​We all know that dealing with a stressful situation can take its toll on our wellbeing, so what is good leadership in difficult situations? When things are going well, we access our own natural leadership style that our friends and colleagues see and experience.  When conflict or stress occurs this often changes our behaviour, sometimes dramatically.
Understanding how both stress and conflict can affect the way we interact individually and as a part of a group can help us to understand how stress ultimately affects our wellbeing.  Our awareness of this can give us enough context, ways to manage interactions and reduce the impact that the stressful situation has on our personal wellbeing, in a conscious and proactive way.

As an HR leader, it can be tough to be excluded from meetings that you know you should be in, when you know that your role reaches and influences every part and aspect of the business.  
 
How do you articulate the importance of the HR function, and how do you make sure the decision makers understand the value of its role?
 
This article will help you to communicate the contribution of the HR team and why it is critical to involve HR at a strategic level to support the long-term business goals and outcomes of the strategic framework.   

Delegation plays an important part in maximising productivity. As a manager or leader, it can be difficult to begin delegating to members of your team. This could be due to a number of reasons. Perhaps you are concerned about burdening your team with more work, worried that the work won’t get done to your standards, or maybe you just don’t have the time to invest upfront to teach people what you want them to do.

Learning to delegate effectively can really help you and your business to thrive. It gives you back the time you need to focus your skills on the higher priority stuff, while your team gets a chance to develop and learn new things.
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But there is an art to it. Here is how great leaders use delegation effectively...

Many people would describe strengths and weaknesses as being polar opposites of each other. Some things you are ‘good’ at and some things you are ‘bad’ at, right?
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Well actually, there is another way to look at this.

There are substantiated theories that challenge this idea. They frame strength and weakness as two parts of the same thing. Strengths and weaknesses have also been described as ‘mirror images’ of one another.
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Before we look at how you can do that, let’s get a bit more context...

Setting yourself apart from your co-workers can be tricky, especially if you work for a large organisation. A personal brand in the workplace is essentially what people know you for.

Remember, you are your brand and you live it every day.

It is your behaviour, your attitude, your skill set, your work history, the way you present yourself, and your social or professional connections. Having a positive and well-known personal brand could make all the difference when it comes to promotion time.

If you are in the running for a promotion – or you want to be – building your personal brand is crucial. It’s time to give yourself some personal PR and build a personal brand to get ahead of the rest!
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Here are my thoughts on where to focus your attention

What happens when you have to stand up in front of a room full of people or give a board meeting presentation?

Do your knees shake and your palms start to sweat?

With all those eyes on you it can be hard to focus. Are you meant to picture your audience in their underwear? How on earth does that help anyway?

Take comfort in the fact very few people escape the fear of public speaking. Some say as many as 75% of people have some form of phobia of it. Unfortunately, needing to give a presentation often come with the territory of a leadership role. And when you have an important presentation to get ready for, it is understandable that you might be a bit anxious or unsure where to start.

Hopefully the following tips will help to get you ready for your next presentation:

How often do you get asked to after work drinks when you are the HR Director? I am willing to bet that the answer is… not very often!

How often do your colleagues (including the CEO) come and offload concerns and issues with you?  In my experience, frequently. 

And yet who do you have to turn to as the HR Director shouldering these woes? ​