Get Amplified
Get Amplified
Don't Get Lost in the Noise with Jason Tooley, techUK Board Member
Brace yourself for leadership lessons that are as impactful as they are practical. We're joined by Jason Tooley, EMEA Sales Leader and Board Member of techUK, who shares what he has learnt from his 35 years of experience in the tech industry.
Strap in for a journey through the challenges and strategies of leading transformations, especially within the backdrop of EMEA. We'll dissect the importance of adaptability and the courage it takes to make tough calls on prioritization, ensuring your vision doesn't get lost in the noise of competing tasks.
Discover why supporting your team is the cornerstone of success and how clear communication channels are the glue that holds your strategic plans together.
You'll learn how to cut through the clutter of everyday tasks and prioritize with precision, fostering an environment that thrives on trust and simplicity.
Our conversation with Jason dives into the importance of emotional intelligence, empathy, and engaging leadership styles that resonate across different cultural contexts. We discuss the art of breaking down silos, integrating business models, and motivating teams beyond just financial incentives, ensuring a seamless approach and a team that's in sync with the corporate vision.
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Welcome to Get Amplified the podcast about the people who power the tech industry. It's raining here today, vicky. How's the weather in deeper
Vicky:Yeah, it's pretty dismal here too, I'm afraid. Yeah.
Sam:However, roll on spring. I've got one daff poking its head up.
Vicky:Yeah, snap, yeah. And the snow drops are out as well, aren't they? So it's just signs of spring on the way for sure.
Sam:We are getting there. We are getting there. So who have we got on the podcast today to brighten this gloomy Tuesday?
Vicky:Yeah, well, we've certainly got a guest for that. So before I introduce him, I just want to explain some background here. So we, as you know our formula for speed of execution because we help tech organisations execute faster is around purpose, trust, clarity and simplicity, and we believe that you need to have those four elements. Purpose Simon Sinek has done a phenomenal job of talking about the importance of why and purpose and just why that is important, and I think, certainly since COVID, importance of trust and the work that Amy Edmondson has done around psychological safety is also starting to get very, very well known. So our next element in the formula is clarity, and you would be really surprised at just how many organisations absolutely lack clarity in their strategy, and what I mean by that is they're just so they're trying to do so much and there's so much noise and so many distractions they can't prioritise. And actually I don't remember that we had Jeffrey Moron and he was talking about the crisis of prioritisation.
Vicky:And I think clarity is really critical. So I know that was quite a long winded introduction, but clarity is really important and of all the leaders that we have worked with over the last few years, jason Tully absolutely has the ability to cut through the noise with the leadership teams that he works with and has such a clear strategy, and I thought it would be great to have Jason on so he can share his experience with us.
Jason:So it's great to have you here, jason. Welcome, jason, fantastic. Thank you, sam. Thank you, vicky, delighted to be on.
Sam:We've said it a few times before on the podcast, haven't we? If you've got 27 priorities, you've got no priorities.
Vicky:Yeah, absolutely.
Sam:Yeah, brilliant, great. Well, welcome Jason. Perhaps you could start, as we always do, by giving us a potted career history. If you will, a quick canter through your experience, absolutely so.
Jason:35 years in the tech industry makes me feel very old, I have to say.
Vicky:God, she was just starting, when you were about seven when I did a quick calculation earlier.
Jason:All of my career has been leading enterprise software businesses in Europe, in the global, typically organizations that range from $50 million in revenue looking to grow significantly on scale out strategies up to kind of $255 million. There's typically been the sweet spot where I've tended to work across all different areas of the tech sector, from data and AI to digital through cybersecurity so lots of different areas. Common theme across lots of those organizations has been transforming business models, whether it be to SaaS or transforming go-to-markets to kind of accelerate growth and accelerate the maturity of the organizations. And then, outside of running multiple different software businesses, I'm also a board member at Tech UK. I'm part of the operational board that runs the business from a go-to-market finance, membership, marketing perspective, and I'm also an advisor non-executive director, for a number of British software companies as well. So lots of experience in the sector, lots of experience in transforming businesses, lots of different businesses as well. So delighted to come and share some of my insights on this podcast.
Sam:Fantastic. We appreciate it. Some really good experience. Should we get stuck in and start by thinking about leading organizations and what your sort of style is then?
Jason:Yeah, it's a good place to start, kind of foundationally, and I think some of what Vicky mentioned earlier around clarity is a really key point there. But let me just touch on how I think about leadership First of all. Most I think if you're thinking about leading an organization, you can't lead successfully without being able to motivate your organization to perform and, ultimately, people in that organization or teams to succeed. I think that that's where your start point is as a leader, and you've always got to kind of hold that North Star or that objective in place. How you do that includes some of the things again that Vicky touched on earlier creating a positive culture around trust, motivating the organization to perform and individuals in the organization to perform. That positive culture that you create has got to be consistent. It's got to be values driven. So clarity would be a typical value that you'd look to have across your organization, but also integrity, values that people feel they're motivated by and match their own objectives, and things that are not just words either. So creating foundationally that positive culture and leading that culture people have got to feel like they're connected to it. There's a couple of other key elements of leadership, though, that for me, are really important as part of creating that culture and leading. Number one is you've got to have emotional intelligence. If you want to motivate an organization you're a leader in an organization you can't do it without emotional intelligence. And more on that a little bit later on you've got to be empathetic, because you're dealing with people and when you're motivating and leading people, they need to feel like you're trying to help them succeed and you're accountable to do that. That's part of leadership as well. You can't do any of that without building credibility for yourself, with your organization and your organization in the market. So you've got to kind of think about those things.
Jason:And then, finally, I think leadership styles are really important.
Jason:When you're trying to create the culture, when you're trying to lead with clarity, when you're trying to motivate your teams to operate in the right way, a diverse leadership style that's situational and that supports your teams being successful is critical.
Jason:And too many people around leadership style don't really ask themselves are they exhibiting the right leadership style for the right situation and is that leadership style working with their organization? So I think, just in terms of some of the foundational elements of how I try to lead, I try to cover all of those things. I try to use emotional intelligence myself to look at leadership style I'm exhibiting and I'm bringing my organization with me. I'm creating an environment for success for the teams. I'm helping people collaborate and succeed in the style that I'm creating and the culture that I'm creating for the organization. I think, foundationally, it's quite important to understand that because then when you get into talking about clarity and communication and strategies and execution, if you think about that as the foundations of what you're trying to do and how you're trying to bring your organization on that journey with you, that's really important.
Vicky:Yeah. So what's really important I think and Jason, you've really touched on it there is if we do a speed check with a team and they've got high clarity but lower trust, then that's a real alarm bell for me because that tells me that you've got a leader that is telling their organisation what to do and it's much more dictatorial. And I've absolutely seen you in action and how inclusive you are with your leadership team of getting them to be involved in the discussion about what is the strategy, what is the plan. But I've also seen when you've gone right. I've heard you all. Now this is the direction and being able to make those decisions, and I think you know you and I have spoken about this times where the team can make the decision or you need to be able to make the decision. Do you want to just explain that a bit more?
Jason:Yeah, I mean, look, creating clarity for the team is about creating that direction for the organisation you know the things that we need to go and do to be successful and creating a motivational environment for the team, for the teams to then go and align with that and execute against it. So that clarity is really important for people to understand what we're trying to achieve, how we're trying to achieve it, their role in achieving it. There are all, and it comes back to diversity of leadership style a little bit. There are times where to cut through the noise and maybe just based on knowledge or experience, or maybe the teams sometimes can get themselves into a little bit of a circular discussion, because you have to be able to recognise and need to guide and coach the team through this discussion, through this decision and this discussion, rather than just allowing them to go in circles. Right, and I think being able to do that is a very important part of leadership. It's a very important part of emotional intelligence, understanding when to do it and when not to do it.
Jason:If you do it all the time, then you turn around behind you and the team aren't behind you. Right, the team are not following you because you're taking decisions that they may not understand right and may not agree with right. So you constantly have to be checking that situation. But there's a time and a place to take the decision, to cut through the dialogue across the teams and say, right, this is what we need to do and why. And then you still need to explain the why right, it's not a matter of we're taking this decision and then not bringing them on the journey. You still have to bring them on the journey. Situational leadership, situational decision making, in that example is extremely important because that's not making a decision and then sitting there scratching their head and not understanding why. That's bringing context and experience and knowledge into the decision process that they may not have right and then actually you are imparting that knowledge and helping them become part of the decision. So you can't use it all the time. It's very situational.
Vicky:Something else that I've seen you do is bringing it to life.
Jason:So when you've been explaining it with stories, yeah, yeah, I mean, you've got to be able to and this is a little bit experienced knowledge context, isn't it Right? And we were joking a little bit earlier on about data-driven decision making, right, If data-driven decision making is good, providing you can apply context, knowledge and experience to those decisions. And context knowledge and experience comes from having done it, having been in the field, talking to customers, understanding where something's worked or hasn't worked previously, and so part of that bringing the team on the journey, part of that helping them understand the decision or come to a conclusion around a decision is giving them the examples of why, where you've seen it before, evidence from the market that supports that decision. You can't just sit there and say we're doing this and then give no explanation as to why.
Jason:By the way there's one other really important point there you really have to avoid sound bites. Right? You have to avoid sound bites because what you're trying to make, always for the team in that situation, is you're trying to make the decision real, right, and the evidence and the context and the knowledge, experience, whatever should bring that to life. If all you're doing is quoting sound bites that doesn't make it personal to them or that they don't understand, that's a huge negative rather than a positive.
Sam:Yeah, that makes sense. It can come across as sort of almost automated, can't it, if you just drop the same phrases out.
Jason:That makes sense, yeah, and people to feel motivated have to feel like they're part of the decision right and they understand the decision and they can articulate that decision and the why. You know if they're asked by their customers, you know in the market by their colleagues. So it's really important that you know you make things personal to people across the organization, not just sound banks.
Sam:Yeah, that makes sense. It appears to me you've worked for some. You know obviously some big, big software companies that are often, you know you've got the American Corp and then the UK or European fields trying to execute. How do you connect the two? That could be a challenge, right.
Jason:Well, this is this is probably the most challenging part of these roles.
Jason:You know there's there's American software companies, or larger software companies were typically through the COVID period. Those organizations created more silos in their organizations right with different measurements or inconsistent measurements. That hasn't really gone away post COVID, unfortunately Corporate. You know at a corporate level that the board, the leadership, have clear views on you know the, the objectives of the business, what they're trying to achieve, whether that be growth objectives, whether it be transformational objectives. There's a market opportunity that they're able to articulate.
Jason:There are situational examples of, of what's working and that they want to go and replicate across the globe. And there may be a brand or a change in brand or change and go to market that they also want to want to articulate. And the board and the senior executive team, you know, have a clear view on what, what they're trying to do there. But how you then connect that to what goes on in the theater in EMEA or parts of the theater is incredibly difficult because you know what the vision at the top level and how you operationally execute and the investment that you get to go and do that and how you localize that for the theater, especially in EMEA, where you've got lots of different regions and countries to deal with and cultures to deal with. So actually, actually converting.
Jason:You're always dreadful at at at the brink of that yeah converting one like connecting one to the other in terms of how you operationally execute against those objectives. At corporate, you know, senior level is is very, very difficult, right, and that's that's one of the things that I think leadership in this industry is one of the trickiest things to get right. I think where you've got to start, though, is trying to break down some of those silos that exist in corporate, in your theater, right, so run a much more integrated operating model. Bring the different silos or the different parts of the organization together into a really integrated business model. Integrated operating model get people to understand the consistent strategy. Go to market, set of objectives and help people understand accountability and the role they play, but make sure that they're all facing the market in a consistent way that matches your, your strategy.
Vicky:Yeah, you know, I think what you just talked about there, Jason, is probably the number one challenge of what we're trying to help tech organizations overcome, and the way you just defined that last bit, it's looking like one team in front of the customer and yet you've got these silos, as you, as you rightfully say, since COVID I've got, I've got wider and the walls between them have got thicker, and breaking those down is absolutely going to be the way to get ahead. In fact, I was quite excited last week. We've just started working with a new organization and they've got all the functions reporting in to the immediate. It's really refreshing. I'm like you are set up for success to do this, because that's the first organization I've seen in a long time that doesn't have such a siloed approach, particularly with the organizations that we work with that have gone through hypergrowth and they haven't figured out how to separate. But in the early days at Citrix, I remember when we went through hypergrowth there with , which I think was before you were there, Jason.
Jason:Before me, yeah.
Vicky:All of the functions reported into Stefan and he was given the ability to lead Europe as you're needed to be led, and given that autonomy.
Sam:Yeah, I think the challenge in.
Jason:I think the one, the one challenge you face there is that you, in order to do that job, you need a very diverse skills, that an experience right, you can't be very one dimensional around just one area of either skills or experience. You know so it's difficult to find people who have that breadth of experience across the whole organization these days in our industry, because of the silos right, it's a challenge. And one we're not going to fix right.
Sam:Well, no, probably not. So we talked earlier briefly on transformation and I think you sort of saw that as your big value that you bring to an organization. You don't want to do business as usual, do you? That's boring. You want to make things happen. Talk to me about the people elements of going through transformation.
Jason:You're right, lots of my roles have been about transformation. I think let's start with something that's quite an interesting point, right, and I think we missed regularly. Transformation is is really about business change in a company, and you need to ask yourself does that matter to the individuals? Is it personal to people in the organization across lots of different roles? Do they really care, right? Do they care about the transformation that is being talked about and that business change? The way that you make them care is you make it personal and you motivate them by showing them how what they do has a material impact in the improvement of the business or that transformation, and I think that's something that is missed quite regularly. So, leading organization through transformation, you need the individuals and the organization to be motivated to support you on that. We're not saying here that they all fundamentally need to be fully aligned with. You know the business change and why the organization thinks it needs to be done, but they do need to understand their role in it and be motivated to succeed, and by them succeeding they become additive to the transformation and the progress of the transformation. So it's an important kind of first point.
Jason:Too many organizations today think that motivation for individuals to transform comes purely from numbers, right, and that's not the case. Motivation for individuals, you know, in terms of transformation, in terms of them succeeding, is also about how they contribute, right, and the role and the things that they do and how they and how they progress the organization and it could be the transformation as well. And at the end of the day, you know, as a leader, you succeed if your people succeed. Your people are what make you successful. You don't succeed on your own. So it's really important that you motivate them in a way where they understand the difference they're making.
Jason:I think the one other thing I would say is transformation is difficult. It's difficult for individuals, it's difficult for teams. We're all a bit attuned, I would say, and used to change in this industry, but but it is very much underestimated by even individuals in organizations. That change is difficult, right, and people overestimate their ability to manage change and lead to change and even deal with changes individuals. So emotional intelligence and empathy are massively important to taking your teams on that journey, to demonstrate how they help you transform that organization. So you've got to use those, those capabilities, in spades, to be quite honest.
Jason:And the one thing I would say about transformation and teams, and again, this is something that leaders don't always do. You have to continually temperature check the team right to make sure that they understand the strategy, they're fully behind it, they understand their role right, that they're supportive of the things that you're trying to do. The worst possible scenario here is if you're not using your emotional intelligence, your, your empathy on yourself to understand the things that you you are doing and the strategy that you're driving and how you're looking to motivate your teams. Are they supportive of that? Are they committed alongside you to that success? Because if you're the leader and nobody's behind you or nobody's behind your strategy, you will fail and it's massively important that you therefore take them on the journey, and taking them on the journey covers all of those things I've said Motivation, you know, demonstrating the role that they play, using empathy and emotional intelligence to help them through that process, the difficulties in that process, but continually temperature checking where you are on that.
Sam:If I remember rightly, Jason, you're a cricket man.
Jason:Yeah.
Sam:I'm sure you still enjoy it. I do. My limit is probably a bit of tennis ball, cricket in the back garden, six and out kind of stuff. Can we take any learnings from, from Ben Stokes's transformation of the England cricket team? I mean, it sounds to me like he's done exactly what you're talking about there.
Jason:Well, I think you can and I think the two key things to take away are empowerment People understand that they're empowered to go and use their skills to be successful and to perform, and people are not really afraid of doing that in the, in the team, at the moment. So that's kind of one thing. And success, you know, breeds greater motivation and the team are motivated because they're performing. People are succeeding, people understand their role in that success and there are a lot of parallels to be drawn from that empowerment, that motivation and therefore the performance and success with driving transformational change in organizations. So, yeah, there are. There are a lot of similarities.
Vicky:Jason, I'm smiling widely as you're talking about motivation, because I remember working with you, with your leadership team, when we introduced Switch.
Vicky:And the whole, direct the rider and motivate the elephant and that motivation piece being so important, and the people element of it and everything that you just talked about there. I could go. That's that bit of switch and that's that bit of switch and that's that of that framework is such a powerful framework and it was. It was probably one of the one of the highlights of any workshop that I've done, just seeing how you and your team embraced that that workshop was. It was, it was a great way, kind of brought it to life, right?
Jason:Yeah, I mean, sometimes, unfortunately, you know, when we're talking about some of these topics, you don't be careful these don't just become sound bites or words, right? So bringing it to life is massively important.
Vicky:Yeah, but also how they got involved, because then they were at identifying, you know what steps needed to be taken, where the bright spots, where, etc. So what you're talking about here and the way that I've seen you work is that it's not just words. Is what I'm saying? It's really, it's really great, thank you. It kind of leads us on to. I was talking earlier about the importance of clarity and how we can really see it missing in many organisations in the tech industry. But having clarity without trust and building that trust and for your team to know that you've got their back. Can you just talk to us about that a bit more?
Jason:Yeah, we've talked a lot about motivating people by them being included and making things personal to teams. And when you're communicating your strategy or when you're asking people to be part of that strategy and helping them understand the role they play, being really clear and credible around what your strategy is, or what the strategy is and how it's articulated, is critically important, and that means real clarity and real consistency of communication. And you need to think about the things that do motivate people to go the extra mile, to stretch themselves, to deliver on something, to be accountable for something. So things like in your strategy, being able to exhibit thought leadership in the market when you talk to a customer, you talk to a partner or you're talking to an audience in a public speaking event, being able to motivate your teams through a vision and a go-to market and a series of strategies that you're delivering on that they can see they have a personal investment in. And when you're succeeding and you're progressing and things are going well, making sure that people are recognized and making sure that when people are delivering or doing things that are making a material difference, you're shouting those things out, you're using those to create the evidence of your strategy. All of that is clarity, providing clarity to the organization on what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it, how we're progressing. So these are kind of critical building blocks.
Jason:As always in our industry, you don't want to set the strategy or the objectives to be too conservative, because you're trying to stretch your organization and people are motivated by being stretched. If you make things not challenging for people, then they become unmotivated or potentially will work less hard because they can achieve the objective without necessarily having to put the extra mile in. So there's a few elements there that are critical. There's a couple of other pieces that come with clarity and credibility as well. By the way, leadership is not really an exact science and you've always, as I said earlier, you've got to validate the things that you're doing with context and with knowledge, and that means, as a leader, to motivate your organization and to kind of drive your organization in the right way. You've got to be in the detail and close enough to validate the decisions you're making or validate where you need to course correct or validate the progress and why, and it's been able, to substantiate the facts and then communicate them with clarity to your organization, because that builds motivation. So it's a really important point of if you're not in the detail, then what you're articulating, the sound bites, and people see through that very, very quickly, and so it's really important not to do that.
Jason:Last two points here continue to check the progress. Continue to check are we on the right track? Are we doing the things that we think we need to do to succeed? Is the culture working? Are the teams motivated? Because without a motivated team, you're not going to succeed.
Jason:So, emotionally, emotional intelligence is something that you've got to use to do that, and then use that emotional intelligence back on yourself in terms of your own leadership style and success. Is it working? Do your people want to work for you? Are they motivated to work for you? Why do they want to work for you? Is the collaboration between your different parts of your integrated operating model network? Do people feel accountable? Keep checking the values right and communicating those.
Jason:As part of that clarity and credibility as well, it's massively important that leadership is not just about saying this is what we're doing once and then everybody's on the journey. You have to keep reinforcing the communication. You have to be super clear. The ideal scenario here is your whole organization can take your strategy and go now to late here in a very consistent way to anybody in the market. Actually, I encourage teams to do that because it builds their own credibility in front of the customer or the partner or in the market. There are a number of things here that are being clear. Concise having an organization motivated around that vision and that strategy and the clarity that comes with it, that's massively important.
Vicky:I've got a curveball for you and I'm sure Sam will want to dig into that consistency in a minute. But you were talking about A late in swinging Yorker rather than a curveball.
Sam:Thank you for that this is one of Boomer's reverse swing deliveries.
Vicky:My question is you said you like to challenge your team. And you talked about course correcting what happens and I don't know if you've got any examples that you can share here if you realize somebody in your team is not on the right track or when someone makes a mistake. You know we've talked a lot when we've worked with you around the importance of vulnerability-based trust, so I'm kind of teeing you up here.
Sam:but sorry, I apologize there.
Vicky:Couldn't resist that. But if you're challenging people and you are going to transformation, you're bound to be making mistakes as you go on. Mistakes happen. How do you deal with that?
Jason:Well, I think you're right, Vicky. You just have to understand that not every decision, not everything that happens, goes 100% correct every single time. Right, it's not an exact science, as I mentioned before, and you know, coaching your team and coaching individuals in your team is hugely important in your organization and coaching your leaders to coach their individuals is massively important. You have to keep coming back to what are we trying to achieve? Why are we trying to achieve it? What's your role in that?
Jason:And look, there will be things that don't quite work right, not necessarily mistakes, but things that don't quite know how you expect them to go. The ability to course correct quickly and have the team understand why you're course correcting at a given point, not deviating from the strategy or what the organization is trying to achieve, but just that tweaking of the strategy. That's normal and actually it's very important that the team understand that is normal. Right, so you can't have people negative about something that didn't go quite how you expected it to go Right. You've got to bring them on, continue to bring them on that journey that things not everything will go exactly how you expected to go. It just can't. You're dealing with individuals, you're dealing with people, you're dealing with different levels of experience across organizations. You're dealing with lots of external factors as well.
Vicky:Yeah, no, really good point.
Sam:Interesting stuff. So, having been through all this, what advice would you go back and give 20 year old Jason?
Jason:were when starting out in the team. Some of them are fundamentally values of how I operated when I first went into the industry and that I continue to kind of hopefully, exhibit and use. I'll start with a simple one that's not just not just a leadership point, but it's something that everybody needs to understand and it's something that I continue to say over and over again to my organizations Hard work done intelligently wins. Every time Hard work, you get out what you put in. So that's a really important kind of what you might term a value, and it's the way that I've always operated and I think you have to help your teams understand that as well, because it continues to be true.
Jason:Emotional intelligence and empathy are immensely important, Right, and you have to work on those things.
Jason:You have to exhibit those things to your organization in your leadership style situational leadership style but those things are massively important People understanding that you're focused on their success, Organizations and the strategy being brought to life and personalized for your organization, Showing empathy when, as Vicky said, something didn't quite go to plan and you need to course correct.
Jason:These are things that are hugely underestimated from a leadership perspective and there are times when I was younger where maybe I didn't always do as much as I needed to, but these are really really important factors and skills that need to be developed, and people don't always understand that you've got to develop those skills. Clarity we talked about earlier, hugely important. Be clear in communicating across your organization with your people. Bring them on the journey with you, make sure that they're motivated and that they can see that you're looking to make them successful and, in return, you become successful off the back of what they do. Finally we talked about it earlier clean, consistent communication. Keep reinforcing the things, the strategy, the things that need to be done, why they need to be done and the role that people play in that, how they differentiate.
Vicky:Just to add on to that as well. I've also seen you quite clearly saying this is what we're doing and this is what we're not doing. I think so many leaders just add more things to be done and that's where the prioritization happens. So, having the courage as a leader to go no, that is not important at the minute. We're not going to do that. We are going to focus on GSIs and we are being consistent with that message. I think every meeting that I supported you with, I pretty much came away and I knew what the strategy was. It was clear.
Jason:And that's what you always should be trying to achieve, and some of what you just said there, vicki, is actually quite difficult because of the silos that are being created, because people get that direction within the silo that may or may not be directly relevant to the strategy that you're executing in the theatre, because you've got an investment model or cost model that you're working with, you've got an organizational model that you're working with, you've got a series of resources, you've got priorities and translating that corporate silo direction into your go-to-market and your strategies and what you're going to go and execute operationally in the region. That's where there becomes challenges. Working through what to do and what not to do is extremely important, because you can't do all of it. You can't do all of it well, yeah, I agree. The last point just to leave you on that kind of advice really is look, support your organization and your teams and they will help you succeed massively important. You don't succeed on your own. Yeah, that makes sense.
Sam:Create an environment where your people can succeed.
Jason:Yeah, absolutely.
Sam:The summary of it, isn't it? So we always ask our esteemed guests for a book recommendation. Do you have anything for ?
Jason:I mean, yeah, I am a massive reader. Lots of stuff that I read that is not necessarily leadership related, but sport related.
Jason:You touched earlier on cricket, which is something that has played a large part of sport throughout my life, so what I would do is I'd recommend a book which is now a book that's probably 40 years old, or I think it was actually republished about seven, eight years ago in 2015, a book about captaincy in cricket, but there are real leadership examples to take from that, and it's a book called the Art of Captaincy what Sport Teaches us about Leadership and it's written by a highly successful, the most successful England cricket captain's ever, Mike Brearley, and there are elements of that book that talks about hard work, being in the detail as a leader, focusing on the individuals and managing individuals, helping teams succeed, the value of preparation, and I think that would be a book that would be an interesting read for some people, and there are so many parallels between performance in professional sport and successful leadership that that's one that I would say okay, it's a little bit off the beaten track that leaders would normally recommend, but probably something that says there's some really interesting content.
Sam:Makes sense. I guess Mike Brearley is an interesting character. He's far more than just an "a cricketer in that he's a psychologist, psychotherapist, motivational speaker, many, many other things. You know clearly a massive, great big brain. He very much applied his learning from the sporting world to things outside of sport, which is really interesting, Absolutely.
Vicky:Cool yeah.
Sam:I'm a big fan, probably the one manager that Ian Bootham actually appreciated, so that tells you something about how good he was Brilliant. Well, I'm glad we managed to squeeze a bit of cricketer. Sorry.
Jason:Vic.
Sam:Fantastic. I apologize for that. So, Jason, just before we finish, would you mind giving us your three quick and science key takeaways for our listeners, please?
Jason:Yeah. So three takeaways. I mean I've talked a lot about emotional intelligence, I've talked a lot about leadership styles etc. So I'm not really going to talk about those now. Key takeaways. Think about the best leaders that you've worked with and for.
Jason:Think about the things that they did and how they thought about leadership and what made them the best leaders. Were they knowledgeable? Did they have great experience? Were they a great sounding board? Did they help you with brainstorming ideas? Did they have great emotional intelligence? Did you look at them and say that they have the same joint success focus that you're trying to exhibit and deliver as well? So I think there's some takeaways there in terms of how you learn and then how you take those into your own leadership style.
Jason:Secondly, lots of talk today about data and AI and data driven decision making, but you've got to add knowledge, context and experience situational examples into that. Right, and context and knowledge only really comes when you're engaged in the market yourself as a leader. So don't put yourself in your ivory tower, don't sit there just looking at numbers or data. Make sure that you can add that knowledge, experience and context to your decision making and, by the way, if you don't do that, your credibility will be damaged in front of your organization. And then, finally, when you're building leadership culture, when you're building leadership teams.
Jason:We've talked a lot about motivation. We've talked a lot about the role that people play, accountability, but there is a really important factor here to say you've got to build an organization that's got complementary skills and styles right. So, as leaders, we all have our own strengths and weaknesses. Understand them, utilize them effectively, motivate and empower your organization. And build your organization so that it's got a very diverse set of skills, so that you can achieve the end goal, the vision, the objective that you try to achieve. Those would be my three kind of key takeaways.
Sam:Great thank you, for that. Makes sense. So it just remains for me to say thanks for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. I hope that all your comments and subscriptions are gratefully received.