Building your leadership pipeline: the crucial role of confidence

Kevin Eikenberry | 12 Mar 2025

Healthy confidence is a critical criterion in picking leaders and forecasting future success. Thankfully, it is also a skill that can be developed.

Six female femtech leaders transforming women's health

Alix Hobbs

To mark International Women's Day, here's a look at the innovation, passion and drive of six female Femtech leaders whose work is transforming women’s health.

Welcome back to the office. it hasn't got any better

Wayne Turmel

Companies trying to get staff back into the office need to address some fundamental questions about culture, productivity and collaboration if those RTO mandates are going succeed.

Why coaching in business can fail to produce results

Clare Norman

Coaching often fails to deliver because organisations want the benefits of coaching without making the up-front investment in screening individuals for coaching readiness.

Remote working needs a unicorn

Wayne Turmel

Despite Amazon and other companies pulling the rug from under remote working, they will never be able to put the genie back in the bottle.

Inclusive strategies for hospitality managers

Stefano Battaglia

With international travel now accessible to an ever-growing proportion of the global population, in the hospitality sector, diversity can be a building block to a premium customer experience.

Garbage in, garbage out

David Livermore

Even the best AI tools display cultural bias. So without knowing how to write culturally intelligent AI prompts, it's easy to end up with content that is not quite right for your intended audience.

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From the archive

Morale: a moving target

Duane Dike

What we think we know about morale is probably wrong, especially the black and white notion that morale is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Like most human feelings, morale is a moving target, which is why being sensitive to its nuances is such a key skill for leaders.

Duane Dike

True leaders are human

Duane Dike

True leadership is the stuff of relationships. Being a leader is much more complicated than simply acting leader-like. True leadership is quality-based. Fake leadership is leader-like-sound-bites of things leaders might say.

Wayne Turmel

Enough of all this 'quiet quitting'

Wayne Turmel

Every once in a while, the business press gets hold of an idea and works it like a dog with a sock until it's unrecognizable. Such is the case with 'quiet quitting'.

Max McKeown

Kissing up, kicking down

Max McKeown

Kowtowing to bullies is both morally and pragmatically wrong, as the pitiful decisions made by 'kiss up, kick down' managers keep proving again, and again, and again.

Dan Bobinski

Dan's "must read" list for this year

Dan Bobinski

It's gift-giving season once again, and time for my annual 'must read' list. Whether you're looking for a holiday gift for someone else or you're looking to sharpen your own thinking, some valuable golden nuggets exist in each of these titles.

Earlier opinion

Managing performance on hybrid teams

Wayne Turmel

As hybrid working becomes more and more widespread, one of the biggest difficulties that has emerged is how to manage individual performance when some people are in the office more than others.

The importance of explicit expectations

Karl Hebenstreit

The mantra for human effectiveness is “communication, communication, communication”. But without setting explicit expectations, communication on its own isn't enough.

Surviving re-orgs and buyouts at a distance

Wayne Turmel

For people working remotely, an internal re-organization or an external buyout can be especially disconcerting and confusing.

How to lead with questions in cognitively diverse ways

Megan Seibel

Questions can be powerful leadership enablers. So it is worth taking time to understand the art of asking the right questions and creating a questioning culture when leading others.

Pause and allow

Neil Jurd

Being 'busy' is normally seen as a positive thing. But being busy has a dark side - stress, poor sleep, never having enough time to stop and think. So how can we learn to be effective without becoming overloaded?

Are America and Europe returning to the office in the same way?

Wayne Turmel

It has been four years since Covid caused a seismic change in how and where people work. But are North America and Europe handling this trend in the same way? The evidence says not.

What to do when you’re just not feeling it?

Wayne Turmel

Working remotely can be great, but it can also be isolating, especially on those days when you’re lacking motivation or just can’t seem to get to grips with what needs to be done.

The importance of age-inclusivity in hospitality

Penny Brown

Amid the ongoing labour shortage in the UK's hospitality industry, one positive sign is that the sector is attracting a growing number of over-50s workers, who now make up over a third of its workforce.

What to do if hybrid isn’t working

Wayne Turmel

How are team’s hybrid working arrangements working out? Are they better or worse than you expected?

Global trends to watch in 2024

David Livermore

Building a more culturally intelligent world requires keeping an eye on what’s going on globally. So I can’t help but wonder what 2024 might hold for us and what trends we should be anticipating and watching.

Can AI be trusted as an impartial recruitment partner?

Dan Adeline

The introduction of AI into the recruitment process has the potential to upset the balance between process and people, undermining diversity and fairness.

Communication is more than a transaction

Wayne Turmel

One of the biggest complaints about working remotely is that communication has become a series of transactions. But why is that a problem?