Thank you for your support during the early days of Leadersmithing. This post provides links to some of the highlights thus far, including my TEDx, my interview in the FT, and my appearances on Woman’s Hour and Australia’s ABC Radio.
I was also Highly Commended in The Business Book Awards 2018.
First, I was delighted that my book was so strongly endorsed by Paul Polman, Joanna Lumley, Jayne-Anne Gadhia, Sir Chris Smith, the Commandant of Sandhurst, the Chairman of Easyjet and Next, the leadership guru Randy White, and the Chairman of Saxton Bampfylde. The book has both a Facebook page and strong presence on my home page, as well as a dedicated Bloomsbury page, and a page on Amazon with lots of lovely reviews.
There is a Leadersmithing TEDx too, with over 2k views and counting. The accompanying Leadersmithing card packs, available on Amazon, are proving both extremely popular and extremely useful.
Even before the book launched, I delivered a keynote about it, and wrote a guest blog and op ed. HR Magazine ran a series of 4 excerpts, based on the suits in my second half, on the Diamonds, Clubs, Spades and Hearts of leadersmithing.
I had excellent launches both at the Bloomsbury offices and at Waterstones in Edinburgh. Then I appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour to bottom out the dilemma about whether or not women should make the tea at work, which led to an extended segment on Australian ABC Radio about the importance of manners in the workplace. The Financial Times picked me up through an extended interview on Manners Maketh Managers with Della Bradshaw, and invited me to contribute to Professors Picks.
The weekend that I filmed the Durham University TEDx, I also addressed the Leadership, Ethics and Working with Unknowing Conference at the University of the West of England and featured in the Edinburgh University alumni bookshelf, before speaking at the inaugural Edinburgh University Women In Business event. I was profiled on the lifestyle blog Honest Mum which also led to a guest blog, and Leadersmithing was reviewed in the June Duke CE magazine Dialogue (p80).
I wrote a summary of Leadersmithing for the June edition of Developing Leaders, which also gave rise to a podcast. A column I wrote for the Church Times also led to a podcast on Leadersmithing (from 28m 50s). In August, I was Editor’s Pick in the Flybe in-flight magazine.
On the strength of my work on leaders, I was invited to chair two sessions with leaders at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, with Richard Reed the co-founder of Innocent, and Jayne-Anne Gadhia, the CEO of Virgin Money who had also endorsed my book.
Recently, I delivered a session on Leadersmithing at Julia Hobsbawn’s Names Not Numbers event in Oxford, and gave the keynote at the Collections Trust conference in York. In September, I launched the book in Jersey, where I also gave an interview to BBC Radio Jersey about building leaders of character for Jersey (10 mins in) and wrote an article for Bailiwick Express. I was delighted to see a pack of my Leadersmithing cards on the Chief Minister’s desk.
Looking forwards, I’m booked to appear at the inaugural Harpers Bazaar At Work Summit in November, and also at the Bloxham Festival in February. This month, those of you in London may like to sign up for my session with the Extra Mile group on 10 October.