Colin Lovering is a seasoned professional well known to the Romanian business community for his creative insights and success-driven advice and knowledge in maximising many organisations’ performance, sales and productivity. He is also familiar as our annual host of the Business Review Awards Gala as well as Vice-President of the British Romanian Chamber of Commerce.

Recently, Colin has teamed up with Brainovate, the leading International consultancy in creative performance models including their well known, Legacy Leadership programme, Professional Team & Individual Development initiatives and the new Business Performance Academy that Colin will drive.

We caught up with Colin during his busy schedule recently to seek his thoughts and advice on the challenges of the next few years and establish his ‘Top 10’ priorities for business leaders and their organisations.

“Well, it’s becoming quite clear already that the accelerated movements to technology has, and will bring along effective streamlining of organisations but also bring the human challenge of replacement of tasks and redeployment/re-training of people. A ‘skill’ based workforce is in danger of affecting the education system as young people see less and less essentialness in attending university when they can quickly slip into a well-paid job and by-pass, what they sometimes see, learning skills that will become irrelevant in 2-3 years through advancements,” Colin began.

“This dilemma is further exaggerated when we witness less tolerance to longer term education and learning processes resulting in an expectation and demand for young people to fast-track themselves in their early careers,” Colin adds.

“As leaders, we have an even greater responsibility to our people if we are to satisfy these modern needs and demands whilst maintaining an acceptable level of leadership and influence to retain, attract, motivate and engage our workforce and reflect this in the bottom-line of the organisation”

Colin describes the new trends and how the word ‘Manager’ is being slowly but surely replaced by titles such as Team Coach, Group Mentor, Team Lead, etc. to help facilitate this transition in the workplace but Colin goes on to tell us what he feels is a crucial element and contributory factor in this transition, ….the skill of ‘parenting’.

“Growing up today is very different from my own youth with access to information and the influence of technology really overwhelming the more traditional experiences and guidance that young people used to receive. This doesn’t make people today less smart or streetwise, in fact, they are probably smarter in many ways, but it does, in my opinion, challenge the basic requirements of human interaction, empathy and emotional intelligence,” Colin explains.

Basically, what Colin is telling us is that young people in the workplace rely on Managers to complement their speedy and more detached upbringing by nurturing traditional skills and competencies such as etiquette, respect, ownership, inclusion and diversity to better prepare them for earlier promotions and exposure in the business world today.

In broader terms, Colin believes that the top 10 of priorities for business leaders and HR executives in 2020 and beyond are:

Creative Leadership & Self-Leadership;
Wellness & Wellbeing;
Emotional Intelligence;
Stress & Time Management;
Creativity & Innovation;
Collaboration & Team Dynamics;
Inclusion & Diversity;
Conflict Management;
Coaching & Mentoring;
Business Adaptability.

In conclusion, Colin passionately states: “As a privileged resident of Romania, I feel a responsibility to put something back and joining the Brainovate team will, hopefully, enable me to directly impact the challenges ahead in maintaining this country’s competitive edge and attractiveness to investors both foreign and domestic.” He concludes: “Business Review has been a fabulous supporter of this country’s drive forward over the last few years and I look forward to actively supporting its readers and partners in 2020.”

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