3 Things Leaders need to change

Leadership has been Evolving: Leadership has evolved significantly over the last 200 years, as the world has undergone profound political, economic, social, and technological changes.

• From autocratic to democratic leadership
• From transactional to transformational leadership
• From local to global leadership

Old style leader is not effective anymore: Traditional management was revolutionary in its day and enormously effective in building large-scale global enterprises that have materially improved lives over the past 200 years. However, with the advent of the 21st century, this approach is reaching its limits.

For one thing, this approach doesn’t guarantee happiness or loyal managers or workers. Indeed, a large portion of American workers(56 percent, according to a McKinsey Article) claim their boss is mildly or highly toxic, while 75 percent say dealing with their manager is the most stressful part of their workday.

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So, what is the context today: For 21st-century organizations operating in today’s complex business environment, a fundamentally new and more effective approach to leadership is needed. Leaders today are needed to focus on building agile, human - centered, and digitally enabled organizations able to thrive in today’s unprecedented environment and meet the needs of a broader range of stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers, and communities, in addition to investors).

What is the emerging new approach to leadership?

Rather than being a manager directing and controlling people, a more effective approach is for leaders to be in service of the people they lead. The focus is on how leaders can make the lives of their team members easier - physically, cognitively, and emotionally.?

In this new approach, leaders practice empathy, compassion, vulnerability, gratitude, self-awareness, and self-care.

They provide appreciation and support, creating psychological safety so their employees are able to collaborate, innovate, and raise issues as appropriate.

This includes celebrating achieving the small steps on the way to reaching big goals and enhancing people’s well-being through better human connections.

Developing this new approach to leadership can be expressed as making key shifts that include, build on, and extend beyond traditional approaches:

1. Beyond executive to visionary: Shaping a clear purpose that resonates with and generates holistic impact for all stakeholders.
2. Beyond director to catalyst: Engaging people to collaborate in open, empowered networks
3. Beyond boss to human: Showing up as one’s whole, authentic self.

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Leaders must?learn to make these shifts at three levels.

• Transforming and evolving personal mindsets and behaviors.
• Transforming teams to work in new ways; and transforming the broader organization by building new levels of agility, human-centeredness.
• Value creation into the entire enterprise’s design and culture.

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How can leaders empower employees?

Empowering employees may require a more hands-on leadership approach. Organizations whose leaders successfully empower others through coaching are nearly four times more likely to make swift, good decisions and?outperform other companies. But this type of coaching isn’t always natural for those with a more controlling or autocratic style.

• Provide clear rules: For example, by providing guardrails for what success looks like and communicating who makes which decisions. Clarity and boundary structures like role remits and responsibilities help to contain any anxiety associated with work and help teams stay focused on their primary tasks.
• Establish clear roles: This can be done by assigning one person the authority to make certain decisions.
• Avoid being a complicit manager: For instance, if you’ve delegated a decision to a team, don’t step in and solve the problem for them.
• Address culture and skills issues: For instance, by helping employees learn how to have difficult conversations.
• Begin soliciting personal feedback from others: At all levels of your organization, on how you are experienced as a leader.

Leaders of today should be open to change in order to stay relevant, increase agility, foster innovation, attract and retain top talent, and address complex societal challenges. By embracing change and leading their organizations in new and exciting directions, leaders can position themselves and their organizations for long-term success.

This article is based on a McKinsey Article “What is Leadership” dated August 17,2022.?

You can reach me at?[email protected]?for any leadership development initiative.

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