Leadership coaching resources

This page houses curated resources for members looking for further reading and other ‘toolkit’ type articles to support professional learning and development. 

Resources are in three broad categories – longer, in-depth reads; shorter ‘how-to’ articles, and books and webinars for following up areas of interest.      

• General articles on Leadership: These explore concepts and theories in leadership that underpin effective leadership skills, behaviours, and practices for individuals and organisations.

• ‘How to’ articles: These articles focus on specific tips and pointers on how to build your leadership skills and enact effective behaviours successfully.

• Talks, webinars, and podcasts: These often feature leading thinkers in the area who are authors or the above articles.

• Books: These are usually the books written by authors and research profiled above, and to which the articles are derived from or contribute to.

Please find below a selection of resources to support your leadership coaching work and general interest in the leadership area. Some articles are free to access, others are not – the link will take you to the original publication.

Leadership insights

AMA Victoria publishes 'Leadership Insight' articles for you to read, learn and apply fortnightly. Click below to read the series. 

LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS

Leadership articles in VICDOC

• Leading through a crisis

• The importance of psychological safety in your teams and how to create it

• Providing psychological containment when times are tough

• It’s not just what you know, it’s who you know: The importance of strong professional relationships and networks

• Burnout: Where we are at and what we can do

• Keeping breadth and balance in work-life integration

• Am I being inclusive?

• Parenthood and a professional leadership position

• Pregnancy and professional transitions: Leadership tips (part 2)
   

General articles on leadership      

Leadership thinkers are increasingly focussing on the need to be flexible and fast-moving: Agile and adaptive. The situations leaders face – both day-to-day and more generally – are characterised by much uncertainty, change and ambiguity. To be effective, leaders need to expect that they will consistently need to adapt and change their processes and solutions and build the capacity in themselves and those around them to do this. These articles paint ‘the work of leadership’ against this backdrop. 

• The work of leadership 

• A survival guide for leaders

• The psychology behind effective crisis leadership

• 10 characteristics of a good leader

• 3 steps for unlocking your leadership potential
   

Leading self 

These articles focus more on the characteristics of leaders, rather than the work of leadership. This focus draws more attention to the self, the person who is in the role of leader, and how they can use and strengthen this foundation to be more effective leaders. Core aspects of this are developing self-awareness, emotional agility and emotional intelligence for leadership.  

• What makes a leader

• What self-awareness is and how to cultivate it 

• Begin with trust 

• Be a colleague that others can confide in

• TedTalk: Emotional Agility: Susan David
   

Teams and psychological safety 

• High performing teams need psychological safety 

• TedTalk: Psychological Safety: Amy Edmondson

• Talk: Amy Edmondson on Leading up and creating psychological safety

• To improve your team, first work on yourself 
   

Professional relationships and networks

• How leaders create and use networks – HBR

• How to maintain your professional network over the years – HBR 

• The importance of positive relationships in the workplace – Positive Psychology 

• Building good work relationships - MindTools

Mentors and sponsors

• How doctors can be better mentors

• Sponsors need to stop acting like mentors.

• Women need a network of champions.

• Mentoring and sponsoring: what is your legacy?
   

Inclusive leadership

• Proof that positive work cultures are more productive

• How to measure inclusion in the workplace

• Why unconscious bias training doesn’t work

• Why reverse mentoring works and how to do it right

• Names – Why getting someone's name right matters

• Diversity Council Australia (O’Leary, J., Russell, G. and Tilly, J.) Building Inclusion: An Evidence-Based Model of Inclusive Leadership, Sydney, Diversity Council Australia, 2015.
   

Leading for gender equity

• Promoting gender balance is everyone’s business

• Achieving balance at all levels of your company

• Achieving gender equity as you lead out of the pandemic

• Gender equity is not a zero sum game

   

Managing oneself and self-care

These articles provide some insight into a range of topics that are part of life, and which can make work difficult and overwhelming at times. This is a look at how we can acknowledge and address the times when we, or our colleagues, are not well, or experience other difficult and traumatic things in their lives that impact work, and how we can support them, ourselves and the work when this happens. 

• 7 habits to stay focused in a world full of distractions

• That discomfort you are feeling is grief

• Avoiding burnout

• Going back to work after a pregnancy loss

• When a colleague is grieving

• How dual-career couples make it work 

• MindTools - Social wellbeing: 8 ways to beat loneliness in the workplace

• The power of positive self-talk when leading in uncertainty

• 3 Evidence-based strategies to help leaders cope with pandemic stress

• Rumination and reducing stress 

• How to foster resilience & prevent burnout
   

Pregnancy and transition to parenthood

• 5 ways managers can support pregnant employees – HBR 

• How I navigated my first pregnancy as a rising leader – HBR

• Navigating work while undergoing fertility treatments – HBR

• On working parent programs – Thriving Talent solutions

• ‘A weight was lifted’: Why it helps to talk about IVF at work – The Age

• Fatherhood is a leadership issue – Aviva Wittenberg-Cox
   

‘How to’ articles 

The next set of articles is more about ‘How to’ style articles. These have a more specific focus and they focus on more concrete skills and behaviours for enacting leadership effectively in particular situations or tasks. 

Leading exhausted teams

• Leading an exhausted workforce

• Burnout isn't just about exhaustion. It's also about loneliness

Crisis leadership and uncertainty 

• How to lead through a crisis

• How to talk to your team when the future is uncertain

• Communicating in a crisis, What, when and how

First time in management – and managing yourself and career progression 

• Moving into your first management role

• 6 ways to become an admired leader at work

• 8 common mistakes that will ruin your image

Feedback – giving, receiving and seeking feedback effectively

• The SBI Feedback model

Difficult conversations and conflict 

• How to handle difficult conversations at work

• 5 steps for tackling tough conversations

• 6 tips for leading through conflict
   

Books

Heifetz

• Leadership without easy answers

• Leadership on the Line

Edmondson

• The fearless organisation

• Teaming

Kegan 

• An everyone culture: Becoming a deliberately developmental organisation

• Immunity to change, See their organisation Minds At Work

Susan David 

• Emotional Agility

Please send us any other books you have found useful – we’d love to hear from you!