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What is your vision for your future? Do you refine this very often? Are you able to deliver outcomes faster, with more impact and more care than ever before? As a leader we need to be aware of current situations, future directions and how we can meet arising challenges which are helpful in leadership injection Take time to learn from the best leaders and then give yourself an adrenalin shot to accelerate yourself and your team to success.  

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney

Bring HUMANITY into LEADERSHIP

Nicole Sparshott in her Linkedin article feels “Leadership needs a shot in the arm.” 2021 so far has been another extraordinary year by all accounts, with huge challenges for business, ranging from how people work, to the functioning of supply chains, evolving business models and even how success is measured. From a leadership lens, the pandemic has created a pressurized operating environment, which very few of us have ever experienced.

We are living in a paradoxical world and the landscape has never required the management of duality more than ever before – in business, in government and in the community. It is not sufficient to solely do one well or to be linear in the way we approach it; the inconvenient truth is that we no longer have the luxury of singularity of focus. Reflection would suggest we probably never did. In managing the duality of objectives, CEOs and other leaders have had to learn to sustain both reflective inaction, alongside the imperative for decisive action.

Alongside the tragedy and challenge of the pandemic, we have paradoxically seen some incredible examples of adaptability, creativity and innovation. Why is it that some leaders and teams have been able to deliver outcomes faster, with more impact and more care than ever before?

Why have some companies been able to establish a stronger foundation on which to raise issues and give rise to inventive, untested solutions and greater forms of pre-competitive collaboration? What have leaders done differently to enable an environment where team members can unleash these strengths and how we can harness the learnings from this time to benefit organisational performance into the future and create new leadership norms?

It’s time to say goodbye to the traditional notions of leadership that comes with the ‘chief atop a pyramidal’ structure. Instead, we now unlock value through the creation of a ‘steerco of equals’, opening the way for latent capabilities and possibilities to flow. The well-known psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl once said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”. 

Those who are able to master a multitude of leadership styles – nuanced for the situation at hand – are typically able to create the very best climate and business performance. Knowing when to lead from the front, or lead from within, or get the hell out of the way so that someone better equipped can do it, is a skill in itself. Leaders will need to build muscle in a diverse leadership injection, to be able to navigate positive outcomes, irrespective of the situation they face.

From my vantage point, I can see a few things that help people cope: a purpose-led orientation that paves the way for daily actions, to create meaningful impact. Care, vulnerability and courage arguably have become the new corporate currency, with compound benefit. Fear and love, both leveraged productively, can surface issues, elevate creativity and ultimately drive higher performance, with a ripple effect that not only benefits the organization, but also the broader community. Ultimately, bringing humanity into leadership, is as necessary as a vaccine is for the pandemic.

The 2021 Leadership Crystal Ball 

Dede Henly a Forbes contributor, shares What Leaders Can Expect In 2021.” What can you count on coming your way in 2021? More ambiguity, uncertainty and change! Traditional approaches to leadership development aren’t keeping pace with the kinds of complexity we now face. Currently, fewer than 18% of leaders have the qualities of mind to optimally lead in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments (Hall & Rowland, 2016). Fortunately, many bright people have been working on this very agenda over the past decade or so. What are they cooking up for us for 2021? Vertical leader development.

Before we jump into vertical leader development and how to engage in it, let’s begin with an area of study most of us are now familiar with – neuroscience.  Julie Chesley, Hannah Jones and Terri Egan, respected researchers of vertical leadership injection whose report on Elevating Leadership Development Practices to Meet Emerging Needs was recently published in the Journal of Leadership Education, point out that there’s been an “explosion of neuroscience research” in the past two decades, and it’s already informing how we approach leadership development.

As David Rock explains, neuroleadership seeks to “improve leadership effectiveness within institutions and organizations by developing a science for leadership and leadership development that directly takes into account the physiology of the mind and the brain.” Our increased understanding of the brain, the mind and the body are revolutionizing the way we go about developing the smart people that lead our organizations.

It’s no longer only about what you do as a leader. It’s also about who you are and how you think. Vertical development encompasses the important insights in both neuroleadership and mindset and goes beyond them. 

Learn from 5 Decades of Leadership Success 

Sir Richard Branson has made history. He became the first billionaire to go to the edge of space in his own spacecraft, beating Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to this feat by a mere nine days. Branson has been talking – and competing with Bezos – about space tourism and commercial space flights since the early 2000s.

While on board the flight, Branson added: “Congratulations to all our wonderful people at Virgin Galactic and their 17 years of hard, hard work to get us this far.” Despite all the hurdles, including an accident in 2014 where a test pilot was killed when a spaceship broke apart, Branson has stayed laser focused and continued to lead and motivate the team at Virgin Galactic to achieve this mission in 2021. So what can leaders in any industry learn from Branson’s distinctive leadership style that has enabled his impressive business success (including this breakthrough spaceflight) over the past five decades? This is what his leadership is about:

  • BEING A VISIONARY LEADER WITH IDEAS AND VALUES
  • FINDING THE RIGHT TALENT AND DELEGATING IS KEY
  • VALUE AND EMPOWER YOUR PEOPLE
  • MAKING MISTAKES IS OK, IF YOU LEARN FROM THEM

Seeking NEW Leadership Approaches

study by Accenture between the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the Global Shapers Community created a framework for responsible leadership in a sustainable and equitable world. They identified three priorities leading the world’s organizations—businesses, governments, non-profits that has never been as complex or as demanding as it is today. These three overarching priorities vie for attention:

  • First, leaders must deliver daily organizational performance—as a matter of table stakes. 
  • Second, amid high-velocity change, they face growing pressure to embrace continuous innovation that unlocks new value for the long-term. 
  • And third, leaders must earn and build stakeholder trust through sustainable and responsible approaches, meeting increasingly vocal expectations for social and environmental progress. 

As leaders seek to realize positive outcomes for a wide range of stakeholders in the decade ahead, we can learn from the experiences of both corporate and civil organizations that are beginning to put the key elements into action. 

IS Leadership a ROUTINE for YOU?

In my blog I refer to what routine do you have as a leader? Do think about your regular routines, or, just get “caught up” in the busyness of life and then realise how quickly time goes by. Then, one day you may realise “you could have done something different.” It’s never too late and the time to start can be right now. Research shows that leadership is a routine: by fine tuning your skills and working with a team with a common purpose, you can create amazing outcomes.

Time for you to become a LEADER for the Future

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Get in touch today to learn more about building leadership skills and set yourself up for success!

Stay Kind. Stay Courageous.

Sonia x

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