Eve Poole- The Art of Leadership: Honing Your Skills to Lead Better

In this Season 3 opener of Beyond the Status Quo, Tamara and Kathryn speak with Dr Eve Poole OBE, chair of the Woodard Corporation and pioneer of the "leadersmithing" movement. Drawing on a career spanning the Church Commissioners, Deloitte, Ashridge Business School and a string of chair and interim chief executive roles, including the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Carnegie Trust, Eve argues that leadership isn't a title bestowed on the charismatic few but a craft forged through hard experience, failure and deliberate practice. She makes the case for "stacking the deck": seeking out difficult moments on your own terms that build the templates leaders draw on under pressure, and for reclaiming the "junk code" of being human- the emotion, intuition and storytelling that AI can't replicate and leadership has always actually run on.

Takeaways:

·      Leadership isn't a title for the charismatic few, it's a craft ("leadersmithing") built through hard experience, failure and deliberate practice.

·      "Stacking the deck": deliberately seeking out difficult experiences on your own terms builds the templates you'll need when real pressure hits.

·      Imposter syndrome isn't a flaw, it's a sign you care enough to try, and it shows up in almost every good leader.

·      AI has absorbed our "rational" knowledge, but our "junk code"- emotion, intuition, storytelling, meaning-making - is what makes leadership actually work, and it matters more than ever.

·      Good governance is unglamorous but essential: clarity about delegated authority is what keeps organisations, and their leaders, safe.

·      Reclaiming words like "bossy" matter. Much of what holds women and diverse leaders back is a heroic leadership myth modelled on a narrow, historically male archetype.

·      Know why you're doing the job, and have an exit strategy: that clarity is what lets you make hard calls and know when to walk away.

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/evepoole/

https://evepoole.com/

Leadersmithing | Eve Poole | TEDx Durham University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73L1613KDnw

Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity? | Eve Poole | TEDx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMVDkSuzQbk

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