We recently asked leaders to gift their wisdom to support a growing community of purpose led leaders. The five key findings show a growing need for investment in time, removal of personal blockages, greater clarity and developing authenticity.

Leaders also told us that sharing their new wisdom is becoming increasing important to help inspire others to follow a similar path.

1. The amount of time leaders spend on their personal development was surprising.

More than half of the leaders tell us that they plan to spend more than a week each year on their own personal development. However only one quarter of the leaders make commitments for certain development opportunities with the majority responding to ad-hoc opportunities.

A useful definition of personal development is spending time reflecting on oneself and learning more about what core beliefs you have and from where these have developed. Then it’s about understanding better how they show up in your life. Personal development...

This is always going to be a challenge for businesses small and large as the traditional recruitment process is simply broken. There is a hybrid model available at the moment split between recruiters and the DIY model and neither has a great track record of delivering consistently great leaders for the average sized business in the UK.

Even the PLC recruiters get it wrong sometimes – then it’s a scandal but its always the board who made the final decision who carry the can and the recruitment firm avoid the spotlight. The current model gives you two options:

1. Go to a recruitment consultant and pay £50K for the privilege for them to do the job.
2. Try and Do It Yourself (DIY) where you have a smaller population to reach but have to do all the hard work yourself.

I have a lot of friends who are estate agents. Any they aren’t everyone’s best friend. But what? Isn’t this about recruitment? That’s true but I know full well when I talk to an estate...

It's important to know how you are performing. There is only one way to improve and that is to know where you are today, have a goal and work towards it. I rate my performance out of 10 and ask my clients to rate me at the end of each meeting, project or workshop. I aim to deliver at a 9/10 or higher. I set my bar high.

What’s your score?   1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10

Did you score 1–4? There are serious issues at play. However, let me invite you to think about it this way: what was your performance last time?  Have you improved or gone backwards? What's really going on. Are you feeling passionate about what you are doing? Maybe it's wort revisiting this with your client and asking for more detailed feedback. Sometimes you may have delivered well but left them feeling bad so that is...

Only a decade ago British Cycling was one of the poorest performers in the world and not a sport for which us Brits were famous, innovative, world beaters or looked up to by any other country. If you aren’t a sports fan then think of British Cycling being as successful as we are in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Then things started to change. Sir Chris Hoy won 6 Olympic Gold medals (that’s more than you can count on one hand) and 11 World Championships (yes that’s more than you can count with both hands). There have since been a whole long list of British champions, men, women and Paralympians, who have taken the sport to the dizzy heights of being the best on the planet.

So why do I want to be Chris Hoy?

Is it the fame, the gold medals, the super expensive bike or his chunky thighs?? No it’s the change. So what changed? Sir Dave Brailsford was appointed to head the team and he quickly realised that he couldn’t fix one big thing by 100%. So he changed the...