Nigel, we've spent time thinking about, and hopefully making the point very strongly, that's making time for leadership is really important. It's time now to start adding, maybe another concept, another idea on top of that. We talk about the idea of "stepping in" to your leadership, but what does it mean when we say "stepping in" to leadership? What do we mean by stepping in? Well, I think by stepping in, Mike, what we're really talking about is, moving towards a situation as a leader, because you need to exert some influence on what's going on. Now, you might choose to do that in different ways, of course. There might be a situation where you need to ask a question. Perhaps, you need to ensure that different people in a situation, or in a meeting, get the chance to express their point of view. You might actually need to do some telling them, be quite directional as well. But it's about picking that style I think, Mike, which is all around, how do I exert some influence on what's going on? I need to step towards that in order to do it, and then choose the way that I do that as a leader as well. That's really helpful, but this is sounding difficult to plan for, Nigel. We've been telling everybody who is watching, working their way through this material, that time is a really important, probably the most important, asset. It does sound difficult to plan for. What's the answer to that? That's a really good question, Mike. Can you prepare, and how do you best be time-efficient on this? Well, I would say, you can almost see two sides of this. There are some situations as a lead where you can prepare, where you're going to need to step in. Perhaps, something where you know next week you're going into a meeting, or you're at a phase of a project, where something is going to need to be done. Perhaps, there's going to be a situation when you know there's going to be different point of view that you need to step towards and influence. So I think that there are those, almost those set-piece, situations you need to go towards; and also, there are inevitably going to be those situations where, actually, it just comes up in the situation, in the moment, in a meeting you're in, in a conversation with someone. Where you actually say: "Actually, I need to redirect that, I need to influence what is going on here." For me, that's about having your leadership "antennae" really strongly out again and sensing what's going on around you, sensing what's going on in the situation and thinking: "OK, I'm the leader here, what do I need to do, to actually influence where this is going?" For me Mike, it's a little bit of both. So, how do you plan or make time for these latter-type interventions, that you were just explaining to everybody, Nigel? When in reality Mike, we're unlikely to be able to plan for everything. I think it comes back to what we were saying about our time management, and allowing for what we've called "chaos time" in our agendas as well. So where do we allow ourselves the space so that we can actually do the thinking, and almost think ahead into the situation, or just be able to give ourselves that chance to react? That's really clear, Nigel. We've talked about how to try and plan for these, how to make space so that we can actually react when it's appropriate. But can you give us any clues as to how to identify these sorts of situations, so that I can actually look at it and say, "This is an opportunity when maybe I should step in, to lead." Well, Mike, how can we identify the situations? Sometimes, I think, it's literally, it will feel wrong, and it'll be feeling rather than almost a logic or cognitive thing. In other words, it might be the discussion going around in circles. There might be some unproductive conflict going on where people are obviously disagreeing and perhaps are not reaching a resolution. There might be one person dominating the conversation as we've hinted out before. All of these things, if you notice them, you'll notice them either from your feeling or from thinking: "Actually, we're going a bit off the agenda here", or, "I sense the emotion in the group is just not what it needs to be". That's when you need to step in really. It's those types of things, Mike. That's how you notice it: feeling as well as thinking, as a leader. That's really helpful Nigel. We hope that's been of some benefit to you in explaining, not just what we mean by "stepping in", but also why it's important to step in. And that it's not just a cognitive and rational thing, it's something you just feel. From the leaders we've worked with over the years, they do have that sense of feeling that something could be better, something needs to be done, and they've got a half-idea as to how to move things forward a bit.
