The other day I met with a good friend who happens to be also a mentor of mine. An amazing lady and very successful senior executive. We conducted an engaging and stimulating exchange on leadership. As we usually do when we catch up. I thought that some of her statements were both very insightful and inspirational, and once I had asked her, she granted me permission to write about our discussion under the condition of strict confidentiality with respect to her person.
As a member of the board at one of the world´s leading companies, Sue (pseudonym) is in charge of thousands of employees around the globe. Some of her main tasks are planning and driving growth initiatives through partnership management, marketing, sales, and customer engagement. Sue, who is considered by her industry peers as a visionary, innovator, and shaper, leads her teams with a high degree of passion for results, commitment to action-oriented analysis, a relentless focus on the customer, and an attitude that anything is possible. Sue believes that being a leader in a highly entrepreneurial, complex, and global environment requires people who think big, are enthusiastic, data-savvy, creative, and not afraid to take risks. While at the same time activating, appreciating, and relying on the strengths of their teams as caring leaders.
Sue´s Leadership Anchors
During the interview, Sue called out the following competencies and skills which in her opinion are essential to successfully lead now and – even more so – in the future:
- Visionary: Leaders should share their vision and strategy with their teams within a realistic and optimistic communication framework. They should ensure – based on a clear and transparent communication – that all team members understand how everyone’s work contributes to the realization of that future. She explained that “when employees believe their organization has a bright future, they can believe that their career has a bright future, too.”
- Ethical standards: Sue holds herself and her teams accountable to high ethical and moral standards. According to her, that creates a safe and trusting environment. An environment in which employees can relax, engage, open up, be creative, innovate, and follow their passions and ambitions: “As a social species we all want to connect and feel a sense of belonging. Engaged and connected employees display a higher degree of productivity and emotional well-being. They enjoy what they do and create a positive ambiance. For the benefit of all.”
- Bias for doing: Sue highlighted at various occasions during the interview that speed matters a lot in business and that leaders need to be able to act quickly and decisively. Also – and especially – in ambiguous and turbulent times.
- Curious and open-minded learner: The ability to continue to learn and develop competencies is a characteristic that Sue believes sets exceptional leaders apart from average leaders that eventually hit a “performance plateau.” From Sue´s perspective, people who embrace a growth mindset know that learning and progress are both just as important as effort: “Rather than getting bogged down by shortcomings or failures, successful leaders identify what they can learn from their experiences. They apply that collective knowledge and use it to avoid making the same mistakes later.”
- Empathy: In the interview, Sue often mentioned the term “empathy” as a key leadership competency which – after having been asked – she defined as “the ability to understand and appreciate the way others are feeling, even if it is different from what we are feeling; it makes us more approachable because we show sensitivity to how others are feeling.”
Learnings and Practical Leadership Implications
Sue´s “obsession” with speed in a highly dynamic and ambiguous world reminded me of Petrie´s concept of Vertical Leadership (Petrie, 2014). He argues that in order to be effective, the leader’s thinking must be equal or superior to the complexity of the environment. Especially in an environment which is increasingly VUCA; which means volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
According to Petrie, leaders go, or should go, through three vertical stages in their development: From the first stage of being a dependent conformer, to the second stage of the independent achiever to the final stage of the interdependent collaborator. Only in this third stage, he underlines, the leader is a connected and multi-dimensional thinker who sees and works in closely linked systems and patterns.
Organizations would be well advised, that their leaders – and as Petrie made the point – to truly excel in a disruptive VUCA world, go through leadership development programs that aim at developing competencies which assist leaders in choosing the right strategies (vertical development) with the required skills to execute them (horizontal development).
When Sue spoke about her passion for being open-minded and curious to learn and grow, I started immediately to think about the 3x3x3 Learning Transfer Model as presented by Reinhold and Others (2015). For many years, I´ve been looking for ideas which make leadership training lessons and development efforts stick for months and years to come. The 3x3x3 model encompasses steps to create leadership programs and experiences that improve the likelihood that lessons will really be captured and applied. The model could be well used by other organizations, as it goes across the “3” phases Prepare, Engage, and Apply; it uses a minimum of “3” learning strategies; and it engages “3” partners: The learner, the organization, and the training provider. In summary, the 3x3x3 Model for learning transfer could assist any company with constant organizational changes and required leadership development.
I´d like to call out the core competency “bias for doing,” as many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study (Bruch & Ghoshal, 2004). Sue, along with her leaders, value calculated risk-taking in order to make decisions quickly and to not lose precious time. Bias for doing and speed are center pieces of cultural agility. For Lundby and Calgiuri, “cultural agility” means to quickly, comfortably, and effectively work in different cultures and with people from different cultures. They state that, although all employees should have an agile cultural mindset at the end of the day, it starts at the top of any organization. As a result, senior leaders play a critical role in creating vision and reinforcing the importance of global activities.
They also found out that immediate managers are very relevant in promoting cultural agility. This correlates with my experience. Organizations should spend a lot of time and effort on selecting and developing the most culturally agile leaders who are able to reinforce attitudes and behaviors within their teams. There is a need in many organizations to conduct more intercultural trainings, shadowing sessions, mentoring, coaching, etc. to better train and prepare qualified candidates.
Final Thoughts
Leadership does not happen overnight; instead it´s a process and personal development journey. It takes constant effort and time to develop the skills, experience, and trust to become a leader and be seen as such by others. In the past, I often wondered about the significance of, and relationship between, hard and soft skills. My understanding being that hard skills (analysis, planning, strategizing, budgeting, designing, critical thinking, etc.) are teachable and most often are technical skills. To contrast, soft skills fall in the interpersonal realm and include listening, team-building, empathy, etc. They are not so much taught, as they are cultivated.
My meetings with Sue, and our in-depth discussions on leadership and managing people, always help me to strengthen my understanding that we can – and must – nurture both sets of qualities over time with self-awareness, respect, and humility to become successful leaders (Rao, 2013). To succeed, learn, and grow as a leader one should be both task- and people-oriented (also known as relationship-oriented). Progressive leadership training and learning models like the 3x3x3 concept can help leaders to develop strategic and operational skills, as well as task- and people-focused skills, competencies, and behaviors.
What is your experience with leadership? What are your related principles? Do you have a mentor, coach, or another trusted person you exchange with on leadership? Please leave a comment below and join the discussion!
Thanks,
Andreas von der Heydt