Many CEOs have told us that what keeps them up at night is that the organizational success they are experiencing today is only as good as their current line-up of leaders. And as today’s leaders give way to tomorrow’s, they need to safeguard that the momentum gained doesn’t fizzle out? Carrying the momentum of profitability forward depends on developing consistently excellent leadership—not leaders, leadership. Being a leader is not the same as leadership. Being a leader is a role. Leadership, on the other hand, is a function–it’s how individual leaders deal with anticipated or unanticipated change, opportunity and threats. Leaders come and go in organizations. Too often when a key leader walks out the door, the success a organization enjoyed under his or her leadership disappears, too. As Quint Studer author of Results That Last reminds us, the challenge is to standardize and hardwire proven leadership best practices that will survive in your organization longer than any individual leader or team. Leadership practices which get others to fully and willingly committed to a new and sustainable courses of action, to meet commonly agreed goals while pursuing commonly held values. As commonsense as this idea may sound, very few companies practice it. Those that do will harvest enormous gains in profitability.
The Future is Hardwiring Leadership Best Practices
November 5th, 2007 · Posted By Bob Ebers · 1 Comment
Tags: AttractABILITY · Current Events · Thoughts & Observations
1 response so far ↓
1 Alan Booth // Nov 15, 2007 at 8:37 am
Bob mentions the positive impact on profits when leadership best practices are “hard wired”. How?
Sounds to me like initiatives that change work environments and culture when a new CEO is hired. Not really ititiatives is it? A new leader intentially or not models the behaviors he wants his team to use.
After consulting over 200 clients, I have observed that it has not unusual for a leader to have traits that do not produce the results desired. As my friend from Korn Ferry, Lou Hipp, told me yesterday,”…the first step here is getting the top to identfy the critical few leadership competencies that will drive a business’ strategy.” They are using Lominger card sorts.
The second step, perhaps the hardest, is assessing the top of the organzation to identify the gaps in actual leadership performance against these critical competencies. Mentoring, advising, coaching; what ever you call it, hardwiring these folks at the top is the only way to align the organizatin.
Not starting at the top IMHO causes plain vanilla leadership development that causes middle mangers tension about what is “best” in leading their organization and what is the reality of their top leaders.
Challenge to Bob: what is it about your leadership at Knowing Point that could be “hardwired”?
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