Leading Through Uncertainty – Details, episodes & analysis

Donna O'Toole is the Founder of August Recognition, a business dedicated to helping other businesses to win awards as part of their marketing strategy. Donna and her team advise on the strategic timing of award entries, leveraging past successes, and aligning award participation with business goals.

Donna also talks about her own challenges as a business leader, including navigating uncertainty, adapting to change, and providing clarity to her team.

I’ve entered and won awards in the past but Donna has explained how much more there is to creating a compelling entry. I particularly loved her award personas and the fact that mindset and different perspectives are also a key component to being successful.

I’ve worked with Donna and her team over several years and seen her grow her business substantially. Their dedication to helping their clients demonstrate credibility and achievements is exemplary. Donna’s ability to balance business ambition with empathy ensures she gets the best from and for her team, enabling them to do the same for their clients.

How well are you balancing results, with empathy and relationships?

You can find out more about Donna O’Toole and August Awards at https://www.augustawards.com

Topics covered:

• Strategic approach to entering awards (00:02:41) 
• Understanding the judge's perspective (00:06:33) 
• Different personas in award entries (00:07:16) 
• Maximizing the value of winning awards (00:11:44) 
• Overcoming mindset barriers (00:16:43) 
• Strategic Approach to Awards (00:21:28) 
• Uncertainty and Clarity (00:22:52) 

Other free resources:

• Buy the book Leading through uncertainty
• Take the Team Performance Scorecard and discover the 12 hidden dynamics of your team’s performance
• Sign up to our Leadership Hints and Tips
• Connect with Jude Jennison on LinkedIn

www.judejennison.com

Eman Al-Hillawi is the CEO of Entec Si, a business change management consultancy. Eman discusses the challenges her business faced during the pandemic, including the financial strain and the emotional impact of redundancies.

She reflects on the importance of relationships and the need to balance business growth with nurturing the team. The conversation also covers the shift to hybrid working and the significance of trust and flexibility in the workplace.

Eman is such an inspiration and I love the parallels between managing uncertainties as a pilot and in business and the importance of preparation, risk assessment, and adaptability.

Having worked with Eman over a number of years, I know how hard it has been for her to navigate the challenges of recovering from the pandemic. Her resilience and honesty are inspiring. So many businesses have had some tough challenges since 2020 with recovery from the pandemic, as well as navigating new innovation and new ways of working, and yet so often people have struggled alone.

How are you faring in the post-pandemic era and what do you need now to support you to move forward?

You can find out more about Eman Al-Hillawi and her business at www.entecsi.com

Topics covered:

• Recovery and dealing with uncertainty (00:05:03) 
• Balancing business growth and nurturing the team (00:16:06) 
• Navigating uncertainties in a hybrid working environment (00:21:04) 
• Managing uncertainties as a pilot (00:26:41) 
• Adapting to Pressure (00:30:20) 

Other free resources:

• Buy the book Leading Through Uncertainty
• Take the Team Performance Scorecard and discover the 12 hidden dynamics of your team’s performance
• Sign up to our Leadership Hints and Tips
• Connect with Jude Jennison on LinkedIn 

www.judejennison.com

Anne Shaw is the Executive Director for Transport For West Midlands. She talks about the challenge of managing a variety of stakeholder groups, from users to transport providers, the government, as well as her own team. She explains that change can be positive or negative for people by how well we engage and include them in the process and decisions. Anne recognises the need to balance the needs and desires of everyone, with the primary focus on the end users who rely on the transport services to ensure they are able to access health, jobs, school and other daily activities.

Anne has certainly sold the transport industry to me, making it sound exciting with change, innovation, diversity, technology, people and variety at its core. It’s a reminder that when we are curious and passionate about change, it’s much easier to inspire and be inspired. Anne talks about the need to be clear about the purpose behind change in order to help people navigate the emotions and uncertainty with curiosity. Some of the most uninspiring things we have to do could be more motivating by changing how we approach them.

What’s the purpose of the change you are experiencing? and how do you use that purpose to motivate yourself and others?

Topics covered:

• Purpose
• Change
• Transport industry
• Birmingham Commonwealth Games transport
• Leading change
• Being on the receiving end of change
• Engaging stakeholders
• Including users in the decisions and process of change

Other free resources:

• Take the Team Performance Scorecard and discover the 12 hidden dynamics of your team’s performance
• Download White papers
• Sign up for our Weekly Leadership Hints and Tips
• Connect with Jude Jennison on Linked In

www.judejennison.com

Jude Jennison reads chapter three of her book Leading through uncertainty and explains the importance of emotions in decision making and the need to use them as a source of information.

In this short podcast, I explain why technology has an impact on uncertainty, the emotional challenges we face as a result and the need to embrace them as part of leadership. I also introduce why I work with a herd of horses to help senior leaders and executives lead through uncertainty, how the horses respond and why they create such great learning. ©2018 Jude Jennison. All Rights Reserved.

Jude Jennison reads out chapter two of her book Leading through uncertainty and explains the context of uncertainty, how technology is driving a rapid pace of change and the emotional disconnection experienced in work.

Elizabeth Cronin is the Director of the New York State Victim Services department. A former lawyer, her team provide support for victims of crime, anything from domestic violence to mass shootings or events like 9/11. She understands the challenges faced daily by her team in leading through uncertainty where anything can happen at any time without warning. There are lots of leadership hints and tips for leading though uncertainty, whatever industry you are in. ©2018 Jude Jennison. All Rights Reserved.

In season 2 of the Leading Through Uncertainty podcast Jude Jennison reads chapters of her book, explains why she wrote each chapter and unpicks it. In this episode, she reads the Introduction.

Jude Jennison from Leaders by Nature explains the challenges we face when leading through uncertainty and sets the context for the Leading through uncertainty podcast series of interviews with business leaders. Jude provides strategic leadership solutions to large organisations as an author, speaker, executive coach and Horse Assisted Educator. ©2018 http://www.judejennison.com (Jude Jennison). All Rights Reserved.

Ann Hiatt is a Leadership Strategy Consultant working with scale-up companies to create rapid growth. Ann talks about personal and professional change and the skills needed to navigate the uncertainty of change. She advocates a need for an “insatiable curiosity” and draws on her experience of working with Jeff Bezos at Amazon to demonstrate how companies can grow through a recession through innovation and technology. I particularly liked her phrase “Having talented people is more important than a solid business plan because your business plan can pivot but you need talented people to deliver it.”

I’m impressed by Ann’s ability to balance being a perfectionist with her willingness to fail in order to learn and apply the learning in innovation. She draws on Carol Dweck’s book ‘Growth Mindset’ to explain the importance of seeing failure as an opportunity to learn, even though it is excruciatingly painful at times! As we continue to lead change in organisations in a context of economic and political instability, as well as a cost of living crisis, having the resilience and growth mindset to lead through uncertainty becomes ever more critical.

Where could you have an insatiable curiosity? Where is the opportunity for you to learn from failure?

Topics covered:

• Curiosity
• Rapid growth
• Psychological safety
• Failing to learn vs being a perfectionist
• Carol Dweck’s book ‘Growth Mindset’
• Humility, vulnerability
• Innovation

Other free resources:

• Take the Team Performance Scorecard and discover the 12 hidden dynamics of your team’s performance
• Download White papers
• Sign up for our Weekly Leadership Hints and Tips
• Connect with Jude Jennison on Linked In

www.judejennison.com