TEN CAPABILITIES YOUR LEADERS NEED
There are few things more rewarding than helping others succeed. It’s the reason why I’m committed to leadership development.
Business leaders often ask me, ‘What does it take to be a successful leader?’
I wish there was a simple answer. There isn’t. Leadership success in the corporate world requires an unusual breadth of ability. Anyone asked to design a leadership development solution would agree. Where would you start? What capabilities do today’s corporate leaders really need?
The capabilities your leaders require are driven by the specific challenges in your own corporate context. But to me, ten stand out as universal leadership needs.
Digital disruption, new competition and social conscience are just three of the trends causing organisations to transform who they are, what they stand for and where they are going. Such transformation can only be achieved by leaders who can deliver results across a broad set of corporate leadership capabilities.
HERE’s MY VIEW ON WHAT THOSE CAPABILITIES ARE:
BE A LEADER
Leadership is the ability to engage and take others with you, create value together and change people’s lives for the better. It’s a tall order. And few leaders do it well. Not because they can’t, but because it’s not been developed in the early stages of their careers. To lead, you need a vision, a plan and a personal style that motivates others to do more, be more and create more value for other people. It’s the no. 1 requirement in any leadership role, whatever its level or size.
ANTICIPATE THE FUTURE
The disruptive impact of the digital economy, the scale of opportunity in non-traditional markets and the need to secure market position before your competitors, require leadership foresight and the ability to execute new plans in unchartered waters. Leaders need to balance their intense focus on current operations with an urgent and plan-full eye on a future that’s arriving fast.
DRIVE TO DIGITAL
Digital transformation is both the biggest threat and greatest opportunity. But it’s not the role of IT to solve it. It’s already been said, ‘If you haven’t got a plan for digital, you haven’t got a plan.’ Every executive needs a digital plan but, because it’s so new, they need advice on what’s possible and how to align it. If ever there was a time for collective intelligence, the drive to digital is it.
RENEW HUMAN PURPOSE
As we become more aware of the corporate impact on human life, companies are re-positioning their CSR commitment within a broader social purpose for the whole organisation. It calls for leaders who understand and breathe life into human purpose, who advance their company as a contributor to a better world, and who expect future leaders to do so, even more.
PROVIDE NARRATIVE UNITY
New insights reveal how important it is for any human system to have a single, integrated story of who they are, what they stand for, where they are going and how they intend to get there. And it’s the role of leaders to provide that narrative unity – and uphold or adapt it as the story unfolds. In the visibility of today’s business world, corporate leadership requires corporate authorship, too.
CULTIVATE INNOVATION
The ideas that build competitive advantage start with imagination. And every employee has some of that. For organisations to thrive, they need a climate that encourages imagination, innovation and improvement. Leaders cultivate that climate by giving people space, inviting challenges to the status quo and encouraging diversity of opinion irrespective of hierarchy.
FIRST, OPTIMISE ENGAGEMENT
The argument for engagement is won. It improves performance. Leaders who do not inspire sustained engagement are constraining business performance. Engagement is a better measure of leadership effectiveness than any other 360° feedback instrument. It grounds your investment in leadership development in data you can track. It’s personal and leaders need to improve it.
NOW, EMBRACE LEARNING
Learning used to be something you do on a course, or reading a book. Today, as routine work is digitised, all employees do things that require learning, understanding and problem-solving. Suddenly, learning is critical to performance. Earlier, leaders had to have answers. Now, they need curiosity and questions. Learning is a competitive advantage. That’s why leaders need to embrace it, too.
CREATE A WINNING CULTURE
In a competitive world, successful companies have a winning culture driven by an all-employee pride and passion to do things exceptionally well and consistent with their brand. Leaders are exemplars, role models and coaches who set high standards and get the same from their teams. It doesn’t happen overnight. Leaders have to develop it. And it starts with them. Leaders who develop their teams achieve 25% higher performance than those who don’t. Leader-led development wins.
LEARN IN LEADERSHIP TEAMS
In every field of human endeavour, people who perform together, train together. Except in the corporate world. As corporate success comes from leaders working together, why don’t they learn together, too? The war for talent has focused our attention on individual leaders. But great performance comes from teams. When leaders learn as a team, it’s easier to turn learning into action, gain agreement and get on with implementation. It creates clarity, builds trust, improves communication and resolves differences. It’s a break through leaders understand – and enjoy.
…AND THE IMPLICATIONS?
There is a shortage of leaders in every function, sector and region of the world. The imperative for organisations to strengthen their internal leadership pipeline is more urgent than ever. And while the capabilities listed here can help define a curriculum, the conventional practice of ‘learning by going on a course’ seems inefficient and out of date.
Moreover, the evidence and personal testimony of successful leaders suggests they learn far more from exposure and experience than they do from conventional training.
If this is so, why wouldn’t we take any of these leadership capabilities and ask senior leaders in all functions and operating divisions, to lead a project to improve them? Leader-led development leverages the drive for improvement that already resides in lines of accountability. The leader’s local focus on performance ensures each capability is aligned and made relevant to improvement that matters.
Leader-led development invites a subtle but significant change to the role of executive and leadership development specialists. As leaders drive improvement, the specialist’s role is to support leaders with a demand-led service of learning provision, change management and responsive facilitation that keeps up with and adapts to the business leaders’ agenda, rather than their own.
A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
The Power of Ten is my own, personal perspective. Your list may differ. But whatever you believe to be the requirement for leaders to succeed in today’s business world, use it to check the breadth of your company’s current leadership development offering.
We both want leaders to succeed. Our hope is that whatever we provide, it helps them do it with style.
