group dynamics – Quietly Powerful

5 reasons why we need leadership without authority

The Golden Key RMIT chapter (a collegiate honour society that invites the top 15% of college and university sophomores, juniors and seniors, as well as top-performing graduate students) asked me to explore “leading without authority” with their students and a panel of experienced leaders: Dr Wendy Harding, CEO of the National Institute of Organisational Dynamics Australia; Professor Ron Wakefield, Dean, School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT University; and Gary Novak, Partner at KPMG. It’s an important concept if you are new to an organisation or do not have positional authority – that is, authority by virtue of your job title or where you are in the hierarchy.

Diversity and Inclusion

Quietly Disadvantaged Talent

In conversations with quieter professionals, I hear examples of how they have felt disadvantaged in the workplace. It is surprisingly common place and yet often not seen as a problem. It is more often seen as the problem for the quieter professionals to fix and fit in. While I have the view that the individuals can develop to overcome some of the disadvantages, I also believe that organisations are wasting talent by not being aware of or addressing these disadvantages.

Diversity and Inclusion

Quietly powerful is not just about introverts

There seems to be an automatic assumption that when we talk about quiet people, they are introverts. In many cases this is true, but not always. Having worked on the Quietly Powerful movement for a while now, this is definitely not the case and worth keeping in mind.

Diversity and Inclusion

Fixing people who don’t fit

I recently had an interesting evening where I went to two unrelated, separate events and came away with the one message.

We keep trying to fix people who don’t fit.

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