As leaders face increasingly complex and ambiguous environments, their ability to expand leadership capacity and capability has never been more essential – yet not any old leadership will do!
Anderson and Adams have seen leaders become derailed when their liabilities negate their strengths; this phenomenon is known as the Canceling Effect.
1. Creative Leadership
No matter their role – responding to an epidemic such as COVID-19, adapting business models to suit new economic realities or remaining competitive in a globalized marketplace – today’s leaders must be capable of thinking creatively in order to overcome hurdles and seize opportunities as quickly as possible. So how can leaders build this skill? According to IBM research, creative leadership must be practiced. But how do leaders train it themselves?
Robert J Anderson and William A Adams, authors of Scaling Leadership, conducted research that shows leaders seeking to become more creative must reevaluate how they lead. According to their findings, traditional models focus on individual advancement while scaling creativity requires increasing leadership as a collective asset within an organization.
Fostering leadership that enables companies to rapidly adapt their business environment. At the same time, creating an enduring leadership culture which can support this progress over time is also essential.
Attaining this goal requires developing a leadership mindset and culture that are agile, adaptive, innovative and engaging; in addition to creating an infrastructure to replicate these behaviors across an entire organization.
Anderson and Adams’ research suggests that many organizations struggle to implement change successfully, often because leadership of the entire organization does not support necessary changes. Leaders must be innovative when building leadership within their organizations, using creative methods such as toolboxes or frameworks offered by Anderson and Adams.
Creative leaders foster team success by creating an environment in which employees can thrive by offering them freedom and autonomy. Furthermore, they set clear expectations regarding deliverables while working to avoid overengineering; realizing that high-impact tasks need extra consideration.
Creative leaders put great care and attention into developing themselves as leaders, in order to develop both the leadership capabilities of their team members and a succession plan for themselves. This involves setting specific goals and devising an overall development plan to support such efforts.
2. Reactive Leadership
Today’s world can be challenging and uncertain, necessitating leaders with the capacity to navigate it through scaling leadership strategies. One person alone cannot do this effectively in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous landscape; therefore scaling is critical for businesses that wish to flourish in it.
Leaders need to be versatile leaders; while reactive skills may be useful in handling urgent events, leaders also must possess the ability to plan, forecast, and strategize effectively. To move beyond reactive leadership effectively they must focus on their strengths while developing those of others who share them.
People who are highly reactive tend to focus on what’s happening right now, and have difficulty delegating or stopping unnecessary activities. A manager might spend too much time in Quadrant III activities – which involve activities that don’t contribute directly to achieving department objectives but may still require immediate responses such as responding to emails or phone calls that do not have bearing on those goals – such as responding to email or phone calls that have no bearing whatsoever on department objectives. These types of time-wasters must be identified as soon as possible so you can eliminate as many time wasters as soon as possible.
High reactive leaders achieve incredible results, but often at the cost of their people and teams. The reason is they continue to employ reactive management styles, rather than developing other people or themselves into effective leaders – thus missing opportunities to grow further and scale.
Work with a coach or mentor to increase self-awareness and perspective. They can assist in recognizing patterns of behavior that keep you stuck in reactive management styles, leading you toward more proactive approaches that enable more strategic decisions about driving revenue and profits in your organization. This approach may free up more of your time for strategic focus that results in higher sales numbers or profits for your organization.
3. Organizational Culture
Organization culture is essential when it comes to scaling leadership efforts, providing either fuel or barriers for success. No matter the size of your team – from 10 employees to 10,000 employees – company culture remains relevant, serving as the backbone for actions and decisions big and small alike. Your assumptions or beliefs influence how managers respond to situations; how leaders across different divisions collaborate; and the way employees are communicated with.
Company culture is determined by how top management leaders act, but it doesn’t follow a rigid blueprint. There are three general types of company cultures: high-hierarchy, moderate and low. A higher hierarchy level entails greater structure within an organization with employees expected to follow formal channels when performing tasks; whereas moderate-hierarchy cultures include both defined structures with formal channels as well as informal ways that individuals often work. Finally, low hierarchy cultures tend to be more flexible with loosely defined roles and an acceptance for working outside formal channels than expected by management leaders.
Your organizational culture should reflect the leadership values you’ve established for your business, enabling teams to work cohesively during times of stress or change. If they do not, change is required –
As part of your first step, it is necessary to evaluate the existing culture and identify areas requiring attention. You can do this by surveying employees or recruiting representatives from different divisions or geographical locations who can give feedback; or hire an outside consultant who specializes in cultural assessment.
Once you’ve identified areas requiring improvement, develop a plan to address them. For instance, designating someone in human resources as the culture liaison and rewarding those who contribute positively to desired cultural elements may be effective strategies. You could also institute a program which introduces new hires with existing staff so they can quickly get acquainted and understand your organization’s culture.
4. Talent Development
Today’s dynamic world demands leaders of organizations of all sizes to be capable of doing more, knowing more, deciding more decisively, and contributing more than ever before. In order to accomplish this goal effectively and sustainably across their organization’s entirety – but how? – effective leadership must be distributed throughout its ranks rather than concentrated among a small number of individuals. But how is this achievable?
Talent development provides the solution. A great way to scale leadership is giving employees at all levels the power and resources to expand their own skills and capabilities, including training, coaching and mentoring programs as well as other methods such as virtual recordings (live or on demand), in-person workshops, e-learning courses, on-the-job learning or one-on-ones with coaches.
Remember that growth activities like these should not replace managers but instead act as complementary measures. To be most effective, talent development initiatives must align with organizational goals and help employees build the necessary skills they’ll need for their role.
Assuming you have a large customer success team that must manage various complex issues, developing employee knowledge and skills in this area will enable your employees to better assist customers while quickly and efficiently solving any issues that may arise. This in turn leads to increased customer retention rates as well as overall business success.
Anderson and Adams’ insights are grounded in over 70 years of leadership and coaching experience combined, but are also supported by data. To substantiate their claims, Anderson and Adams collected and analyzed results from over 1 Million Leadership Surveys including those conducted by The Leadership Circle to back their claims. Anderson and Adams created tools that can be utilized by any leader regardless of industry or size of organization – though nonprofit leaders in particular will find this book especially helpful as their outcomes matter even more while facing greater complexity and volatility than counterparts in private sectors.
