During the month of June JasperRose worked with Antonia Smith Leadership Coach and Founder of Dragonfly Coaching to bring you the third workshop, in a four-part series of workshops. Designed to help finance professionals with personal development. The session provided those who attended the workshop, an opportunity to understand how to capitalise on their influence to drive and motivate their teams.

Biggest Challenges in Leadership.

Antonia started by discussing some of the biggest challenges faced by leaders. The top four beings:

  1. Motivating Teams
  2. Managing Stakeholders
  3. Managing own Workload
  4. Maintaining own Focus & Drive

A poll she conducted on LinkedIn highlighted that over 75% of leaders agreed that managing their workload and time was the biggest challenge.

What Does it Mean to be a Leader?

In the next segment of the workshop, Antonia raised the question ‘What does it really mean to be a leader?’ She spoke on the difference between having a leadership focus vs a management focus. See the picture below to get a visual understanding of what she discussed.

Management consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal. Whereas leadership refers to an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. The important thing to note is that influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers, not power and control.

Being an Influential Leader.

Whilst discussing what it means to be an influential leader Antonia expressed that having clear values, a strong vision, authenticity, agility, and alignment are all important contributing factors. The combination of the above factors enables a leader to guide an organisation or team clearly, to consistently inspire them whilst allowing yourself to master and grow as a leader. 

Maximising Results

This segment focused on teaching leaders how to get results and keep them. The below triangle was used to illustrate five questions that leaders should always ask.

Results being at the top of the triangle, is an outcome of the combined factors underneath. Antonia stressed the importance of having a clear understanding and processes for everything else before results can be attained. So, asking yourself questions at each stage is very important.

Why Bother with Personal Growth as a Leader?

Antonia emphasised that being a good leader not only affects your team’s productivity and motivation, it also affects your self-esteem, self-development, overall business performance, friends, family and future life. Keeping the balance is intricate, and personal growth is imperative.


To conclude, personal growth and developing your skills as a leader should help you achieve results. The first step is understanding what leadership is; influencing, motivating, and enabling others to be the best version of themselves within an organisation or team.  

For more information and useful tips on how to grow as a leader, please contact us via the following email: [email protected]. The fourth and final workshop date and title will be released this month, be sure to keep an eye out on our social media platforms:

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