Over the last four weeks, I enjoyed working with some colleagues from Leadership & Performance Partners with Glencore. The training is known as associated non-technical skills (ANTS), which the regulator in the mining space has identified as people in mining who do the technical work very well but lack some of the soft skills. These soft skills include teamwork, leadership, communication, decision-making, and situational awareness.

They may be referred to as soft skills, but as Ross would say, they are the most challenging skills to learn. One of the activities is to get participants to identify who are leaders in the organisation. After discussion, it was identified that everyone is a leader in one way or another.

Last week, I did some training with our client, Premier Conveyors PTY LTD, regarding the commencement of Certificate IV in work health and safety.

I was amazed that we talked about leadership at the beginning of that workshop. I asked the same question, and the response was the same.

Everyone is a leader.

When asked about issues and concerns, they were all swift to provide examples of good and bad practices.

More importantly, they were able to identify solutions to issues.

Who are the leaders in your organisation?

Do you ask them for advice?

Do you listen to them?