27 Jan 2016 9 Demands of Successful Leadership Teams
On Tuesday, January 19th, 2016 I attended a fascinating talk at Columbia University in NYC, by Professor Peter Hawkins of Henley University in the UK.
Professor Hawkins spoke about the new challenges facing high-performing Leadership Teams in organizations today.
Below is my interpretation of Professor Hawkins’ nine key leadership challenges outlined in his book Leadership Team Coaching (2011, 2014). You may find some of these intriguing and calling for more in-depth consideration by you and your leadership team.
1. Managing Expectations Of The Y Generation. Recent research on Generation Y stakeholders within the organization and outside, suggests that future generations will have increasing expectations of their leaders. Leaders will command less automatic respect bestowed on them by virtue of their title. Generation Y employees and other stakeholders will increasingly challenge their leaders, and the leaders will have to earn the respect of their constituents.
2. Running and Transforming At The Same Time. The ever increasing pace of change brought about by technology and by the growing global interdependence means that organizations will have to re-invent themselves more frequently. Leadership Teams will, therefore, have to learn to run the organization while transforming it at the same time. Leaders will have to cultivate a culture of on-going change. And they will have to become skilled in enlisting the commitment of employees, customers, suppliers, and partners in transforming the organization over and over again.
3. Working Through Systemic Conflict. The ever-increasing pace of change in a highly interdependent environment is bound to produce ever-present systemic conflict, which leadership teams will have to learn to deal with. Leadership teams can no longer assume that the interests of all the players in the complex web of stakeholders will be aligned with their own interests at all times. Accepting conflict as a permanent feature of their work, and learning to effectively manage conflict will become a critical success factor.
4. Playing Senior Roles In Multiple Organizations. With the growing complexity of our highly interconnected world, senior leaders will find themselves playing senior roles in multiple organizations at the same time. In addition to their company, this may include industry associations, professional organizations, or community and charity organizations. These roles may present conflicting demands on the senior leaders, which may be challenging to resolve.
5. Functioning In A Complex And Interconnected World. Technology and our shrinking world have created an expectation that leaders be connected and available at all times, irrespective of time zones, weekends, or holidays. Leaders are finding it difficult to disconnect, to say “no”, and to stay focused on one task at a time. And yet, neuroscientists tell us that the brain can only focus on one task at a time. So what we’re really doing is “task switching”, not multi-tasking.
6. Working In A Virtual World. You would probably be hard-pressed to find a business that is not in some way working virtually with resources or organizations that are not co-located. Although working remotely brings about efficiency that would otherwise be impossible, there is a price to be paid in working with people whose location, culture, and mother tong are different than yours. Modern technology has not yet taught us how to read body language, facial expressions, or cultural intonations of people on the other end of the line.
7. The Challenge Is In The Connections. Over the past several decades Organizational Psychology has focused on studying the behavior of organizations as a whole. We have little understanding of the connections between the individuals within an organization, and between the organizations in a networked system. Yet, what makes a leadership team, an organization, or a network of organizations extraordinarily successful, are the connections between them.
8. Restoring Trust. Think about how many highly reputed leaders and organizations have lost the trust of their stakeholders in recent years. The global financial industry, a global European-based automaker, countless politicians, and more. It is incumbent on leadership teams to figure out in advance how they will approach a crisis in trust, and how they will rebuild the trust of their stakeholders.
9. Increasing The Quality Of Engagement. Most medium and large organizations today hold an annual Employee Engagement Survey. But it is not easy for leaders to determine the “return on investment” of employee engagement. What is the amount of effort and resources which leadership should invest to increase the aggregate employee engagement index by one percentage point? What is the quantitative return on investment of Organizational Integrity, Open and Engaging Communication, A Clearly Articulated and Shared Vision, Employee Voice, and other dimensions of Employee Engagement?
Conclusion:
As a member of a leadership team, you will probably find it difficult to pause, contemplate these challenges, and implement a plan of action that will measurably increase the capacity of your team to excel in these areas. Yet the long term success of your organization may depend on your team’s performance in one or more of these challenges.
Please send me any thoughts or questions you might have on these challenges. I will endeavor to engage in a group dialogue with Professor Hawkins, which I hope will benefit all of us.
Learn More:
Please email me at Uri@thewilltochange.com or visit our website at www.thewilltochange.com
