The difference between a leader and a great leader

REIQ's Advanced Leadership Program is set to guide attendees through key leadership principles including organisational culture, leadership vs management, authentic performance conversations and much more.

In the lead up to this event, we caught up with Dr Neil Carrington, CEO, Carrington Consulting Group, who will be running the event to get a brief insight on what leadership means to him and what attendees can expect.

Are you in a leadership role or thinking of becoming one? Learn more about our Advanced Leadership Program here.

How would this course help aspiring leaders?

There's a big difference between those two concepts. The best way I can explain it is if it has a pulse you lead it. That's going to be an important message that we talk about.

We're also going to talk a lot about creating and sustaining powerful teams. There's a big difference in creating and sustaining that team environment. We're going to look at the secret ingredients in teams and what makes a great team. So we're going to talk quite a bit about what role a leader plays in that and indeed what role all participants in that team play.

The other major thing we will explore from this program is to have a deep look at organisational culture.

What are common mistakes people make in a leadership role?

Most people are crap at listening so we're going to explore the concept of deep listening and what it means to truly listen to people and, paradoxically, leadership is about keeping people in a volunteer state.

You've worked with the All Blacks in a leadership workshop - are there similarities in the leadership found in sport to business?

Leadership is about what I call being discipline ecliptic...and that sounds like theoretical mumbo-jumbo but what it actually means is you do different things with different people in different contexts. That's what the best leaders understand.

It doesn't matter if you're in sport. I worked with hospitals, leaders in university...real estate people and it's about leading people with names. You manage things and you lead people with names. That's the big message across any sector you work in.

What do you think attendees of this event will walk away with?

What that means is they are willing to grow and learn. So, if you ever come across somebody who says I pretty much know all that I need to know, move away from that person at high speed.

What I'm going to show people is that you need to stay in a state where you are prepared to grow.

Most people suffer badly from fraud syndrome. Particularly if they are new to leadership they probably think, 'what the hell am I doing in this program, I'm not a leader'. So, we're going to unpack that concept of fraud syndrome.

One of the last activities we are going to do is a practical session on feedback and I'm going to talk about four-way feedback. Most people's idea on feedback is beige-level bulls**t and they have these surface- level conversations and they don't really know how to construct a feedback culture.

So, I'll teach them techniques like scaffolding and foldback...these are really practical skills that you can plug and play straight away.

Advanced Leadership Program - Stradbroke Island Retreat

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