Tom Ayerst & John Eades (Afternoon Session)

Challenged by the global pandemic CEO’s have had to make shifts in the way they lead. We wanted to explore what this has meant for business leaders on Day 2 of C2S Leadership Week.

We brought together speakers to look at Leadership from different perspectives:

Bob Holt OBE – business man, investor and philanthropist
Jim Lawless – key note speaker, author and high performance team coach
Tom Ayerst – Partner PwC, Bristol Office
John Eades – Leadership author and international speaker

Tom Ayerst, PwC Annual CEO Survey

Tom is Market Senior Partner & Private Equity Portfolio Leader at PwC based in Bristol.

Tom heads up the regional Deals business, with over 17 years supporting a range of clients on acquisitions, disposals, fund-raising and changes in ownership. Tom works with some of the region’s leading listed business, national private equity houses and lenders, private businesses and the public sector. We asked Tom to join us for Leadership Week to talk about the recently released PwC 24th Annual CEO Survey.

For business, 2021 will be a year of reinvention. One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, PwC surveyed 5,050 CEOs around the world about their plans to respond to new threats, transform their operating model and create a more sustainable future.

Tom took us through a few of the key highlights:

Even at a time when many CEOs remain concerned about economic uncertainty, they are investing in these areas with a clear intention of turning a year of significant disruption into a catalyst for positive change.

For a lot of UK CEOs, economic uncertainty remains a concern (86%), but they also see a route to recovery for businesses and the economy.

Just over half (51%) of the UK CEOs surveyed expect to see moderate growth in the global economy this year, while around a quarter (26%) expect strong growth.

That suggests a clear belief among CEOs that the economy is recovering, albeit from a base of a very tough year. While nearly a quarter (22%) of UK CEOs do not expect the economy to pick up this year, very few expect it to get significantly worse (2%).

CEOs are showing a greater commitment to tackling climate change – an issue which has soared in terms of CEO concerns in recent years (from 44% two years ago to 70% this year). There are already positive signs of change, with more than half of UK CEOs increasing their investment in sustainability and other ESG (environmental, societal and governance) initiatives. However, over half believe they should still be doing more to measure (51%) and report (53%) the environmental impact of their business.

Read the whole Report (UK) https://www.pwc.co.uk/ceo-survey.html

Contact Tom: tom.x.ayerst@pwc.com

https://www.pwc.co.uk/contacts/t/tom-x-ayerst.html

Watch the recording of Tom’s session

John Eades, Inspiring Leaders to Be Their Best

John is the CEO of LearnLoft a leadership development company which exists to turn managers into leaders. He was named a 2017 LinkedIn Top Voice in Management & Workplace. His weekly leadership column has over 150k subscribers. He is also the author of Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Other to Success and is the host of the Follow My Lead Podcast. As a motivational speaker he connects to the hearts and minds of leaders from all industries and experience.

He shared some of those lessons, strategies, and tools to help elevate leaders to be their best with us during C2S Leadership Week. John took us through some of the ideas from his book Building the Best and challenged us to rethink what it means to be a leader today and gave us a look at some of the tools to determine our current leadership style.

The 3 shifts to Lead in the New Era in Leadership

1. We have to move from metrics to people – great leaders know they are leading people not just managing the numbers. You cannot micromanage all of the numbers you are there to inspire and lead the people.

2. From ‘What to Why’ – Give People A Purpose

What Do you Do? = X

Why Do you Do It? =Y

Who Do You Do It For? =Z

3. From Manager to Coach – improving the current and future performance of others to achieve higher levels of excellence. Coach comes from the word ‘carriage’ – pick them up from where they are to where they need to be.

Watch John’s session from Leadership Week and hear more:

Website: https://johneades.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngeades/

Day 2 Leadership Week – A New Era In Leadership with PwC & Learnloft