Renewing the Promise of Leadership: A strategic priority
Leaders can make a promise to their people……no matter what.
When McKinsey & Company spoke to a group of students at Yale School of Management they said, “the pace of change will never be this slow again. It’s only going to get faster ”. This 2019 prediction of continuous unprecedented organisational challenges has never been more applicable. Fast forward to 2021. We see how leaders have been forced into operational, task-driven overdrive with a need to rapidly respond to constant change, threat and disruption. Despite best efforts to keep their people engaged and motivated, leaders cannot deny the built up negative impact of pandemic fatigue, fog and the difficult reality we face in “living with Covid”. Now we see leadership looking towards the complexity of their future working landscape with little strategic clarity. The question now being asked of leaders is “What is your promise of leadership” and “ How are you leading your people though the pandemic while re-contracting, re-engaging and re-energising them into the new future? ”
For organisations to renew and re-energise there is a need for leaders to recognise the need to move away from getting stuck in operational style leadership and move towards the strategic priority of delivering a renewed “Promise of Leadership” to enable the new future.
If you are in a leadership role, there are four principles that are central to the Promise of Leadership thinking:
setting the right direction and creating meaningful work;
engaging all stakeholders and holding them accountable for performance;
ensuring that processes and systems facilitate focus and execution;
leading effectively‐maintain relationships of trust to achieve and sustain desired results.
Understanding these principles requires reflection on the following critical areas and offers a frame-work on what “Being Leadership Conscious” really means.
Awareness: How self-aware are you as a leader? What do you pay attention to? Are you fully aware of how this pandemic has impacted your leadership style?
Pace: As a leader, are you evolving at pace to ensure relevance that can lead change now and beyond 2021?
Impact: What impact can you have on your people across the organisation? How can you have impact in every context in which leadership is required?
Adaptability: How adaptable and capable are you at meeting the complexity of your business? Are you and your people adapting quick enough or at risk at being left behind?
Defining your Promise of Leadership means being more explicit and deliberate in how you balance your functional leadership role with a more explicit awareness of leadership that provides new meaning and is delivered with compassion to a more human-centred workforce.
Our experience in working with the Promise of Leadership has provided us with insights and learnings on how leadership has been challenged and now needs to be re-framed. Our belief is that at the heart of future leadership is the need to become explicitly aware of how leaders can individually and collectively focus on shifting their mindset towards making the Promise of Leadership a real strategic priority. As the speed of disruption continues to accelerate it is more critical than ever for you as a leader to make a promise to yourself and to your people.……no matter what.