Michael Tobin OBE, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Maverick - a podcast by Al Fawcett

So today I am speaking with Michael Tobin OBE, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Maverick, Adventurer, and Author.  Michael is the recipient of an incredible list of awards including the likes of  - 

• Business Turnaround of the Year
• Business Person of the Year 
• Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (numerous times)
• Outstanding Non-Executive Director (numerous times)
• The Princes Trust Outstanding Individual Award
• Chairman of the Year
• and Order of the British Empire for Services to the Digital Economy,  

In this conversation he shares the story of tough beginnings, before going on to take an electronics engineering apprenticeship.  He then continued to push himself and progress his career, to the point of leading a tech business that was eventually sold for £2.6 billion. 

Michael talks about what he looks for when recruiting people and building his teams, the leadership style and approach that has led to many calling him the Maverick Entrepreneur, and the importance of setting the vision and developing the culture that leads to high performance and success. He also explains how he attributes the successes, recognition and the ‘awards’  to the great people that he surrounds himself with. 

What I really enjoy about the conversation, is that whilst Michael shares great stories, we dig into them to understand the impact they had.  We discuss how he implemented the lessons and learnings, how he continually revisited these lessons so they came part of the language, the culture and of course the behaviours. 

Michael highlights the value of really knowing your people, setting a vision and then getting out of the way and letting the great people you have put in place to do a job, do their job. To trust them.  It would be easy to say, 'well I don’t run a business or lead lots of people' but the lessons are still there. Take the time to really get to know yourself first, become truly self aware. Define and refine your skills, knowledge, capability and capacity. Review your ‘performance’ in the key areas of life and explore what you can do to continue to improve it, to develop it, to keep getting better.  

If you want to know more about Michael Tobin OBE, then head over to MichaelTobin.online where you can read about his background and experiences, details about the books he has written, his adventures to the South Pole (which I will have to get him back on to talk about in the future) and much much more.

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