Blog Posts

Building A Special Team

As the old adage goes, time flies when you are having fun. It is amazing [...]

13
Sep

René Receives Honorary Doctorate

Education Is The Passport There is a time in our lives when we don’t quite [...]

06
Sep

Who Are You Listening To

Who Are You Listening To? As the late great Maya Angelou reminded us, “Not everyone [...]

31
Aug

Why Inclusion Matters To This CEO

Why Inclusion Matters To This CEO Leading a team is never about the glory of [...]

23
Aug

Change Is Your Choice

Change Is Your Choice Ever since the tragedy of George Floyd last year, I have [...]

16
Aug

Everybody Deserves A Voice

Everybody Deserves A Voice London is not your city or my city, it is everybody’s [...]

09
Aug

Diversity is not a project: it is permanent cultural change

21 June 2021

Clarity, Certainty and Hope

Clarity, Certainty and Hope Many have spoken about VUCA times, where it all becomes Volatile, [...]

20
May

How To Handle Failure

You Lost, You Failed. What’s Next? Losing and Failing. Something we all experience in our [...]

26
Mar

Talent – How to Have it and How to Keep it

It’s Harder Now than it’s Ever Been There are a huge and growing number of [...]

12
Feb

Innovation for Continuation

Planning for the Future I had the privilege of being the host, compere and MC [...]

29
Jan

Destination Johannesburg

Retreating from the chaos Sometimes it takes a serious and vital deadline to bring the [...]

15
Jan

Leaders and Mentors

Preparing the Youth Lilian Baylis School in Lambeth, south London was regarded by many as [...]

17
Dec

Soft Power is Smart Power

It’s More Than Academia I had just finished my address to the gathered officers of [...]

03
Dec

Leading from the Front

A Generational Leadership Shift PPS – Izak Smit Another fascinating trip to Johannesburg led me [...]

27
Nov

The Squandering of Soft Power

A New Age of Leadership There was a time when the people worked for the [...]

19
Nov

Older Doesn’t Mean Better

Leadership Through the Dip Exceptional times demand exceptional leadership. And make no mistake about it, [...]

05
Nov

Higher and Higher

5 Ways to Create an Inclusive Culture The technology division of Vodafone, like far too [...]

29
Oct

The Illusion of Inclusion

We Don’t See Things The Same I was meeting Priyanka’s mother for the first time, [...]

24
Oct

Where’s Rene?

BBC Children in Need Having worked with The Executive Team of BBC Children in Need [...]

16
Oct

Do Some of Your Employees Feel Invisible?

How to inspire and motivate your workforce Diversity and inclusion appear to be back in [...]

15
Oct

On the Journey to Diversity

African Development Bank Back in Abidjan, Ivory Coast with the African Development Bank (AfDB), I [...]

02
Oct

Emotionally Unintelligent

Theresa May has been cruelly nicknamed the Maybot, for her robotic and unemotional responses to [...]

18
Sep

Do the Right Thing

Not Every Negative Action is Worth a Negative Reaction It was another typical winter morning [...]

21
Aug

Women and Leadership – Part 2

Role Models Empower In my previous article [https://carayol.com/women-and-leadership-2/] we examined the interesting and instructive article [...]

10
Aug

Women and Leadership – Part 1

Khanyi Makwala had been amazing to work with. No task was too small and no [...]

30
Jul

Engagement – Trump Does It His Way

From the moment Donald J Trump threw his hat into the ring to be nominated [...]

16
Jul

Engagement – The 2018 World Cup

A couple of years ago, I was privileged enough to have the opportunity to interview [...]

02
Jul

Here’s £5,000 Now Quit

Modern Engagement - best practice to next practice. Amazon have a completely different form of [...]

11
Jun

Empowering Engagement

Whilst running a Boot Camp for all the African Development Bank’s Young Professionals (a newly [...]

04
Jun

The Chief Engagement Officer

The days of the aloof but brilliant CEO, spending most of their time in long [...]

29
May

Spike! The Power and Simplicity of the Strengths based Revolution

During this webinar interview with Catherine of MBA World, I explore the reasons why the [...]

14
May

The Secret Rules of Engagement

How we ensure that employees are encouraged to do their best every day is Employee [...]

30
Apr

The Leadership Void

I had the privilege of being invited to compere a really important and well thought [...]

03
Apr

Reputations Don’t Die – People Destroy Them

The Falling Of Oxfam? Oxfam has fought hard to make so many disadvantaged people’s lives [...]

04
Mar

Good Receptions Create Strong Connections

I had just arrived at the ‘Gherkin’ building in the City of London. I was [...]

25
Feb

The Unwelcome Reception

Some years ago, I was invited to give a leadership talk at Marks and Spencer [...]

19
Feb

Nothing Beats a Warm Reception

The Home Advantage Before accepting any assignment, we always endeavour to spend 30 minutes in [...]

12
Feb

Facing Down Your Boss

Cyril Ramaphosa’s Challenge – The Real Work Starts Now You really have to want to [...]

04
Feb

Ramaphosa’s Modern And Contemporary Leadership

Our Youngers and Betters (Part 4) Maybe, ‘born free’ of the past is precisely what [...]

29
Jan

New Age Leaders

Our Youngers and Betters (part 3) Africa is becoming the unavoidable inflexion point of a [...]

22
Jan

It’s Time to Skip a Generation

Our Youngers and Betters (part 2) The polarisation and tribalisation in today’s politics exacerbates a [...]

15
Jan

Our Youngers and Betters (part 1)

New Dawn for South Africa? It was truly a momentous occasion at the recent ANC’s [...]

08
Jan

Young, Gifted and Blocked

From Job Seekers to Job Creators As an early morning ‘ice breaker’ for our Leadership [...]

11
Dec

Building a World Where Everybody Works Less for More Money

Work Smarter, Not Harder During a recent heated debate about annual leave with the executives [...]

04
Dec

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

We all Need Something Positive to Believe In There are some moments in recent history [...]

20
Nov

Extraordinary Times Demand Extraordinary Leadership

Managers Can Lead We were by the extraordinarily beautiful Lake Malawi, it was November 2016, [...]

13
Nov

The Changing Role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

The Technocrat There was a time not so long ago when the CFO was purely [...]

06
Nov

Belonging

We all need Someone to Believe in and Something to Belong to “It was the [...]

30
Oct

Leadership is an Art Not a Skill

Leadership is no longer about rank or hierarchy. It’s about who can influence and persuade [...]

23
Oct

Collaboration is the New Leadership

Nothing is Best Done Alone Anymore Business has become far too fast moving and markets [...]

16
Oct

Leaders Never Stop Practicing

On arrival, late in the evening at Copenhagen airport in Denmark, we looked forward to [...]

09
Oct

What Does Britain Want In A Political Leader?

The insightful results from the recent BritainThinks survey is worth looking at from a slightly [...]

02
Oct

The Nasty Leader

The Killer Flaws of a Political Leader The recently published book, Betting the House: The [...]

25
Sep

Be The Leader You Want to Follow

[bctt tweet=”Be The Leader You Want to Follow” username=”renecarayol”] Change is hitting every business like [...]

21
Sep

The Sack Race

New Job and You Want to Last – Make Big Calls Fast Even the very [...]

18
Sep

The Only Way is Ethics

We were always taught that Public Relations (PR) was the “the truth told well”. The [...]

11
Sep

I’m Getting Myself Out of My Way

My daughter and I were looking forward to watching the climax of the World Athletics [...]

04
Sep

I’m live at BAFTA and here’s how you can win a ticket

I’ll be talking about the power of strengths based leadership on Tuesday 31st October at the prestigious [...]

01
Sep

Survivor

“How bad have sales got to get before you consider resigning?” was the sharpest of [...]

28
Aug

“Getting Engaged”

Mission Impossible As the White House doors continually swing open to eject another ‘failed’ communications [...]

22
Aug

Girls Get Spike Best

I had agreed to deliver a ten-minute address taken from my new book, Spike, to [...]

09
Aug

Why mothers are the best leaders blog image

Why Mothers are Today’s Best Leaders

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed [...]

01
Aug

SPIKE is Here!

Over the last few months, I’ve been planting my “SPIKE” seeds wherever I go around [...]

29
Jun

Welcome to Spike. This Book is all about YOU!

Be careful when reading Spike – it might just change your life for the better. [...]

26
Jun

The Return of the Big Men

Sitting in the sun, near the aisle at a good friend’s outdoor wedding in Palm [...]

16
May