Bonar Institute: Carpe Diem, Carpe Futurum
The pace and scope of change are unprecedented in human history.The nature of business, of work, is changing radically. Established in Ottawa, Canada, the Bonar Institute for Purposeful Leadership Inc. is a dynamic and innovative advisory firm that enables executives to excel in managing...
Purposeful Directors, Purposeful Board
Governance is too often focused on compliance, but good governance results from a board's ability to make the best decisions possible on behalf of the organization and its stakeholders, given the best information available. Boards do not run the company, but they set the tone and should be helping...
The Bonar Institute for Purposeful Leadership Inc. Signs Letter of Intent to Partner with White Label Advisors Inc.
The Bonar Institute is delighted to announce that James de Gaspé Bonar, Ph.D., CEC, PCC, CEO of The Bonar Institute for Purposeful Leadership Inc, and Christine Wzorek, SPHR, CEO of White Label Advisors Inc., have signed a Letter of Intent to create a formal partnership between the two companies...
The Purpose and Role of Advisory Boards & Why the Bonar Institute Has Created One
The purpose of an advisory board is to help a business gain new insights and receive excellent advice from experts, typically from different fields. An advisory board is not a decision-making body. Rather, its role is to serve as a forum for exploring new corporate opportunities by stimulating...
Road to Clarity
Let me invite you to take a short break in your busy day to embark on your personal road to Clarity. Most people will carve out time for a coaching session with their heads full of various problems, concerns, and gigantic “to-do” lists. Yet they lack the clarity needed to focus on what matters. If...
Anticipant Leaders & Anticipant Organizations Are Better Positioned for Innovation
Two recent Bonar Institute Webinars explored themes in purposeful leadership. Major General (Retired David Fraser, a Bonar Institute colleague, discussed in a June, 2022 webinar, Leadership in Uncertain Times – Developing Resilience, the need for anticipant leadership to proactively transform...
Stress gets in the way of Good Leadership
Awareness of stress and how it manifests in the mind and body is crucial for organizational leaders. Ignoring it can lead to diminishing returns both mentally and physically. Stressed, leaders can lose mental focus and become ill-tempered leading to tension in the organization. It can spiral out...
New Program: Elevate your leaders and gain the competitive advantage with Foundational Purposeful Leadership Development
It’s one thing to supervise a group of people. It’s another to lead a high-performing team. Are your leaders in the first category, the second category, or somewhere in between? As baseball legend Babe Ruth put it, “You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they...
Leading Human Beings, Not Human Doings
So much focus in business goes to action, specifically swift and decisive action. Think about common business phraseology such as “going the extra mile”, “hitting the ground running”, “playing hardball”, “going above and beyond”, or “stepping up to the plate”. Each carries a sense of intensity...
What makes work attractive to people?
"Human beings are “symbolizing, conceptualizing, meaning-seeking animals," – Clifford Geertz The disconnection between employee aspirations to work and what they really experience at work is being increasingly voiced by their quest for destiny of preferred work and workplaces. This forces managers...
Spirituality and Purposeful Leadership
Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor in her new book Whole Brain Living says that most of humanity who live urban lives are stuck in the left brain. This results in linear, mechanistic thinking in the past and future tense, structured, certain, analytical, detail oriented, seeks differences, happy to...
The Battle of Attrition Post COVID
Leaders today have just gone through a gruelling two-plus-year fight of normal business challenges that was coupled with an unprecedented worldwide COVID pandemic. As many would say, “you cannot make this up.” As we come out of the COVID pandemic, many leaders and their teams are just now coming...
Address the risk of burn out to increase employee retention
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” — Lou Holtz The astounding phase of announcements on people moving to new jobs over the past year indicates high volatility in the market for top talent. This poses a major retention risk for managers. The August 2021 PWC U.S....
Inaction is also a Choice: A Leader’s Dilemma
One of my coaching clients was struggling with one of the most difficult choices a leader must make. His company was growing quickly and some of his most trusted lieutenants didn’t have the necessary skills to foster exponential growth. The choice was stark: thrive by replacing loyal colleagues...
Leading Purposefully in The Era of ESG Reporting Fatigue
Purposeful leaders can create benefits for their companies and stakeholders by linking ESG reporting and company purpose and values. Let’s take a look at why. Much has been written about ‘sustainability reporting fatigue’ in recent years. There is no denying the toll Environmental, Social and...
Challenges of Internal Transition to a C-level Role
High potential candidates for a C-level position can benefit from an executive coaching engagement to prepare for the role and to succeed while in the role. Transition challenges are well-documented in the popular business press and peer-reviewed academic research. Many organizations experience...
From Startup to Exit: Necessary Leadership Adaptations
Each phase of a business’ life-cycle poses unique leadership challenges, and the Bonar Institute team can assist at each stage as coaches, mentors, and strategic advisors, and trainers. Senior executives need to adapt leadership practices and optimize the organizational structure for each phase of...
Need to Create Purposeful Teams
Teams need to be purposefully built. This is true because teams need to have the right balance of the skills and team characteristics required to solve the specific challenges they are facing. Team challenges can, generally, fall into three buckets: Generating exceptional levels of performance...
Anticipant Leadership – New Rules for Leadership in the Digital Society
There have been many transitions for humankind. From the Neolithic, scientific, agrarian, industrial, information, and now digital era. Each one of these transitions fundamentally changed our lives. And for the better - on balance. What was fundamental in each change was that humans were involved...
Freedom
“Without freedom, creativity cannot flourish. The right to freedom is crucial to progress in any society, and the context is having a sense of Global Responsibility.” - His Holiness The Dalai Lama Freedom is a deeply rooted value in how we live our lives in Western societies. It is a critical...
Endurance and Equanimity: Attributes of an Effective Leader
Endurance is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to trauma, wounds, or fatigue.i Equanimity is defined as a state of psychological stability and composure...
Why We Should Do Better to See Social Entrepreneurship As a Spectrum
As events were unfolding at the Capitol in Washington on January 6 and in the subsequent hours when technology giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon decided to kick certain users off their platforms based on how users leveraged the platforms, I kept wondering how much longer the business world...
Artificial Intelligence is Shifting Traditional Notions of Competitive Advantage
“Consistency is the playground of dull minds” ― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Traditional sources of competitive advantage (CA) focus on relatively static aspects that allow companies to gain greater market share. Proprietary assets, distribution networks, access to...
Bonar Institute & Purposeful Leadership
I am often asked what is purposeful leadership, and why is it the focus of the Bonar Institute? These queries have inspired me to revise an article I published on purposeful leadership following the founding of the Institute in December 2014. Based on my work with executives and the review of some...
Use Simple Rules to Avoid Bottlenecks
Organizations that enable employees to feel respected as individuals, as professionals, and as members of a team, also trust them to fully develop the potential of their skills, talents, and creativity. Jody Thompson and Cail Ressler, devised ROWE (Results Only Work Environment), a human...
Align Virtual Teams and Employees with Your Organization’s Mission, Vision, Strategy, and Values to Optimize Performance
Idea: Remote employees and virtual teams need continual alignment with your organization’s values, vision, mission, and strategy (VVMS) to optimize performance. Employee alignment with your VVMS mitigates some of the inherent performance challenges facing individual remote workers and virtual...
Disruption and Innovation
When COVID 19 hit several months ago, the words we heard most in our collective lives were “disruption, chaos, and disaster”. No one knew or could even imagine how the next few months would play out. At that time, we had no doubt that we would get back to our lives and businesses very quickly....
Inherently Spiritual People must be led by Spiritually Intelligent Leaders
The COVID pandemic has given the world a pause as we face the biological response to an ecological crisis. The crises exacerbated by the frenetic pace of the world with unfettered consumerism and economic growth have given us time to reflect on the merits of the globalized neoliberal world. The...
Influence the Conversation: Plan for the Worst
When you are preparing to have a difficult conversation, it can be pretty daunting. Here are a few questions that you might find helpful to think about when you are trying to influence the conversation. What could go wrong in this meeting (e.g., emotions, new facts)? What are things you definitely...
Empowering Clients to Thrive, Not Just Survive
Issue: The breadth and depth of risks facing businesses cannot be overstated. Seismic disruptions resulting from technological innovation and the instantaneous dissemination of data and information are transforming economies. Interconnectivity results in today's crises being truly global -...
Leadership’s ESG Imperative and Practical Suggestions for Addressing It
Idea: Multiple internal and external stakeholders increasingly insist that businesses address ESG issues. Leaders must apply emotional intelligence and change management skills to actualize ESG goals within their organizations. What Is the ESG Imperative? Multiple business stakeholders require...
Seven Simple Questions that Every Leader Must Answer for an Engaged Team
Engaging and mobilizing employees can feel like a daunting challenge. However, we have found that a few simple behaviours can make a huge difference in improving engagement. It is frustrating to have to read minds. For instance, many employees are frustrated because they feel like they have to...
The Bonar Institute’s Influence Planning Tool
Some questions to think about Before going into any high-stakes conversation that requires influence, use this simple tool to make sure you have your bases covered: Action Step SET A CLEAR GOAL. Key Mistake Going in with one's gut instinct instead of a clear goalsetting a fuzzy goalsetting a goal...
Need to Engage & Mobilize Your Employees?
Some questions to think about Why are you worried/frustrated about employee engagement?What does it cost your organization? What does it cost your team? What is your manager saying about it?Is it hurting quality?Is it hurting productivity?Is it hurting customer service and loyalty? How does it...
Steps to Executive Renewal
Intellectual Snapshot: Leadership has been described as a role involving chronic stress punctuated by periods of acute tension. Though typically, the working environment places little value on personal renewal, successful leaders learn to deal with the stress in their professional and...
Bouncing Forward: The Resilient Leaders’ Mindset
As we all struggle to come to grips with the human and economic devastation caused by the ongoing evolving COVID-19 pandemic, the most insightful leaders are identifying ways forward. They are adept at adapting their organizations' established contingency measures to the unprecedented existential...
Cost Questions
On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you assess your own levels of stress?Where does the stress show up?What are the effects of this stress on your job performance? Satisfaction?Whare are the effects of this stress on your personality?How aligned do you feel personally with the organization's...
Managing in a Time of Crisis
James de Gaspé Bonar Ph.D., CEC, PCC March 29, 2020 Issue: Running a business is predicated on two things: • Making decisions • Executing the decisions made well The importance of rational, effective decision-making in a crisis cannot be overstated and the biggest impediments to making such...
S.M.A.R.T. Goals
SPECIFIC Ensure that your goals are targeted and clear-cut. Ask yourself questions like: What am I trying to accomplish?Why is this goal important?What resources are required?Are their operational limits that need to be taken into account?Who is involved?If geography is involved, how does that...
Business as Usual: A Quaint Idea of a Bygone Era – Uncertainty is the Only Certainty
Issue: The current pace of change is unparalleled in human history. This is due to exponential technological advancements coupled with the instantaneous dissemination of data and information in our interconnected world. The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning...
Maturity Models for Leadership Risk Mitigation, Coaching, and Development
John Barker JD, CCEP, CHC, CHPC, CHRC December 8, 2019 John Barker is a Chicago-area management consultant specializing in innovation; and corporate strategy, product and market strategy & development. He is affiliated with the Bonar Institute Idea: Maturity models are a powerful visual aid...
Results-Driven Coaching in a Rapid-Fire World – Bonar Institute’s Proven Methodology
"I have had a number of executive coaches in the past, but in the end of the day they went nowhere. I need real, lasting results!" We have heard this refrain from corporate, government and non-profit clients at the Bonar Institute. To ensure productive executive coaching, we offer clients our...
Time Management Conundrum in Rapid-Fire World
Our org chart has so many vacancies that our senior people have to fill multiple roles. And, in some cases, they’re even unaware of all their managerial responsibilities! Does, this situation sound familiar? If so, you are not alone. Many organizations are reeling in the turbulence of...
How Business and Government Leaders Create a High-Performance Culture
The role of an executive in today's global economy is not for the faint of heart. The pace of economic, technological and social change is unparalleled in human history. Executives must also keep pace with a flood of instantaneous gathered, disseminated and analyzed data and information. Many are...
Leadership & the Power of Influence
"Leadership is influence." - John C. Maxwell, New York Times Best Selling author One of my clients recently shared with me her frustration on being passed over for a promotion in her hoped-for ascent up the corporate ladder. A very capable executive, she is well-liked and would appear to have all...
Servant Leaders and Unicorns
During the Q & A session after a talk on Success Through Purpose & Service, I was asked to elaborate on my comments on servant leaders, specifically in business. Below is an expanded version of my response. All organizations need leaders to provide focus, purpose, strategy and...
Abusive Leaders, Wounded Workers
"I hate to have to speak to you about this Paul [all names have been changed]… but I feel I have to... I can't go on like this… Sarah's bullying is too much for me". Sarah reports to Paul and is his star performer. "She often humiliates me in team meetings: 'You're dropping the ball Jake! You're...
The Private/Public Management Divide
Some of my executive clients share that they are attracted to the government by the desire to improve service to the Canadian public in a more cost-efficient way. They appreciate not being chained to quarterly results, allowing for more considered long-term goal setting. They complain, however,...
Corporate Consciousness – A Key to Success
As I have previously written, organizations need to develop new ways of adapting to prosper in our complex, volatile and hyper-connected world. (See my August 27, 2017 article Surviving or Thriving? Prospering Through Purpose.) They need to foster greater corporate consciousness based on a...
Leadership & the Law
As an executive coach, mentor and management consultant, I work with leaders who are required to manage complex legal and regulatory issues on a daily basis. In my experience, clients who have acquired a solid understanding of their legal responsibilities as managers - or owners – are more...
The Power of an Impactful Value Story
You can if you believe you can, and then others will believe you can. — Adapted from Virgil An old friend asked me recently how many of my coaching clients can tell their value story convincingly? I asked him what precisely he meant by value story. He responded that in his experience as a...
Government: The Forgotten Collaborator
Many of our executive coaching clients report feeling overwhelmed due to the daunting challenges of dizzying technological change coupled with instant dissemination of vast amounts of information -- and increasingly, disinformation -- in our hyper-connected world. The current rate, magnitude and...
Between Jobs? Now What?
I was speaking recently with a former colleague who is between jobs. He is an experienced and highly respected senior executive who is struggling to know what to do next. He shared that he wasn't particularly happy in his previous job, and that he wants his next opportunity to have purpose and...
The Greening Economy: Private Sector/Government Collaboration
We have been reflecting on the threats and opportunities the environment poses to economic sustainability. Many have noted the economy is increasingly removed from nature and natural processes. Our natural resources are being consumed at an unsustainable rate. The Earth's ecosystems cannot survive...
Mitigating Leadership Risk in Uncertain Times
The current pace and scope of global change are unparalleled in human history. This dramatic upheaval is largely due to dizzying technological development that enables instantaneous global sharing of information. Moreover, the world order established after World War II is also undergoing a seismic...
Stuck at Work? Choose to Become Unstuck!
If you are in a rut and feel stuck in your job, you are not alone. Research shows that up to 40% of managers and executives in the US are dissatisfied in their jobs (Pew Research, October 6, 2016). There are many reasons for this dissatisfaction ranging from stress, issues with your...
Surviving or Thriving? Prospering Through Purpose
Today's volatile and complex global economy creates significant corporate risks that executives must effectively manage and resolve. The most prominent risks are financial and cyber threats. Others, though, such as leadership, strategic and succession planning and execution, team building,...
Deep Coaching: No One Size Fits All
James de Gaspé Bonar Ph.D., CEC, PCC June 18, 2017 Our approach to executive coaching is based on the firm belief that each client is unique and has specific needs, challenges, opportunities and practical goals. One size doesn't fit all! In our practice we have identified the risks and benefits of...
Thriving in a World of Exponential Change Through Deep Coaching
The pace of change we are currently experiencing is unparalleled in human history. This is due in large part to exponential technological change coupled with the instantaneous dissemination of ideas and information across an increasingly connected world. (See Duleesha Kulasooriya and Maggie Wooll,...
An Enduring Question: Can a Company Have a Soul?
One of my coaching clients asked me recently if a company can have a soul. This question is very common in today’s fiercely competitive business environment - witness a recent search on Google came up with over 100 million results. Based on my experience with executives and a review of the best...
Economic Sustainability & the Environment
This is the fifth and final post in our series on stakeholders’ value creation in volatile times. It deals with the threats and opportunities the environment poses to economic sustainability. The Threat: Innovation, technology and resource conservation are core sustainability issues to business...
The Complex Case of Customers as Stakeholders
This is the fourth in a series on stakeholders’ value creation. The case of customers as stakeholders appears self-evident. Simply, a company cannot exist without customers. The purpose of every business centers on creating customer value. Forgetting that customers are the ultimate decision makers...
The Case for Employees as Stakeholders
This post is the third in a series on stakeholders’ value creation in volatile times. As traditional and social media unfailingly reiterate, we are living in turbulent and potentially dangerous times. Traditional spheres of political and economic power are mutating rapidly. Established values are...
Value Creation in Volatile Times: The Case for Ethical & Socially Responsible Companies
This post is the second in a series on Stakeholders’ Value Creation. Large publicly traded multinationals are considered by some to be the real centres of power of the global economy in the 21st century, where technology and innovation are integral to success (See James McRichie, The Individuals...
CEOs & Stakeholders’ Value Creation
The primary goal of CEOs is to leave a meaningful legacy, something greater than themselves and the organizations they lead. They aspire to accomplish the extraordinary. Today’s legacies differ from yesterday’s. We are in the midst of a historic transition where old paradigms are giving way to new...
Complexity, Volatility, Purpose & Leadership
At the Bonar Institute for Purposeful Leadership, we work with executives who are dealing with the demands of increasingly complex problems in a volatile and uncertain global economy. The most recent example is the immediate and dramatic global reaction to the “Brexit” result. In the past, issues...
Risk Mitigation for Businesses in Early Stages of Development: The HR Imperative
The dynamics underlying the everyday business situations of companies in early stages of development is a particular focus of the Bonar Institute for Purposeful Leadership. We are currently working on developing an effective and practical customized Leadership Risk Mitigation Program to help...
Succession Planning: Skills Gap & Corporate Risk
In our volatile, uncertain, complex and inter-connected world, the challenges facing corporate executives are often outpacing their cognitive abilities. This is undermining the sustainability of companies across North America, Europe and Asia. The need to find the right leader to navigate their...
Reframing: The Hallmark of Great Leaders
The challenges facing today’s corporate leaders often outpace their cognitive abilities. Errors, failures and chaos are an everyday occurrence in the life of an organization – some are small, others are catastrophic such as the 2008 Wall Street debacle. Calamities occur because executives are...
CEO Performance & Board Oversight
Corporate governance is under increasing scrutiny. Intense competition, a shifting marketplace, increased regulatory review and activist stakeholders - these are the hallmarks of the myriad complex challenges facing today’s corporate boards. Directors are the stewards of their corporations. They...
Great Leaders: The Competencies Imperative
Many believe that business leaders have the requisite competencies to manage their companies capably. Ah, but do they? At the Bonar Institute for Purposeful Leadership we see many clients struggle, some stumble, as they move into new management positions. In a recent issue of The Economist...
Are You Overwhelmed While Other Leaders Thrive?
Today’s headlines point to an economy in a state of unusual volatility and uncertainty. The ongoing energy sector meltdown, the decline of metals, minerals and gold prices, weak aggregate demand, as well as a Chinese growth and currency crisis have all been contributing factors. The mixed global...
Avoiding the Rush to Action
In my coaching practice, I encounter executives who are confronting unexpected crises, some which even threaten the ongoing sustainability of their businesses. The pressures on these leaders are great. They feel an urgency to act - quickly - to mitigate the risk to their organizations; and, longer...
Why New Leaders Fail
In my coaching practice, I see organizations struggle because they fail to offer key executive hires the support they require to successfully integrate into their new organization, their new position, and to learn the intricacies of the corporate culture. This support is a process called executive...
Organizational Change: From Cluelessness to Reframing
In a world that is becoming ever more turbulent and complex, organizations are pervasive and dominant. The challenges facing leaders often outpace their cognitive abilities. Indeed Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal (Reframing Organizations, 2003) speak of the “curse of cluelessness” that afflicts many...
Coaching as Alchemy
What a wonderful metaphor for the coaching experience. As the sacred practice of alchemy transforms base metal into gold, and transmutes physical consciousness into higher awareness, the experience of being coached by a master fosters the personal and organizational transformation of even the most...
Ruthless Compassion? Really?
"Ruthless compassion” may appear to be an oxymoron. But, if we think of it as a form of “tough love” adapted for executive coaching, it takes on real meaning. The role of an executive coach is to ask powerful questions and to provide meaningful feedback in the form of observations and assessments....
What Balance? It’s about Survival!
As an executive coach, I recognize the importance of work-life balance. I even offer a program to help stressed-out executives manage the tension, often dynamic but sometimes toxic, between work and personal time. Then one day, a prospective client told me pointedly: “There is no balance where I...
Poor Skills Limit Growth
During a recent coaching session, an executive complained of a phenomenon in her company that is limiting revenue growth: younger employees’ poor sales skills. We explored a number of possible reasons for this ranging from inadequate hiring practices to the need for better training to improved...
The Silver Tsunami, Skill Shortages and Ageism
In the past while, a number of my executive coaching clients have shared with me their experiences with skill shortages and ageism. Only a few years ago, the world was, some say still is, facing an unprecedented war of talent and competencies. Two critical shifts in workforce demographics were...
An Enduring Myth of Business Innovation
One of the mantras we hear most often in business is that we need to innovate in order to compete and to be viable. In scouring the best thinking on business innovation, we have discovered that innovation is not a revolution; it is evolution and execution. It is the successful implementation of...
From Pain to Purpose
An executive once shared with me the debilitating stress, the pain, he was experiencing in his work environment. He wondered how he could continue to lead his organization when he was feeling as badly as he did… And his deep-seated, unspoken, fear was that he couldn’t. Leadership has been...
What’s in a name?
James de Gaspé Bonar Ph.D., CEC, PCC January 23, 2015 I am often asked what is purposeful leadership, and why is it the focus of my institute? Based on my work with executives and the review of some of the best thinking on the subject, it has become clear to me that purpose is central to...