54 - Harnessing Informal Power in your Organisation with Dr. Matt Offord

In this episode we welcome Dr Matt Offord, esteemed lecturer in Leadership and Management from the Adam Smith Business School, Glasgow University.

Matt is a former Naval Officer with extensive experience leading agile 21st-century teams in high tech and data rich environments.

Matt shares many fascinating insights which include;

·      ‘Harnessing informal power is a very healthy thing; the idea that informal networks are not helpful, is not helpful’
·      Leadership Lessons from the Royal Navy; you learn how to lead and be led, people are encouraged to challenge leaders as well, it's 'seen as a duty if something is not right'
·      On the difference between military and private sector, 'people talk a lot about teamwork, but then you go into workplaces and you see that it's not  really happening so much'
·      Leadership starts when you start. Leadership training is given to everyone from day one. ‘It was self evident why everyone was treated as a leader in the navy but in business it's different, you have to justify leadership training’
·      On crisis communications and informal influencers, ‘I wanted to see whether they (the ship's company) were listened to, based on their rank or based on some sort of prestige.'
·      Hierarchies– ’throughout most of human history, we've not really lived in hierarchies'– ’I wonder whether data and technology are changing the game and we're reverting back to what might be more natural perhaps.’
·       How to be a data savvy leader and the importance of data-driven leadership


Please enjoy the episode! You may also wish to give Matt a well-deserved Five Star rating!

Chapters

• 3:22 On distributed leadership
• 7:19 Everything you do is through people
• 9:42 Leaders learn to lead and how to be led
• 11:14 On challenging the leaders
• 17:42 Informal influencers are key to spread information
• 31:18 What if leadership was taught from day 1?