Tony Holmwood Author Interview

Best Behaviour outlines a strategy to develop culturally competent leadership that is essential for business transformation. Why was this an important book for you to write?

Throughout my professional career, I’ve been fortunate to work with brilliant leaders and have grown to respect the influencing and inspiring characteristics and qualities of servient leaders who transform workplace cultures by providing purposeful future pathways. The current prevalence of self-directed, linear, transactional leaders, highlights the need to develop and promote the more sustainable behaviours of transformational leaders who lead from the heart and can empower and motivate employee value. Transformational leaders have the capability and know-how to deliver substantial productivity and prosperity.

What do you feel is a common misconception people have about the manager-employee relationship?

Like a parent, manager’s need to be accountable and responsible for coaching and empowering the potential of an employee. This includes challenging the employee to step outside their comfort zone and experiment with new behaviours. This helps the employee to develop important life skills, self-awareness and be more independent in their decision making. These adaptive qualities are extremely valuable to organisations in today’s ambiguous, fast paced environments.

You are an accredited Ei, behavioural and change practitioner. How has that helped you write this book?

My expertise in behavioural and emotional development arose from my personal struggles with social phobia. I had to learn the behavioural methods and social skills to overcome my fears and shyness to function as an effective business professional. My struggles defined who I am and influenced a career in performance improvement and my passion for behavioural development and experiential adaptive learning. Gaining professional accreditations helped to build my credibility and influenced the approaches in my book.

What is the next book that you would like to write?

I am humbled by the positive testimonials and book reviews from renowned coaching practitioners and leading industry publications. This has influenced my decision to work with a team of experts to release a second edition of my book to target a wider audience beyond HR Leadership. The book will include case studies and practical tips to appeal to general management.

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A finalist in the Australian Business Book Awards and described as groundbreaking by Dr. John Demartini, this book provides a behavioural framework to develop employees and enable high performance.

Behaviours express how we act toward, interact with, react to, others, situations and events. Behaviours are how we learn. Historically, human behaviour has been dominated by left-brain (transactional) thinking. Standardisation, productivity, competitive advantage, compliance and incremental growth are products of a logical left brain. But we need to relegate this thinking and empower our workforces to develop their creative, collaborative, spatially aware, big-picture, right-brained (transformational) capability if we are to adopt the best behaviour that will succeed in a rapidly changing business environment. Backed by leading research, Best Behaviour examines how:

• emotional development is key to creating a responsive, innovative, open culture
• knowing our motivations and strengths builds a strong identity and a passionate workforce
• trusting our intuition builds emotional intelligence (Ei) and enables our critical reasoning
• learning Ei and addressing our weaknesses develops a powerful leadership cultural competence and enables proactive workplace cultures
• managers and HR professionals can champion and coach business transformation.

Coaches will need to be aware of employee vulnerabilities, show empathy, promote trust, and be supportive and accountable for developing Ei in their organisations. To assist them in their task, Tony has created an innovative Behavioural Development Framework. This book is not for the faint-hearted – be prepared for some thought-provoking arguments on why we have an imbalance of command-control ‘boss’ styles and their impact on our security. Tony introduces an Ei, cultural change and business transformation framework, and presents a strategy to develop culturally competent leadership, essential for business transformation and to secure our communities for employee wellbeing.