TesseTalks Tesse Akpeki

Fran Borg-Wheeler describes Heart Centred Leadership as being about connection, compassion, care and harnessing the power of kindness in leadership.
“My vision was for young people to be able to have safe place to live and for them to get the support to be able to flourish in life and create better futures. I was starting to experience some mini strokes.  My health was a little bit questionable, but it was very important to me that I didn’t leave my role until I'd completed the mission of raising £1 million.   It took me four years. The project is up and running now and I know it's making a difference to young people's lives. This is an example of an ambitious goal that I managed to achieve by focusing on a heart centred approach”.
So, heart-centred leadership can involve forging connections, showing compassion to others, caring deeply, and leveraging the strength of kindness in leadership.

Excavating Memory, Archaeology and Hope is an invitation by Elizabeth Mosier to listen to the objects speak. The true treasure is not the object at all. Instead, it is the stories the object tells about the people who owned or used it, what the thing tells you about the person and what is of importance to them. Once Elizabeth embraced that concept. It changed everything about the way she viewed objects.

Mountains and valleys, ordinary to extraordinary is a theme that thrills anthropologist Erik Seversen. Erikspotlights the essence of feeling fulfilled and purposeful. Describing himself as ordinary he admits doing extraordinary things, especially after being told he would not be able to do something. He learned to confront his fears and embrace the possibilities and gifts in less than ideal situations. “Challenges are what makes life good. Challenges do make us who we are. Fear is a team effort. Faith wins over fear every time, whether we are in the valley or the mountain top”.
“Mountains and valleys are both stepping stones to shape our lives. Movement in our lives and achieving paradigm shifts is very much related to our mindset. Whenever something bad happens, I always ask myself, what's the positive? What do I see that's the positive, where is the gift? “

Says David Taylor-Klaus , “Vulnerability is a human gem. It's a core part of who we are and it doesn't have to be hard. It just has to be conscious. And when you bring it up to conscious awareness, when you invite it, when you lean into it, it's not hard, it's a practice. Being attentive to your frame and your energy as you're creating something, whether that's your presentation to your board or something other activity”. 
" Leaders who don't bring themselves and their full selves to their leadership are experienced as not genuine, and a disingenuous leader is one that people won't follow".
“Failure is part of the path towards vulnerability”.

People are less familiar with, feedforward which inspires quality performance. That’s because there really isn't any point pointing out to people what they're really bad at, because they probably already know. The brilliant thing about feedforward is that people at the receiving end of feedforward see aspects of their performance that they are less good at - start becoming better! This is because people feel good and are not trying to undo what they are not good at. In pursuit of excellence Two themes emerge - excellence and empathy. Feedforward is a totally different way of talking about performance.

Debra Allcock Tyler reflects on the power of feedback “What is the point of saying something to somebody that they are not going to do anything about? Instinctively as a human being we assume feedback is going to be bad. As managers and as leaders, we have an enormous amount of power of other people. The biggest power we've got is over their emotional state. “Feedback is about the person who gives it and the person who receives it, and both have got to be in the right space. We can wield feedback so inappropriately. We forget how much power we have over those we lead. We can make our staff utterly miserable without thinking about the context of feedback or the support required for it to land well.