Leadership on a personal level with Brad Fox

This week, Chris Ridd speaks to the multi talented Brad Fox, owner of SmartBrave Consulting and Adventure Excellence. Two very different businesses with a common thread to help people ‘grow personal strength, resilience, and enthusiasm for a challenge’.

Brad shares his insights into the changing realm of leadership through some actionable tips for managing teams remotely:

  1. Retain your culture.

    Be consistent with your messaging about your trademarks, and how you are as a business and keep that alive.

  2. Treat each person as an individual.

    People process messages differently, so when you put out a blanket message be mindful that you’ll get different reactions, and plan for that accordingly. 

  3. Stay connected.

    Hold two connection meetings a day – one, first thing in the morning to touch base about what each person has on for the day, and another one midday or post lunch, which can have more of a social aspect that covers a quick check in to see how everyone is going. Feeling connected is extremely important, especially when you don’t have those water cooler conversations anymore.

“Businesses that have now encouraged people to find their own method for productivity have done consistently well.”

When it comes to the changes that should be embraced going forward (post COVID), he advises leaders to think about: 

  1. What did you learn in terms of a hands-off leadership style?

    When employees are back in the office, stop looking over their shoulder because you’ll take away the individual meaning and purpose of their work, and make it about you. So let them have the autonomy they’ve been used to, and trust them to manage their own productivity. 

  2. What did your team really enjoy about working from home?

    How can you encourage and enable them to bring elements of that back to the workplace? People have adjusted to the mind shift of working from home, and going back to working in the office will mean another mind shift that leaders could be underestimating, so there needs to be policies in place to enable a more flexible and individualised work plan. 

  3. What did your clients learn to like, and how do you keep giving them what they want?

    Your clients may have increased their reliance on technology, and learned new ways of getting information which you’ve previously provided, such as through myprosperity. So what can you do to keep them enjoying that world?

Watch the full interview below.