Leadership Development for a Changing World

New research from Josh Bersin and Better Up shows something that I've been concerned about for some time. That companies are massively underinvesting in leadership development.

Leadership development is not just a “nice to have.”  When you get down to basics in a hyper-ambiguous and disruptive world, leadership culture and purpose may be the only things you have to really guide you and if you've underinvested you're in big trouble.

What's more, adjacent research into the impact of HR capabilities shows that Leadership and Management Development have the highest impact of all HR capabilities when measured against business growth.  And as this infographic shows the effects of good practice are far-reaching.

Leadership Development is not usually easy. Plug and play solutions often fail to hit the mark and there's a lot of different people and approaches to choose from.  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in it.  If you are responsible for budgeting in your organization, make sure you allocate sufficient funds to it and use this kind of data to justify your decisions.

I'm increasingly coming to believe that the best way for humanity to respond to the growth of AI is by becoming more human. Our humanity is what distinguishes us and it's increasingly what we'll come to value as more of the world we know becomes automated.

One of the interesting things about humans is that they respond better to stories than to facts.  That's not to say that facts and data don't have a role in stories, just that on their own they rarely move people.  It's more about how you tell the story that matters.

In my quest to tell better stories in my own work and help other people use storytelling effectively in their leadership, I recently took a course with IDEO.  One of the articles they shared related to how to tell complex stories effectively, which I share here.

In this complex world, great stories help to make sense of issues in helpful ways that move people to action.  There are some great pointers here on how to frame things:

1. Tell stories about individuals

2. Give your audience two plus two

3. Be strategic with your empty spaces

4. Paint a picture in the mind of your audience

Read on to view some great examples of how to do this effectively.

Matthew Farmer

Emerging World 

This chart plots polarization for various countries based on the Edelman Trust Institute's annual survey of 32,000+ people conducted on November 2022.

I'm struck by how many of the severely polarized countries are supposedly liberal democracies while a number of those least polarized have less democratic forms of government.

A democratic society allows for more dissent and a more free expression of alternative views so perhaps from that side this pattern is not so unexpected.  But polarization is not a good thing - it breeds intolerance, unrest and violence. 

What we need is 'both/and' thinking rather than an 'either/or' mindset.  This enables the free expression of diverse views supported in more liberal democracies to be a source of strength, opportunity and innovation.  We need this kind of thinking from our political leaders but we also need to exercise this kind of thinking in our day-to-day leadership of ourselves, our teams and the communities we are responsible for.

There's been so much to read about empathetic leadership and the need for empathetic leaders in business today. This article takes a look at research on empathy, and suggests that it should be taken even to the next level, compassion. 

It's an interesting article that might ignite the psychologist in you, it did me!

How has the Pandemic has changed the face of Leadership Development? In this Emerging World blog, our in-house expert, David Tsipenyuk, discusses what is currently shaping and influencing the Leadership Development landscape.

Jeff Dickson argues that “sensemaking is the most powerful skill a leader can leverage and improve in today's non routine context".This article looks at what sensemaking looks like for today's leaders and how this leadership capability differs from other characteristics.

It comes as no surprise to me that The Power of Empathy in Times of Crisis and Beyond Study found that empathic leadership contributes to more inclusive workplace experiences. The Power of Empathy in Times of Crisis and Beyond is the full report from Catalyst on their study of Empathic leaders. A very interesting read. 

Emerging World

Emerging World was founded in 2003 from an insight that great shifts come from seeing things from different perspectives. A decade and a half later, the company still has this purpose at its core. 

In this podcast by The Leader's Council, Matthew Farmer, Emerging World's Founder and Managing Director, talks about how the company came to be and the work that we do.

Emerging World

For a long time, the VUCA acronym has been used as a helpful way to characterise the world in which we live.  However, it's probably time to re-consider it's usefulness given how fast the world is changing and the fact that it was originally coined by the US military to describe the post-Cold War geo-political context.

To replace VUCA, thinkers like Jamais Cascio consider a new acronym 'BANI' to be much more appropriate .  A BANI world is Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear and Incomprehensible and in this article the designer Stephan Grabmeier offers some good explanation and a great infographic that explains more.

However, perhaps the most valuable thing is not the acronym itself but rather the qualities it implies are required to successfully lead and operate in the world it describes.

Brittleness might require resilience but also some slack (think about the global supply chain challenges created by the Suez canal blockage last year).  Anxiety can supported with empathy and mindfulness.  Non-linearity requires systems thinking, an understanding of context and the flexibility to change paths while Incomprehensibility suggests that judgment guided by intuition and transparency would be very helpful.

Looking at things in this way can help us think about how to develop the individual behaviours and organisational capacities to ensure a BANI world does not break us.

Matthew Farmer

Emerging World

We often hear and use the term ' keeping an open-mind' but was does it actually mean?

To me it's an important quality to hold in a time of complexity, division and ambiguousness.

In this piece Dara Goldberg summarises 5 different mindsets and values that it's helpful to adopt if we want to be truly open-minded.

Matthew Farmer

Emerging World

I love the illustration that compares management in the complicated world of 20th century with complex world of the 21st, which is taken from the opening key note of the World Agility Forum that was held at the end of last month. 

But what I find particularly interesting is that the Forum agreed on a vision that would bring the diverse practitioners in the world of Agile together.  This was that 'organizations should be about people creating value for other people' - something they do not feel is the current norm.

It leads me on to a question - to what extent do you feel that your organization behaves as though the most important thing is about people creating value for other people?

Matthew

Emerging World

The concept of belonging has become a major issue of concern in recent years for a variety of reasons.  Those focused on diversity and inclusion have noted that groups who do not feel they belong leave workplaces quickly despite the efforts of recruitment teams to reach out to under-represented communities. 

While those concerned with employee engagement note that people that feel they belong are more engaged, productive and willing to carry a positive culture.

This study starts to explore the concept of belonging, how it can be measured, how different groups experience it (e.g. white men vs Asian women, leaders, vs managers vs rank and file etc.), the business impact of belonging etc.  It's an interesting summary of an ongoing study that looks to be able to shed light on a topic of growing interest and gives a different lens to be able to understand how we work and why we work.

Matthew

Emerging World

If you've ever been on a call with me, you'll know that I'm a big fan of visual capture.  Even a look at my LinkedIn profile probably gives that away.

Visual capture is a great way to distill complex conversations about important concepts and themes into something clear, tangible and memorable.  But they're also the result of an exercise in deep listening as great visual capture artists have to listen deeply to what is going on during experiences and events to be able to represent them meaningfully.

'Most of us stink at listening. We tend to listen just enough to get the gist of what someone says before we begin to judge, rehearse our response, and then speak again' says Matt Abrahams, lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business and author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When you're put on the spot.

This is a big issue for leaders who often fail to listen deeply and as a result miss great learning opportunities, create misunderstandings and lose trust.  Consequently, Listening is a theme we frequently address in our immersive leadership development experiences at Emerging World.

So what can we learn from visual artists about great listening as a leader?

Zara Stasi, Visual capture and community artist at Good for the Bees studio provides some great pointers in this article that are also shared in Matt's book:

• Know why you’re meeting/talking
• Have a sense of a plan (so you can keep listening rather than planning what so say next when you want to speak)
• Don't overprepare (or you'll have too many fixed ideas)
• Listen for patterns

More detail in the article.

For many people, including MIT Senior Lecturer Otto Scharmer who developed the well-known Theory U framework, listening is the most fundamental (and underrated) leadership attribute.  If leaders don't listen there is a huge disconnect between their perception of the world and how others see things, and it's this disconnect that causes huge problems.   So if listening's so important, how do we get better at it?

The 4 levels of listening framework gives us a way to think about different kinds of listening, what stops us from listening more deeply and how to cultivate a habit of listening.

Being aware of different types of listening and that there are different things to 'listen to' is a helpful first step.  Becoming aware of what gets in the way of listening more deeply is also valuable.  The framework identifies the common barriers as the:

• Voice of judgment (between level 1 and 2)
• Voice of cynicism (between level 2 and 3)
• Voice of fear (between level 3 and 4)

But in the end we must all make the conscious decision to listen more deeply to be able to develop our ability to do so.  This is because there is no quick switch or simple playbook to follow.  But what will help is giving yourself time and time to those around you to listen more deeply to what is going on and break the disconnect between how you see the world and how others really see it. This article gives a few tips and ideas for encouraging this and developing a good listening habit that can save a huge amount of time and lost emotional energy in the long run. 

When we think of the long term, what do we actually mean?   How long is long? And what guides our decision-making?

In today's corporate world long term can often simply mean 'the quarter-after-this-one' or at most 'a 5-year strategic plan'.  This kind of time-horizon is hopelessly inadequate for many of the challenges that face us. Even for governments, the long term rarely gets beyond the next term of office.

In this article, the philosopher William MacAskill makes a case for genuine longtermism, which argues there is a moral reason to consider how the actions and decisions we take today affect the lives of huge numbers of future people. This is a powerful perspective to embrace and we need leaders who will adopt it to make wise decisions that will protect the lives of all our descendants.  The future of humanity is at stake.

At Emerging World, we’re obsessed with creating immersive experiences that change perspectives, to shift business and shape a better future. Over the last 12 months, we’ve been asking ourselves what that better future really looks like. This has led to the development of Our North Star – a vision for a better future which consists of 7 characteristics , self-awareness is one of these. 

Now more than ever before, the world is in need of innovative solutions to the pressing and evolving issues of our time. This interesting article looks at the impact of DesignThinking and Growth Mindset on powering innovation across the organisation and the importance of practice inorder to see the desired results. Read on...

Taking a broader 'ecosystem' perspective is vital important for today's business leaders.  As this HBR article based on some Korn Ferry research outlines, the world in which we operate is more obviously interconnected and intertwined than ever and leaders need to see and operate beyond the traditional boundaries of their organization to be successful.

The article provides some interesting and helpful ideas on the steps that leaders can take to be more successful when operating in this way.  However, headlines can be dangerous. If leaders try to control the ecosystem in which they operate using the same thinking they may be conditioned to when leading their own departments, functions and organizations, they are doomed to fail.  You can lead within an ecosystem and you can influence how ecosystems function and behave but if you think you can be the leader of the ecosystem that's not new thinking.  That's just trying to control a bigger empire. 

Good ecosystem thinking means understanding that you are shaped by the system as well as having a role in shaping it, and that thriving systems have power distributed in different places.

Matthew Farmer

Emerging World

Through the work that we do at Emerging World, we know that Immersive learning programmes create a deeply emotional response, but it is also vital to assess their impact through effective measurement and evaluation. This article that takes a look at 5 best practices of Leadership Development measurement for remote and hybrid work.

We hear about empathetic leadership more and more. This article provides some interesting insights. It features a new study of 889 employees by Catalyst and details some significant findings on the  outcomes of empathetic leadership.

Emerging World

As Salesforce's investment in this new 'cultural epicenter' shows, great Hybrid working is not just about the flexibility to work from home' or ''the office'.  Instead, it incorporates the notion that work can take place anywhere and that when bringing people together physically, being intentional about the objectives for doing so, the experience and the outcomes is really important.

Matthew

Emerging World

Predicting the future is notoriously difficult but scanning the horizon and looking weak signals of what may come to pass is an important skill that helps people and businesses prepare for upcoming change.

Demographic indicators are far more reliable that many other signals and it seems that the pandemic has led to a sharp decline in the birth rate (in many countries at least).

In this article Rita McGrath, professor at Columbia Business School and author of 'Seeing Around Corners' takes a look at the impact this might have socially and economically.  While there are challenges, there are also a number of potential positives including perhaps most tantalisingly, the prospect of an increase in worker rights and a change in the prevailing social contract.  

Matthew

Emerging World

The concept of Personal Knowledge Mastery is growing in popularity as we all seek to make sense of what our best next step should be in this incredibly complex world.  PKM offers an approach that connects work with learning and at its heart is a principle of seeking information, making sense of it and sharing it in a reciprocal manner with others that broadens understanding and can lead to new insights and action.

In this article Harold Jarche (the leading author on PKM) argues that in more complex realms the groups (teams, communities and networks) that form to address knowledge areas need to be more open, informal and transient to be able to deal with the issues at hand.  This suggests that the kind of leadership qualities that need to be developed to be successful in these complex times are those associated with being open, humble, curious, flexible and trustworthy.

Employee surveillance software seems like an archaic way to deal with the productivity of remote teams.  It suggests that the humans that work for your company are in fact machines,  that they have no sense of intrinsic motivation, that your team or company has no sense of purpose with which to inspire people, that you don't trust the people you work and that you have no personal influence as a manager or leader.

I would suggest that any company looking at this kind of approach should take a look at itself and answer these much more deep rooted questions - Why do we exist?  Why do we have people doing these jobs and not machines? How can we equip our managers to lead in a more human way?  What is it that motivates people?

Part of the problem is that people have grown up in a system where humans have been treated like machines and we have been taught to measure and reward people as if they are machines encouraged by terms like 'human capital' and 'staff productivity'.  But the world is changing fast an this kind of thinking will not work over the longer term.  If I worked for a company that adopted these practices, I think it's a great to get out.  Not just because my company didn't trust me but also because the writing is on the wall for the company itself - it's not sustainable and it totally lacks imagination.