Style Dynamics
Style Dynamics is dedicated to the mission of connecting and promoting talented leaders to their full potential, in terms of communication style and leadership style (behavior), with clarity and versatility.
Be they working on a basis of one-to-one or one-to-many. Whether addressing internal or external audiences. From giving feedback to direct reports, to the litmus test of telling the corporate story to a nuance-attentive equity market.
Because style, combined with substance and technical excellence, is material to leadership performance. And fundamental to the way in which leaders 'show up' and deliver long term on their leadership promise and potential.
With an outcomes orientation, Style Dynamics brings insights, that inflect actions, to embed change. Services and Areas of Focus
Welcome to the Blog
The blog of Style Dynamics will cover and develop content that reflects on leadership communication and behavior in corporate life. And their dynamic influence on people and performance. It extends in scope to any salient substantive input that is within the areas of business focus for Style Dynamics, including leadership identity, engagement and development of people, corporate culture, conditions for change, and stakeholder relations. The essential rules are common courtesy and fair sparring.
To all comers, help keep it lively and build it wise with your comments and contributions. Interesting articles, news stories, 'did you sees', or most of all books or experiences that brought you learning as a leader. Thank you in advance for observations, points of view, and any patterns or trends, that advance the understanding of leadership and its impacts at every level.
Overreaching
Observer March 18th, 2009
If Barack Obama is, in his own words, the blank canvas onto which a global following now projects hopes and expectations - especially that he messiah-like, deliver us from the pain of the economic crisis - then Sir Fred Goodwin has made himself a vessel for the collective frustrations, anxieties, anger, and possibly even guilt of the times, at least in the British environment. Knighted he may be, but it’s hard to see any honor in the greed and his dinner invitations must be as shrunk as his pension inflated. But there are others too, highflyers in banking before the crisis, with reputations diluted or destroyed by the public outrage at what has come to pass. They may reach out and form a kinship group, a ‘laughing all the way to the bank’ group perhaps. Assuming that we still do have banks in the future. While he and others are visible and targetable as significantly accountable for the chaos, there are others who contributed as well. Parties like the rating agencies, executive pay consultants, regulators, and all the people that forwent the IKEA urging to make a house a home, chosing more of a get rich quick approach of make a house a punt.
Crisis management?
Observer January 31st, 2009
…Jamie Dimon’s mutterances of impatience at Davos speak for many as we continue to cut a path through the unchartered territority of the first truly global financial crisis. The US could normally be expected to step into the breach and lead the task of coordinating across key players that might begin to address it. For the moment the crisis is still at best in a holding pattern, crying out for the surfacing of a global leadership approach. Mr Sarkosy and Mr Brown have both been proactive, but likely lack the clout beyond the postures, added to which the newsflow at home now begins to menace. Mr Obama has been focusing on first winning then transitioning into the WhiteHouse and while his mandate is clear and his economic team credible, the mess in large part has been ‘made in the US’. So step forward Angela Merkel, who recently impressed with a thought-through program for Germany: Time for some boxing and coxing and to invite Mr Obama back to Berlin for a special session, with, as Mr Dimon pleas, the right people in the room for the task at hand.
Derisking
Observer December 23rd, 2008
…Judging by the full page call-to-job-hunters in The Economist this week from McKinsey, the pendulum swing is well under way to build defences for the future against the financial market and wider economic mess of the year now closing, with risk management front and center. Missing from the ad’s menu of risks to be managed are reputational risk, governance risk and psychological risk. Assuming that the mistakes that were made are first understood, and secondly, not repeated, reputational risk may be managed and mitigated in due time through fundamentals, though many of the worse impacted banks will likely be in reputation rehab for a long time yet. Governance risk may be harder to manage as the CEOs that decide on significant consulting mandates are at the same time uniquely pivotal to most corporate governance systems. As for psychological risk, old Europe seems often discomfited by what is perceived as the pathological optimism of the US mindset, but in the delusion that domestic property values were a one way bet, many Europeans proved over optimistic as well.. And how to manage for that emotional thing of fear of missing out? In the future we’ll still likely have lemmings chasing bounties. Something even the men and women from McKinsey cannot guard against.
Swallows of some remorse
Observer November 30th, 2008
In the past month or so, some regrets expressed in the midst of the newsflow on the ongoing global financial and economic crisis. Alan Greenspan put it on record that he had been mistaken in assuming that banks could properly self-regulate. More recently some of the excesses of executive pay for poor governance and performance is being partly paid back or forgone, at UBS and AIG. And this past week Sir Tom McKillop, apologised to shareholders, customers and former and present employees of the Royal Bank of Scotland, for the state the bank has gotten into, now majority owned by the British taxpayer. Genuine and public apologies are of course rare, and possibly even rarer are public acceptance and forgiveness. Nothing can now cancel or make much redress for the coming global economic downturn. Though such contrition wins attention, the players that more likely deserve recognition are those banks that held firm during the boom times, that did not succumb to the seduction of easy money and the pressure to pursue it, but held steadily to a conservatism that by today appears to have served them well indeed.>
Leadership of the free world
Observer October 22nd, 2008
On the day when Britain’s shadow chancellor fought allegations of having sought donation funds from a foreign tycoon, into the email from a loose connection pops what seems like a friendly directive/ solicitation to cast a foreign vote in the US presidential campaign: Delicately worded and urging the checking out of virtual votes from all over the world. If it’s a campaigning ruse, it’s a clever one to measure, evidence and magnify grass roots preferences on a global scale. The map today, no surprise, strongly favours Obama. One can’t but feel sorry for the McCain campaign’s being left standing on this. And a little uneasy at the scope creep. The US election is for US citizens, but we do now have, and more so than ever before, a global politic. While the US may not be the largest or even the greatest democracy, it certainly remains for now the one with the greater latitude of power. And for that, citizens everywhere will want to have confidence in the choice of America on 4th November.
Another day…
Observer September 30th, 2008
…..another bail out, or not. As we watch with a macabre fascination the Wall Street story getting grim, grim and grimmer, the Republican failure to pass a bill of its own president’s making, in what is clearly a fast spiralling crisis, speaks loudly to the leadership failure of the Bush years. The market meltdown is now caught up well and truly in the mire of politics. Setting aside social outrage at executive pay on the one hand and free market ideology on the other, it appears that many on main street were also tempted and or persuaded to speculate, in the belief that ’safe as houses’ meant exactly that. In the event that Obama’s candidacy for the presidency becomes a surer and surer thing, the chaotic closing out of the incumbent administration, and the global hope now invested in him, will make his task all the harder. One of his biggest challenges will be to manage expectations.
Insider tack on corporate culture
Observer August 24th, 2008
First Tony Hayward, now Andrew Witty. Two new CEOs to FOOTSIE 100 companies in the past months declaring culture change a top priority. Even while in their prior senior roles they must have contributed to and owned to an extent the prevailing norms. But this nods also to culture perhaps being less about ‘the people’ collectively than the CEO individually. The tone, look and feel of a firm are to a great extent set from the mindset and world view at the top. The rest may align or conform to a greater or lesser extent due to bounded rationality and allied factors. The leadership bias, be it to a theory x or theory y view of people, can make a big difference to an organization’s available energy as well as potentially, the performance. Let’s see what upside can be orchestrated at the respective firms. And whether internal talent is more successful at forging culture change than new blood from outside.
Viva Espana!
Observer June 30th, 2008
…great sport, flair and atmosphere in Vienna last evening with Spain beating Germany 1-0 in the UEFA Euro 2008 championships. An engaging match, despite the dominance of Spain over Germany, who were only a little less pedestrian than in the semi-final against Turkey. With this Spain breaks a 44 year fallow period of no wins of a single major title. And, as the commentators kept on reminding us, with a coach just short of his 70th birthday. What happens next with Spain will be an interesting case in succession management, as the team finally finds its form, but with Luis Aragones moving on, and the World Cup in South Africa in a couple of years.
The Clinton miss
Observer June 25th, 2008
… on the Clinton miss, the asymmetrical information was all his to leverage (known unknowns) and hers to defend (very well-known knowns). On certain levels she did remarkably despite the lorryloads of information about her and her wider organization, including the mixed blessing of her enduringly popular husband. At a distance it’s still hard to see quite why she’s so loved on the one hand and loathed on the other. Conversely it’s easier to grasp the broad appeal of Barack Obama, naturally gracious, and with time on his side. The newsflow too. Iraq ameliorating by some reports, Mandella at 90, and Hillary pitching in with her own brand of graciousness, can all but help. And Obama’s own campaign, already highly impactful, is ticking up an assertiveness, which he will undoubtedly need in the upcoming furlongs between now and November. The hints at warmth between him and Hillary in the past few days would not make it far-fetched that she’s still compelling as a possible running mate.
Buffet in Europe
Observer May 20th, 2008
Warren Buffet is touring Europe this week, redressing (overdue) a perceived lack of prominence for Berkshire Hathaway in the European arena. IMD must be cock-a-hoop to have secured him for a 45 minutes’ broadcast to alumni and corporate clients, as well as a session with student MBAs. But then IMD does the business of business schools better than anyone else. At least on this side of the pond. At 77, the famous Buffet wisdom just keeps on flowing. And the wit as well (he’ll have a go at succeeding himself..). He gets close to Mother Teresa in terms of the venerability in which he’s held. All the more remarkable that he appears not ever to have fallen into the trap of believing his own public relations. With all the noise and urgings around about ‘authenticity’, Mr Buffet comes across as the most original, real deal. So much talk of love and passion, the ‘right’ parents, and choice of spouse, and not a curling toe in sight. While he evenhandedly has backed both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the current Democratic nomination process, I’d vote for Buffet himself to lead the charge to rehabilitate the US in the eyes of the world. He travels well.
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