Guest Speaker: Geoff Crowley

Preface: SIBL Executive Programmes involve participants in a blend of latest cutting-edge theories and models of best practice leadership together with an appreciation of “unwritten wisdom.” The latter is based on the practical realities of leadership at “the sharp end” delivered by members of the SIBL faculty in which the prime qualification that trumps all others is the “Got the T-shirt” tag after the name.  Or as some would say “Never trust a CEO who doesn’t walk without a limp”.  Welcome Geoff Crowley.

Background and Introduction:

Geoff Says: “Sometimes we are so focused on how our teams interact, or how members of the management team are working together, or perhaps on how individual members are faring, that we pay insufficient attention to how we ourselves interact, how we react, and how the team sees us.

Are we the autocrat, to be feared and obeyed? Or the leader who cares and spends time helping the members of the team achieve the set goals? Or are we a non-event, nominally in charge but hardly involved? And how would we tell what we are and what team members think we are?”

Workshop Content

This workshop will examine interactively, with the help of a couple of case studies:

• How we lead the team in reality as distinct from how we might “think” we do
• Can psychometric instruments help our understanding of ourselves and others?
• Can leadership be learnt or is it inherent anyway?
• What can we learn from books and personal experience?
• Importantly, how can we put into action anything we do learn (from books?)
• How does our management style change over the years and how does years of learning change us as people and how we manage others?

Two case studies (real life, true experiences from Geoff) will form the basis of discussion on how to manage awkward management situations. By putting ourselves into the cases, we can explore our ideas on how we might have handled these situations and what we might learn for our own futures.

Outcomes

• A slightly clearer view of ourselves as others see us (“Oh, would some power the gift tae gee us? – to see ourselves as others see us” – Robert Burns
• A better understanding of how we ourselves operate, our management/leadership style through the reactions of others to our style as they experience it.
• Perhaps a view on how others in this workshop see our ability to analyse ourselves.

About Geoff Crowley

Born and mostly educated in New Zealand (NZ) Geoff started working in engineering in the steel industry in NZ straight out of university, then moved through various metallurgically oriented business positions in technical and operations management in NZ, Australia, Iceland, and Scotland.

This includes twenty-five years at Highland Galvanizers, including 13 years as MD of a two locations business employing one hundred people between Cumbernauld and Elgin.

Earlier this century he completed an MBA at Aberdeen University. For the past 2 years, Geoff has been sharing his acquired knowledge as a consultant to the Galvanizing industry internationally. Visiting thirteen countries this year, including speaking eight times at industry conferences, Geoff is acknowledged as a great technical resource, but he still does not consider himself as a good leader of people!

A sailor in his spare time, qualified to skipper boats to three hundred tonnes, and sailing up to three thousand miles a year, mostly around Scotland, he is spending some of this winter planning and preparing for next summer’s trip to Madeira.