Leading
with
heart and data
Welcome to my blog, where I explore how to combine data, facts, and metrics with the human touch to be a better leader
Recent posts
Is one number enough to understand your team? It might sound too simple, but it can be a powerful start. In the drive for data-driven decisions, many leaders turn to complex people analytics dashboards. But these tools are often useless without a crucial foundation: trust. Trust Before Technology Before you introduce any metric or dashboard, you must build trust. People share honest feedback only when they feel safe and secure. It is essential to explain the purpose behind collecting feedback and, more importantly, to demonstrate that you act on what you learn. Without this psychological safety, any data you collect […]
Communities are the mirror of the culture “So, this is how I shape the culture of our company?” That was the question that popped up in my mind when I was asked to speak about the communities of interest as part of a presentation of our technology hub culture for the new CIO. When I volunteered to drive the CIONET Tribes at our Technology Centre almost six years ago, I was driven by my belief that the best growth is through knowledge sharing with professionals with diverse experiences from various organisations. When I created the Team Leaders Network, I wanted […]
LinkedIn and other social media are flooded with comparisons of leaders versus managers, often depicting the latter in a negative light as someone focused on tasks, procedures, controls, and data. On the other hand, the leader is presented as an empathetic listener who understands what people think and need, using her heart to motivate them intuitively. So, should the true people leader focus on the music playing in their soul and avoid checking the hard facts? If you follow only your heart, you may fall into many traps when making decisions. From my observations as a people leader, I see […]
If you miss a great mentor, read this post, and you won’t be waiting any longer. In the early years of my career, I dreamed of having a mentor – an experienced professional to guide my career. Unfortunately, I didn’t have such a guide, and I was envious of people who enjoyed such relationships. A few years later, I found a piece of advice that ultimately changed my perspective on mentoring. It said that instead of looking for a single “The Mentor,” you can learn from anyone you meet. Suddenly, I’ve shifted from the desert of mentoring to a sea […]
Let’s be honest: remote work has been forced by COVID-19, and while most employees enjoy it, many leaders cannot wait to get people back to the office. Therefore, it is no surprise that more and more companies are mandating three to five days per week in the office. But is travelling back in time to pre-COVID-19 possible, and does it make sense? Although face-to-face interaction is irreplaceable for fostering strong relationships, trust and creativity within a team, it’s harder to justify the argument that returning to the office is necessary for enhancing team productivity. There are better ways to ensure […]
Being pushed to work from home due to the pandemic made me ask myself, what is the secret sauce separating great teams and organisations from mediocre ones? Some early and popular explanations pointed to ad-hoc meetings at coffee machines as the events where great collaboration and innovations happen. But do we want to leave the chances of having great teams to serendipity? Searching for a better explanation led me to rediscover the concept of weak ties. Originally described by Nick Grannovetter in 1973, it underlined the importance of your outer circle of connections or a loose network of colleagues and […]
