Self Leadership and
The New Leadership Playbook
Blog by Andrew Bryant

Leadership is a complex and multi-faceted topic. To be an effective leader requires awareness of the context in which you are leading, the motivation and skills of the people you are leading, and your own leadership style. Despite the complexity, there are some do's and don'ts that can help you become a more efficient and effective leader. In this guide, we'll cover five of the most important leadership do's and don'ts.

Leadership Do's

1. Communicate Openly and Frequently

One of the most important things a leader can do is keep lines of communication open. This means being accessible to your team and encouraging two-way communication. Leaders should make it safe to ask questions and be available to address concerns (psychological safety). Being responsive to feedback builds trust and engagement.

2. Be Decisive

Leaders must be able to make decisions quickly and confidently. Indecision breeds confusion and causes morale to suffer. Sharing why and how a decision was made creates buy-in...

Being an effective leader or manager in a post-pandemic world goes beyond being good at what you do; it requires balancing empathy with accountability.

The New Leadership Playbook provides a practical guide to being human and understanding people whilst simultaneously driving for, and delivering accelerated results.

 It does this by sharing principles that work and plays to achieve success.

This is a book that you will not only read more than once, you will want each of your team to read and apply the tools within it.

Why a Leadership Playbook?

In sports such as American football, set moves are often called a play. The aim is to move the ball down the field, but there are various plays to achieve this. Coaches and players keep a record of these plays in a playbook, so that they can be learned, rehearsed and executed.

When you lead people, you need to understand the principles of leadership and have plays for your team to effectively execute and achieve objectives. The New...

In nearly twenty-five years of writing about, speaking about, coaching and facilitating leadership, clients often ask me, ‘What is the best leadership book?’ or ‘If I was to read one leadership book, what would it be?’

Best is subjective and depends on where a leader is on their journey. For me, leadership always starts with self-leadership or personal mastery. After all, how can you lead others if you can’t lead yourself?

Prior to writing, ‘Self Leadership – How to be a more successful, efficient, and effective leader from the inside out (McGraw Hill 2012’, I would have said the best self-leadership book would have been ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. 7 Habits is still a must-read for self and time management.

But what about the best leadership book? There are so many, and each covers different definitions of leadership; some are more strategic focus, whereas others are strictly about management. I would...

In my 2012 book with Dr. Ana Kazan, ‘Self Leadership – How to Become a More Successful Efficient and Effective Leader from the Inside Out’, we asked are you the Driver or the Passenger of your Life?

Self-leadership, and whether you are the ‘driver’ of your life and career depends on accessing the self-confidence to exercise your autonomy (ownership) over your thinking, feeling, and actions.  Passengers, by contrast, wait to be told what to do for fear of failure or because they lack the self-belief that they can.

I recently heard from one of my executive coaching clients that he would be promoted before he expected.

“How do you feel?” I asked.
“I don’t feel ready”, was the reply.

This is interesting because, in my experience, how ready we are for a new challenge depends on our willingness to get comfortable with the unfamiliar and our belief in our ability to learn.

Learning to Drive - Again

I have recently moved from...

I will always remember an inspiring speech by Darrell, a CEO that I was coaching. The occasion was a ‘town hall’ for employees just after it was announced that he would be moving on to new pastures.

“Make mistakes”, he said.

“Just don’t let your mistakes be bigger than mine”

It is not often we hear a leader encourage his team to make mistakes, but Darrell knew that making mistakes was part of the business and that you should limit the size of your mistakes. Darrell’s leadership had created a culture of creativity and customer service, and many people openly wept on his last day.

A critical test for any leader is how they effectively manage employee mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable but your response to them will determine whether you enhance productivity and employee engagement or destroy moral.

A simple maxim for mistakes would be –

“Be tough on standards, be tender on people.”

Before I discuss how to implement this...

When a team underperforms or experiences failure, who is to blame, the team or the manager?

In sports, sacking the manager is a public answer to this question, but what about in business? 

The question assumes full responsibility for failure on either the team or the manager, but what other factors should we consider?

You will have likely experienced working in a team or a group and being frustrated with either the team lead (manager) or fellow team members. I know I have. Recently I found myself being ‘triggered’ by the behaviors of a group I belong to. The group is a global collective of coaches and consultants contributing articles to an online magazine. The metrics are simple, provide relevant, well-written content by the 15^th of the month so that the magazine can be produced and released at the beginning of the following month. What could go wrong?

Last month, I received an email from the team lead thanking me for my article and letting me know that the...

In a Harvard Business Review study of 20,000 employees, 54% claimed that they don’t get respect from their leaders. Respect has been shown to improve employee trust and safety and effect a 92% increase in focus and priority. The obvious conclusion, therefore, is to instruct managers and leaders to be more respectful, but what if this conclusion is wrong?

If you are honest with yourself, do you respect someone who does not deserve respect? Are you able to respect someone who does not respect themselves?

Respect Definition

The verb respect means to admire someone (or something) because of their abilities, qualities, or achievements. It can also mean having due regard for their feelings, wishes, or rights.

In my work on self-leadership, and through over 20 years of coaching, I can share that most people struggle to respect their own abilities, feelings, or rights. And how can you expect respect if you do not respect yourself?

Coaching for Respect - A Case Study

Recently I was ...