Shaping leaders now, for the decade ahead
When change is the new constant, how do professionals embrace the shape shifting notion of leadership?
At the start of 2019, few would have looked ahead five years to today, to foresee the impact of AI, Covid-affected logistics, the decline of globalism, the rising cost of living and the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.
Amidst all of this, there appears to be one constant – and that is change.
How can professionals prepare for these ongoing and future disruptions?
How can organisations enable leaders to hold an adaptive and agile leadership style?
What is the relevance of the ‘‘rounded senior professional’?
And will the ‘rounded senior professional’ of 2024 be as effective by 2034, or even 2029?
Status no more
Arguably leadership in today’s world has never been more multi-faceted. Leadership is no longer a ‘point in time’ status symbol – today, it’s a developed, practiced discipline that requires constant honing for the context of our times.
Good C-suite professionals must now have core skills around strategy, human capital, operations and entrepreneurialism.
Imagination & courage
Leaders also need to learn how to ‘see around corners’, by watching present trends and having the imagination and courage to extrapolate these across the next 12 months, three years and further into the next decade.
Importantly, they need to lead others in a way which is adaptive: combining mentorship, coaching and management, and using the right mix of these three broad skill sets, in the right ways and at the right times, to get the very best from their people and their organisation.
‘In the moment’ learning
These talents sometimes come naturally and sometimes can be taught, but increasingly organisations are realising the importance of ‘in the moment’ learning, often tied to structured coaching.
A good external coach in these situations will help the leader contextualise their experiences, through sharing and feedback.
Sometimes role playing is involved, but more often it’s advice and ideas based on the coach’s own experience and approaches to all these situations.
Identifying genuine coaching needs
Key to success in all this is a coach who can identify what the coaching candidate really needs – not necessarily what they think they need – and identify why the candidate is struggling in these areas, before guiding them to the improvements they need to make.
But when should organisations employ a coach? And for what types of coaching candidates? Our next article answers those questions and takes a look at some of the needs that our candidates – and their supporters – might have for an external leadership coach.
This article has been co-authored by Amanda Fong at Intent Advisory and David Lennane at POC Consulting. Through our respective businesses, we coach individuals and teams in high performing professional services firms to become better leaders and business builders.