You can’t escape all the literature, conversation, and often just ‘noise’ around the topic of leadership. We hear what leadership is, what it isn’t, what it was, and what it will be.
In the current operating environment, there is no substitute for quality leadership. Leadership is required on both a process and people level. Let's take some time to focus on the five emerging skills and competencies around future-focused leadership.
- Organizational Agility for Business Readiness and Responsiveness
- ‘Altrocentric’ Leadership - Soft Skills: Renewed, Refreshed and Revisited
- Managing the External Side of Change Management: The Organizational Journey
- Managing the Internal Side of Transition Management: The Individual Journey
- Leader as Corporate Steward - Risk Management
Why is the topic of leadership getting so much attention today? Our world and our organizations are living in a new reality, and there is no more escaping this point. Old organizational paradigms that have served us for the past 50 years are quickly approaching their ‘sell by’ date. Our new reality results from the aggregate effect of change converging at multiple levels? Too many people, it seems so sudden. It’s not so sudden!
We are now dealing with a global pandemic, the convergence of technology, diverse workforce demographics represented by age, skills, and culture, the nature of work and the role of the knowledge/expertise worker, and the list goes on. We could 'comfortably' ignore or deny this impending new reality until now. The convergence of all these factors has accelerated and amplified the need to deal with this new reality head-on, and NOW!
To make some sense of this whirlpool of leadership ‘noise,’ let's focus on the five high-priority leadership topics that can critically impact the leadership landscape and the organization's strategic business direction.
- Organizational Agility for Business Readiness:
Leaders must always have an external perspective and then build and maintain internally responsive organizations. Critical success factors associated with this view are:
- Thinking like the C-Suite
- Implementing for future-focused optimization
- Unlocking human capital potential to ensure strategically-aligned, robust organizations
- ‘Altrocentric’ Leadership - Soft Skills - Renewed, Refreshed and Revisited:
Change must now be viewed as constant, creating continual disturbance and discomfort for both leaders and employees. Dealing with change that comes at organizations from the external environment is the rational, process approach to change, which, while necessary, only deals with part of the change trajectory. - Managing the External Side of Change Management - The Organizational Journey:
Change must now be viewed as constant, creating continual disturbance and discomfort for both leaders and employees. Dealing with change that comes at organizations from the external environment. This is the rational, process approach to change, which, while necessary, only deals with part of the change trajectory. - Managing the Internal Side of Transition Management - The Individual Journey:
Each individual will transition through this change journey differently. Leaders must understand this transition process and help employees journey through the very real phases of change. This is the emotional response to change in terms of change resistance, change commitment and change tolerance. - Leader as Corporate Steward - Risk Management:
- Financial
- Organizational / Structural
- Human Capital
- Reputational
- Competitive
As you can see, each of these topics is critical both on their own and together when understanding how leadership competencies impact your team and your organization. We invite you to download our latest eBook: "Human Asset Management Strategy: A New Approach," which provides a multifunctional operational guide to human capital capacity planning.
