Julia Stephenson

A picture paints a thousand words.

Life’s not always easy. Sometimes we feel too much is going on, things are overwhelming, we do not know the answers to important questions. We find ourselves out of our comfort, in our stretch or occasionally even panic zone.

This picture helps us to get things in perspective and find strategies for coping.

How does the image help you?

In today’s world all leaders need to consider their focus.

At Sladen Consulting we are practicing mindset shifts. Here are 5 mindsets we are really trying to move from and to, and we are seeing the benefits already.

How are you shifting your mindset?

We were always taught that teachable abilities or skill sets that are easy to quantify (hard skills) are the most important thing when learning.   But it is so important to recognise the importance of soft skills (we prefer to call them human skills).  We were reminded of this recently in the book Emotional Agility by Susan David.

In the drawing on the right, if you look at the human skills more closely you see that really paying attention to these elements are crucial.  And only both together will they work.  Skills like empathy, showing vulnerability, building connections to people.  Even if sometimes it feels like you can’t grasp the human skills, and they can be hard do and hard to measure, it is so important to take them all into consideration when we do our work.

Measurement can be seen in the happiness of people, how easily trust is built, and retention of staff for example.  Leaders need to show big slices of these elements; who would you rather work for? Someone with great hard skills, or human skills? It really has to be a combination of both.

Strategy is NOT a document…..it is the aspiration, the thinking and the actions. It is the grabbing of opportunities, it is the dreams and the drive, head and heart, making things happen and overcoming certain roadblocks in your way.  Connecting the dots with where you came from, where you are and where you want to be!

Practicing what we preach we have carried out our own Sladen Consulting strategy exercise based on a simple yet powerful and straightforward methodology called ’Strategy Explorer’ by Dr Stefan Pastuszka.

Reading our own ‘Big Strategy Sentence’ that came to life at the end made us proud and shed a tear. We are going to hold ourselves accountable for living this strategy and checking in with it on a very regular basis.

In addition to this methodology we are frequently using a visual engagement process to co-create an impactful strategy together with our clients. We will share more on this tool in an upcoming post.
Curious? Ask us anything!

We love this quote by Jason Fried. Our working life comprises meeting after meeting; done well they can be the lifeblood of any business, done badly they are a waste of time and resources. We have some clients who have ‘meeting free Fridays’, and a few of the Sladen Family are experimenting with this themselves. But does this just mean more meetings during the rest of the week? How do we get the balance right?