Making a Paradigm Shift in Leadership Development

MAKING A PARADIGM SHIFT IN LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

FIGURE 4

“While notions such as the leader as coach, focusing on wellbeing and empathetic leadership were all factors that were in play beforehand, the pandemic accelerated and amplified them, making them a mandatory component of leaders’ toolkits.” GUY COHEN, HEAD OF TALENT AND ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT, TT ELECTRONICS

KEY THEME How leaders set direction

KEY THEME

Building the organisation infrastructure for rapid execution

Outside-in thinking

Build capacity for agile execution

Adaptive strategy anchored to purpose

Our 2019 research Digital Disruption: Exploring the Implications for Leaders and Leadership Development examined leadership in the digital age to understand how the demands of leaders were changing and how our models of leadership needed to evolve. We explored how the expectations of leaders were changing across three dimensions: 1. How leaders set direction 2.The organisational infrastructure they need to build for rapid and adaptive strategy execution 3. The new relational skillsets required We have adopted the same three dimensions to organise the themes that emerge from our 2022 research. Breaking each element down, there are both similarities and differences between what we found to be the emerging priorities for leaders in the digital economy and the challenges for leaders as we emerge from the pandemic. For example, the ability to sense and respond rapidly to changes in the external environment and to handle complexity were essential leadership capabilities in both studies, as was the shift towards a coaching (as opposed to directive) leadership style. However, the pandemic emphasised the need for leaders to become skilled in leading virtual and hybrid teams to a degree we did not envisage in 2019 (although we did flag in 2019 that leaders needed to master digital communication tools and work out how to build trust with remote teams).

NEW PARADIGMS FOR LEADERSHIP POST-PANDEMIC

Making sense of complexity

Develop a culture of learning and experimentation

Leading in an age of activism

KEY THEME The new relational skillsets

Leaders as enablers of others

Fostering inclusivity and wellbeing

Leading remote and hybrid teams

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