Published by Tim Collings
Insights > Better World Leaders
Published October 1, 2021
Listen  68 mins

Leaders are trying to navigate a whole new way of leading without the tool set to do so

Our conversation with Karren Jensen, CEO of Conductor Software

Our guest for this co-created Better World Leaders conversation is Karren Jensen. Karren is a female CEO of a tech company who’s over 50 and raised 4 children! We reflect on her journey to get here, and hope that sharing Karren’s story will inspire a whole range of entrepreneurs, leaders, women, girls and older generations to continue to strive to bring their greatest ideas to life. 

For Karren, leadership is a great privilege and as leaders it is our responsibility to support all our people to feel cared for and respected. She has seen time and time again, when we get that right, staff take great care and responsibility for the people in their care – your clients, providing them with the best experiences and services that surpass expectations. Her company, Conductor, is leading the way connecting people and business performance in organisations so leaders can see for themselves what they can and should be doing to support the people in their care, and seeing how it improves their bottom-line performance.

Key out-takes from this episode

Inclusion:

  • Inequality removes people from the opportunity to explore their true potential
  • Ask yourself whether you feel included, a sense of belonging, access to equal opportunities, fair treatment, the ability to make decisions and to disagree with those whose opinions are dominant
  • To be innovative, we can’t just hear from leaders, we need to hear from everyone

Changing demands on leaders:

  • Leaders are trying to navigate a whole new way of leading, without the tools to do so
  • Leaders need to understand the issues, know how to come at the issue themselves, and what will the impact be on the organisation as they do
  • Leaders need to be aware that people are reading the unintended consequences from intentions much more easily these days
  • Many more people are willing to put their hand up and say ‘that’s not right’

Trust & Teams:

  • The key to teams is trust and communication
  • You cannot retain good staff if employees don’t trust the organisation, don’t trust their colleagues and don’t trust their manager
  • The health of your organisation is linked to the health of your teams
  • You cannot have a healthy organisation if you do not have healthy teams
  • You can’t influence anyone if they don’t trust you

Purpose and values 

  • Don’t give up on those niggling things that you have an ache to change
  • In their heart most leaders have the same ache as most of us, which is to make a difference to others, yet they are often trapped between the demands of business performance and supporting their staff.
  • It is not a zero sum game…we need to support leaders with the key knowledge they need now, to achieve both business performance and the growth and success of their staff.
  • Ask yourself whether the vision and values of your organisation are permeating all the way down through the organisation?

Leading Change

  • In any situation where you are courageous enough to really look at yourself lies great opportunity
  • You cannot change what you cannot see
  • It takes preparedness to create an organisation that can look at itself and learn
  • If you’re not comfortable to do this, you have an organisation which is not psychologically safe and you are losing revenue.

Karren and I look forward to sharing this chapter of the Better World Leaders journey with you. We would really like to hear your thoughts and comments either via leaving a review, posting on any via any of the social links below or by getting in touch with us directly.

Reach out to Karren or follow Conductor via social platforms and details below:

Email – karren@conductorsoftware.com

LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/karren-jensen-7495a634/
Conductor website – www.conductorsoftware.com/

As mentioned in this episode, we’d be very interested to hear how we can develop the Better World Leaders platform to enhance how you can develop as a Better World Leader. We’d really appreciate it if you could take a few moments to share your thoughts via this 3 question form – click here for the questionnaire, and thanks in advance for taking the time to share your thoughts.

You can also join the Better World Leaders LinkedIn group, follow to connect with and interact more deeply across the BWL community – www.linkedin.com/company/better-world-leaders