoughts, and mistaken assumptions. Be very present and available. At times of ambiguity emotions are high, your responsibility is to check in with others and yourself. We may be isolated; we don’t have to feel alone.

Right now – Trust is the foundation of making it through any crisis. Be a good listener, keep your word. In a culture of deep trust your people will share their concerns and vulnerabilities and so can you.

Right now – there are questions and essential conversations that you need to have with your people. One of the best ways to communicate with your team is through 1:1 essential conversations. You need group discussions, email updates, and standard communication, but nothing can replace the power of the 1:1, giving dedicated, personal attention to each of your team. This is how you will uncover their biggest fears, concerns, frustrations and the questions they’re afraid to bring up elsewhere and build their trust and confidence as they navigate these uncertain times.

Right now – it’s important to meet weekly with your direct reports. As so much can change quickly aim for weekly 1:1’s with your team members. Great leaders ask the right questions at the right time and then they listen.

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“The Coaching Habit”, Michael Bungay Stanier

Kathryn Thomas — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 00:38:13 +0000

I’ve become a fan of Michael Bungay Stanier who describes himself as “the founder and CEO of Box of Crayons, a company that helps organisations do less good work and more great work”.

His advice in his book The Coaching Habit again is perfectly aligned with the conversations I am having with leaders around the importance of powerful conversations to unlock performance for people and their organisations. “the magic of leadership occurs in daily conversations.” Within the pages of this book you will find simple, yet amazingly powerful questions to inspire performance every day. Well worth your time.

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Can You Engineer Trust?

Kathryn Thomas — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 00:35:17 +0000

Every day in conversations with my clients we discuss trust and its impact on organisational culture and how people engage in the workplace. Leaders overtly being deeply trustworthy matters more than ever. Today’s podcast from the Michelle McQuaid Making Positive Psychology work series that I am recommending is Can You Engineer Trust with Paul Zak.

Paul discusses the power of building trust and trustworthiness to build strong and effective teams in the workplace. I loved the concept of “management experiments” to test a hypothesis, iterate, review and learn in an agile way to continuously adapt a workplace culture to ultimately impact performance and the bottom line.

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Tim Kelpsas

Kathryn Thomas — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 01:56:11 +0000

The everflowing abundance of inspiration and guidance expressed by Kathryn warrants this recommendation. Kathryn’s eye for finding the good in everyone not only helps her to drive each person with a personal level of motivation, it also helps her to match any given task with the right person. Although that might seem magical to some, it’s one of Kathryn’s core competencies.

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John Groarke

Kathryn Thomas — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 01:55:47 +0000

Kathryn knows her ‘stuff’ and it was an absolutely rewarding pleasure to work alongside her. I will never forget, and I will always treasure, her support, help and encouragement. She is one of the unsung heroes in the organisations she works for. An all-round great colleague.

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Magendar Rajasekaran

Kathryn Thomas — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 01:55:06 +0000

Kathyrn is one bright spot in the organisational landscape who truly loves what she is doing. It was a pleasure getting to know her and to soak in the training program she led. Will be happy to work with her anytime in any initiative. Terrific gal.

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David Terry

Kathryn Thomas — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 01:54:26 +0000

Kathryn is an outstanding leader, manager and facilitator of learning and development programs. She has designed, developed and delivered many training initiatives to successfully build leadership, consulting and selling capability for individuals and organisations – and is equally skilled in individual executive coaching and development.

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“Drop the Ball” Tiffany Dofu, Penguin 2017

Kathryn Thomas — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 04:29:28 +0000

This book is for all the working women who juggle work, life and everything in between. Tiffany encourages women to step away from the premise of doing it all and having it all and to “drop the ball” in a deliberate, authentic and careful act. She encourages women to decide what matters most for them at this point in time and by deciding that, you are also deciding what doesn’t matter as much for you at this point in time and therefor what you can deliberately let go, maybe into another pair of safe hands or completely let go! Dofu describes how to protect yourself from burnout and concurrently find the focus and energy to truly become our best selves.

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Quality Conversations

Kathryn Thomas — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 04:25:12 +0000

My focus and that of my clients lately has been on the quality of the conversations that leaders have with their followers and how through those conversations organisation culture is created. My desire to understand more about the true elements of essential conversations led me to the ABC Radio National podcast “Best Practice”

Carmen Hurwitz from WorkPlacePLUS describes the continuum from easy to hard conversations, great to courageous conversations and the power of those conversations on people, relationships and culture.

Being brave, having a structure and the confidence to have a conversation that will unlock performance through getting the heart of what really matters Carmen suggests, needs to be embedded into the way people in organisations find resolution in a psychologically safe place.

It’s worth 11 minutes of your time! You can listen on the ABC website or click the player below.

The power of having a hard conversation

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Bangkok

Kathryn Thomas — Sun, 06 May 2018 04:00:16 +0000

Kathryn represented Asia Pacific as part of the global learning team responsible for delivering the Global Consulting Program for PwC, the first cohort for this world class program was delivered in Bangkok!

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