THE WORKPLACE IS CHANGING…
Al:
You can’t be a mediocre leader in the world of remote or hybrid work. You can’t be a mediocre leader in the world in the world of generative AI that is poised to transform every organization, every industry in ways we can't understand today. So leadership fundamentals are incredibly important and leaders have to lead, you can't micromanage your way on generative AI.
There is less flexibility now for poor leadership.
Tsedal Neeley, HBS Professor
Automation:
In Japan, robots are being used for elder care. Manufacturing, lab and retail roles can be performed by robots, destroying some jobs and creating others. Around the world, the use of robots to assist in human tasks is beginning to grow exponentially and this will almost certainly continue as the convergence of advances in multiple technologies expands.
Diversity:
Work teams today are increasingly diverse by race, culture, skills set and other factors. By valuing differences and enabling everyone to bring their full selves to work each day, you create a more collaborative work environment and further growth of your people. Leading inclusively enables organizations to maximize performance while improving innovation and engagement.
Globalization:
The trend of working from anywhere will continue for knowledge workers and increasingly customer service workers and technicians who can remotely fix devices on the internet of things.
Workforce Values:
Sustainability, inclusion and work-life balance are important to today’s mobile workforce. There are shortages in trade industries and skilled labor positions that have become difficult to fill. Some of these roles will need to be automated, leaving more complex roles remaining.
Workplace Logistics:
Remote work, flexible hours and collaboration are reshaping the way work is done and managed. Post COVID-19, customer and worker expectations will not return to the past. New ways of shopping, interacting with companies and even having fitness and health services are different.
Risk Management:
Climate change, civil unrest, and governmental instability are examples of the forces that make simple, predictable issues a quaint notion from the past. The variables that need to be considered when designing strategy are dynamic and expanding.
What's Next?
As we move past the Covid crisis with more dispersed teams, more diversity, new opportunities and new threats, learning and growth will be the foundation for future success. This will require leaders who adapt the elements of the Growth Leadership Framework.
OVERVIEW OF CHALLENGES TO ORGANIZATIONS
3RD QUARTER / 2024
An organization is a collection of people united by common goals, a culture such that it is and with the need to make effective decisions and create productive work environments with the right people in the right roles doing the right stuff at the right time.
Center for Growth Leadership
The Center for Growth Leadership is focused on helping the leaders of organizations deal with today's challenges. This requires having the right people in the right roles doing the right stuff at the right time. To help organizations do this, we help organizations use validated predictive data and effective processes to ensure their leaders have the capabilities to meet the challenges they face.
Our Agile Growth Leader program is a proven program for setting your organization up with the capabilities they need to meet these challenges Using the same tools, we also help organizations become future -ready, ensuring they have the right people and that these people are used to their potential.
Like with most things in life and business, the key to being effective rests on reconciling dualities. When you reconcile dualities by considering both "natures" of the situation, you enable broader perspectives, differing opinions, the ability for ideas to coexist and you enable the likelihood of coming up with better, more innovative and possibly win-win solutions. Our data analytics and our approach focusing on the crucial dualities in leadership effectiveness, succession planning and high performing cultures enables superior results.
So, in a highly complex world, who gets to thrive?
It's the people who can grow and adapt to new ways of working who will exhibit the learning and inventiveness to solve both work- and community-based challenges. Leaders will transform themselves, their teams and their organizations by reconciling dualities and multiplying capability-building organizations with a growth mindset and a willingness to take risks.
We can help you become a growth leader with our Growth Leadership Framework.
Our model is rooted in the science of decision making, growth mindset and learning with a primary focus on reconciling dualities.
So many things in life have a dual nature and often times, we oversimplify, stay set in our ways and exhibit debilitating an Either/Or thinking. By properly considering the dual nature of things and approaching them with a Both/And mindset, you encourage openness, innovation, curiosity and better collaboration. More importantly, you avoid oversimplification, polarization and ongoing conflict.
Then: School taught us there was only one correct answer and it's the teacher who knew it!
Now: Life teaches us that we need to reconcile dualities with both a growth and a Both/And mindset. There are multiple innovative ideas that can meet the needs of a broad set of stakeholders, but only if we learn to reconcile them.
The world needs growth leaders, and our mission is to equip them to be lifelong learners who empower and engage their teams to transform their organizations and perhaps, if we're fortunate, transform our community and society as a whole.
How can you assure that your leaders possess both the fundamentals and the new capabilities for dealing with change and uncertainty?
The program for ensuring your managers possess the leadership mindsets, habits and behaviors to optimally deal with change, unpredictability and complexity.
“The GLA360 helped me understand my hidden strengths and uncovered blind spots in how I lead my team and I interact with others. The tools available to create a development plan make it easy to follow through on action items. Feedback from senior leaders in a development program that I facilitate indicate this is one of the best parts of their cohort experience in that it improves self-awareness, accountability, and ultimately, their leadership skills.”
— Executive, USA Fortune 200 Insurance Corporation
Components of the Growth Leadership Framework
Learning Attitude.
Looks Like
Being in pursuit of mastery requires that leaders are comfortable following a learning path. An intention of improvement, no matter how good one already is, characterizes a growth mindset.
Stays calm and positive
Listens to feedback
Habits
Find a project where you can exhibit the following behaviors on a weekly basis:
Ask how and why questions with a spirit of curiosity.
Seek feedback on an idea and incorporate it into your plan.
Practice
Learn a new skill that is outside of your comfort zone. Patience with yourself and the learning process is a forgotten art for some. Find opportunities to laugh at yourself while learning a new technology, sport, hobby, or work skill.
Mindset
Be kind to yourself; see failure as a steppingstone on the path to success and have faith in your abilities. This allows for the pursuit of improvement knowing that your best will be good enough. Fear can erode the team’s creativity and resourcefulness.
Mindset
There are many sources of truth worth exploring. Balancing our own intuition or sense of what is right with data and facts allows for new insights. Opportunities can be looked at from a variety of perspectives or disciplines such as economics, psychology, engineering and process. Understanding our own biases by experiencing other views takes curiosity and courage.
Thinking Agility.
Looks Like
Continuing to sharpen and develop thinking ability is an exercise for the mind. Develop habits that role model investment in learning. Research shows that breadth creates more analogies and mental models, making for more creative, effective problem-solving.
Frames problems as opportunities
Seeks different perspectives when solving problems
Habits
Spend time every week engaging in self-directed learning:
Set one hour of reflection time in your calendar on a weekly basis. Write a “what if “question in the notes section to spend time pondering.
Read (or listen) to a variety of books, taking 15 minutes each morning to read.
Practice
Take a customer challenge and develop 3 possible solutions. Work with scenarios rather than accepting the first answer. Develop competing ideas or hypotheses in order to understand the assumptions and implications of the project more deeply. Superficial thinking can turn into deep thinking when implications are rooted out.
Leading Learning.
Looks Like
Leaders who want to multiply talent must guard against being the hero and the source of all creative ideas. They create space where others feel safe learning and contributing.
Requires focusing on meeting others where they are.
Listening and coaching them to be active learners who balance not being afraid to make a mistake with taking responsibility for their outcomes.
Habits
Have a monthly agenda item for each direct report to talk about their learning within their current work projects.
Praise effort and improvement, particularly highlighting lessons learned.
Ask one “what if” question to stretch the person’s thinking.
Practice
Let someone struggle while being secure in the belief that they are fully capable of success. Pick a staff member or peer that you typically rescue. Instead of providing direct assistance, be a cheerleader and resource provider. People cannot learn to ride a bike if you hold onto the back of it.
Mindset
Delegation is a tool to allow others to reach their potential. Don’t take on work yourself that is not your responsibility with a misguided thought that it makes you a serving leader. Reflect on the criteria that must be met for you to feel confident in a solution and then share those clear expectations with your team. Delegating authority means that you will accept a solution that meets all the criteria even if it is different than the approach you would have taken. When all parties are clear about what success looks like, it is easier to delegate.
Mindset
What got us here won’t get us there. Because we live in a rapidly evolving world, there are opportunities to reimagine almost every industry. Believing that the talent exists in your organization to thrive in the evolving economy means leading the learning of the organization with an eye towards what will serve members of the organization including customers, partners and employees. Balancing optimism and experimentation with a keen eye for managing risk creates a learning environment.
Results Agility.
Looks Like
Take a continuous improvement mindset. Acceptance of the current state creates literal blinders to improvement opportunities. Creative destruction occurs when people challenge the default. Innovation occurs when someone asks wouldn’t it be better if we could…?
Articulates a compelling vision of the future
Challenges the status quo
Habits
Don’t let the status quo make you complacent. Make continuous improvement part of your routine.
Keep a notebook of improvement ideas based on the best/worst parts of your customers’ experience with your team.
Schedule time once a quarter to review a process and either map it out or ask 5 “whys” about a barrier.
Practice
Apply something you have learned in the last month to make a positive change. Make a small change to how you use technology, a planning system or a talent development process. Enjoy the feeling of accomplishment to energize yourself towards bolder moves. Learning in action disrupts the current state in a satisfying way.