Creating a leadership legacy.

I recently listened to the Hogan Assessments 'Science of Personality' podcast, Peter Berry (creator of Hogan's 360 feedback tool) was being interviewed and his opening line was "Leadership is consequential, measurable and improvable". It made me stop and think. Whilst intuitively it makes sense, it did make me think more deeply. Why is leadership consequential? How do we measure it? How do we improve it and to what end? So I have taken these questions one by one.

Leadership is consequential.

Whether it is growing someone’s career or facing into some of the world’s most complex challenges, leadership is at the heart of everything that happens in the world, at a micro and macro level.

Leaders make decisions. Whether strategic or tactical, leaders exercise their judgement to make decisions for their people and organisations. All decisions have consequences, good, bad and indifferent and in an increasingly complex and often polarised world, decisions are becoming more difficult to make. Leaders are increasingly having to exercise judgement to make decisions with often imperfect information or conflicting outcomes.

Given judgement is so critical, as leaders, we must ask ourselves, what are the values, beliefs, preferences and biases that may be influencing our judgement and ultimately the decisions we make?

From making a decision to promote someone through to making a decision to take a business in a new direction, they are all consequential. We must therefore get under the skin of what influences our judgement, what helps make good quality decisions and what hinders.

Decisions leaders make, have consequences.

Leaders shape the climate for their people and teams. In our work with leadership teams we talk about ‘climate’. We think about climate in the context of culture. Culture is the personality of the organisation, climate is the mood. Culture is the atmosphere, climate is the local weather. Culture influences how decisions get made and things get done, climate influences how people feel.

Climate is localised and changeable. According to Korn Ferry, leaders influence up to 70% of the climate their people experience. A leader's personality, strengths, derailers, values and beliefs as well as what they give their attention to, value and prioritise, influence how they behave and that, has consequences for the climate they create.

A positive and empowering climate inspires and supports performance and engagement. It enables individuals and teams to thrive, to feel they belong, that they matter and that their work has meaning and impact.

A negative climate, will do the opposite, more quickly and more deeply.

What leaders think, feel and do has consequences.

Leaders leave a legacy. I love the definition of leadership legacy by Sanyin Siang, she says “instead of grand accomplishments, think about your legacy as your presence in your absence”.

All leaders will leave a legacy whether they intend to or not. Intentionality therefore is important for any leader if they want their legacy to have had a positive and enduring impact on their people and organisations.

Think about some of the leaders you have worked for and how they have influenced you. My first leader is still a role model for me today even though she has been happily retired for a number of years. I attribute a lot of my career success to how she supported my growth. I also remember working for a highly political and toxic CEO, the climate he created was one of fear, mistrust and unnecessary volatility. I swore to myself to be the exact opposite and to never work for or with anyone like him ever again. I choose instead to adopt the empathy, commerciality and authenticity I learned from my first boss.

Legacy has consequences.

In our leadership development programmes we always start by asking leaders to think about their legacy and then crucially, how they will craft it. The starting point has to be self-awareness and self-knowledge.

Leadership is measurable.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” – Aristotle

For leaders to create a legacy they are proud of, to create a climate where people and organisations thrive and to make sound, quality decisions, they must understand themselves at a deeper level.

Internal and external self-awareness.

Tasha Euric’s research on self-awareness demonstrates the positive impact of self-awareness on individual, team and business performance as well as confidence, creativity, career outcomes and wellbeing.

She talks about two types of self-awareness: Internal self awareness which is the extent to which we understand our own values, needs, preferences and passions. External self-awareness is the extent to which we understand our impact on others or how others see us in relation to our values, preferences, passions and beliefs.

Building both types is how the benefits of self-awareness are realised.

In our work with executives and senior leaders, we use Hogan’s flagship Leadership Forecast Series of personality profiling to build internal self-awareness. It is one of the most comprehensive psychometric tools we use. It looks at everyday behaviours (aka bright side personality), risks and potential de-railers (aka dark side personality) and motivators, values and preferences (aka inside personality). The reports, coupled with qualified coaching and feedback elevates leaders awareness of how they behave and crucially, why.

To build external self-awareness, a robust, 360 feedback tool, facilitated well can be illuminating. We often use Hogan's 360 as it covers a wide range fundamental leadership competencies that are proven to lead to leadership effectiveness.

By understanding ourselves and then how others experience us, we build strategic self-awareness.

Internal self-awareness + external self-awareness = strategic self-awareness.

With the right tools we can build strategic self-awareness and measure leadership impact.

Leadership is improvable.

‘The best leaders are the best learners’ – Peter Berry.

We need to continually build our leadership practice, intentionally and with focus. When we build strategic self-awareness, the opportunities for development are clear and allow us to work on the right things. This is about us creating a development plan that means something to us and becomes part of our daily work, not something to sit on the company’s learning system. For us to craft the right plan, we need to know why we want to develop, what we will work on and how.

Why?

In the Science of Personality Podcast interview, Peter Berry says an important step in development planning is understanding why you want to work on your leadership - what is your motivation for personal growth? Is it for you? Your family’s security? Your advancement? Your impact on the communities within which you work? Reflecting on why we want to develop, gives our development more meaning and focus.

What?

Personal development plans are often short-range in that they rarely go beyond a 12-month development timeframe. We encourage leaders to think beyond 12 months and think more strategically about development. We should approach development planning in the same way we approach business planning. If we only ever did business planning for 12 months ahead, we would miss opportunities to grow or realise the potential of the business, or worse, fail to adapt and become obsolete.

We encourage leaders to think in a strategic timeframe e.g. 3 + years. We use ‘future-back planning’ where leaders imagine they are in the future and they answer the following questions:

The leadership qualities I have developed are…

The beliefs people hold about me are….

The impact I am having/have had on the organisation is….

This approach tends to allow people to think bigger, with more aspiration and less constraint or critical thinking.

Once we have defined our future leadership, we’re able to do the detailed planning year by year.

How?

We are advocates of the 70-20-10 model of learning and development and encourage leaders to focus on targeted development where:

70% is experiential learning. Learning that takes place in every day work. To be effective, it needs to include stretching assignments or work that pushes our capabilities and it requires leaders to reflect on their learning while doing.

20% is social learning. Learning from others which can be coaching, mentoring or feedback. It could be action learning or working collaboratively on a problem together with the express intention of learning.

10% is formal learning. The learning we’re most familiar with, training, workshops, e-learning, education and coursework.

Experiential learning is emphasised in this model because real-life challenges provide excellent opportunities for skill development but it is particularly important in leadership development because for many leaders, development is often about behavioural change or building new habits and strengths, all things that need to be deliberately practiced in every day work.

Leadership is consequential. What leaders think, feel and do has consequences, at a micro level for the team they lead, at a macro level, for society and the world. Leadership therefore has to be continuously developed. To do that we need to build strategic self-awareness and have a strategic approach to developing our leadership capabilities to deliver on our leadership legacy.

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People Science Consulting develop bespoke leadership development programmes. We are certified in the use of Hogan Assessments including Hogan 360 (among other self-awareness and psychometric tolls). If you would like to learn more about how we support the development of teams, leaders and talent, get in touch with Julia on +44 7795 600226 or [email protected]