Leadership development in the VUCA environment
Over the last decade or so, economic developments have put the focus on how to prepare leaders to manage in a VUCA environment: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.
Based on a Leadership Forecast study, the primary business priorities for organisations, according to their top executives, are growth and leveraging their talent. Interestingly, given the rate of growth of these organisations, the executives prefer to focus more on strengthening the leadership and management of their organisations than introducing additional uncertainties through expansion.
This is the reality of the landscape we are in.
But what are the realities of today’s young workforce?
While top executives of leading organisations are willing to bet their money on leadership development and cite that as their single largest agenda – what does today’s new leader look like? Is she ready for this? What is his reality?
Look around you within the corporate walls. This is the world where change, speed and ambiguity have become the way of life. And here you see bright, young, sharply dressed men and women moving from one meeting to another. Their days are filled with back-to-back reviews, meetings, conference calls, one-on-ones and the occasional conversations over coffee or a smoke. And that is the story each day – more change, more speed, more ambiguity to deal with. And the young workforce enjoys this enticement.
The reality of the corporate world today is that more and more people are moving into managerial and leadership positions much faster than 1 or 2 decades back. Young, high-potential managers and leaders with limited experience and exposure leading very busy lives – trying hard to PROVE their worth – to move to the next level.
This may have been the reality earlier as well, but the demographics of today’s leaders have changed.
These young leaders have an interesting challenge. Unlike their predecessors, too much is happening in their lives at the same time. They are being promoted to Regional Managers or Global Heads at the same time as they are becoming a parent for the first time. Different from their predecessors who would get to “senior” roles around the time their kids were settled in school, they were settled comfortably in a city and a home had invested in relationships with spouse/ partner, and perhaps even kids were socially connected and had support systems – a lot has changed for these new leaders.
That’s not it; their environment has changed completely – the world today is about efficiencies – things need to be done “ASAP”. The “mind-chatter” is high – multiple job options, cities to live in decisions, promotions to literally “die” for and the belief that you have to maintain “relationships” to be successful which leads to after office social time – with office folks.
So – we have an interesting leadership challenge.
Despite the plethora of management and leadership development now available and the increasing level of demand, however, there remains a significant question as to the extent to which current provision meets the needs of today’s leaders and today’s organisations.
The point I’m making is that it’s evident that the leaders and the leadership challenges of today have changed, so why haven’t we started to change our approach to developing leaders?
A decade or so back, if you were working for a big Global organisation, and you were a high potential manager – you would probably be sent off to the USA for a Management Training Program. Where you would be educated on how to manage time, delegate effectively, manage and lead teams. You would be trained on various leadership models and taught how to “plot” people on your team and how to “strategise” your approach to each person. You were TAUGHT.
And that worked. It worked because your realities were different as were your pressures – both at work and at home. So being taught some skills and then being left off to practice them worked – because you had time, you COULD make mistakes. Not just that, other people around you – your leaders and managers also made time and invested that time in speaking with you, guiding you, being a support system for you.
The world today is not as forgiving – or so is the belief that these young leaders have formed. Regardless of whether that is a fact or an unrealistic belief that managers have today – it is THEIR reality.
What this means is that the future workforce is working under fear, stressed out and possibly without a support system to help them.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Management Training Programs are not helpful – they still are. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As leaders who have benefitted from being ahead of the current leaders by a decade or so, we have a responsibility – a responsibility to build stronger ways of developing our future leaders.
What we need is a way to help leaders deal with this landscape and their realities. Equipping them with skills and competencies will have little impact on their behaviours and results unless we work with them at a deeper emotive level as well.
I call this the “Inside-Out” approach to Leadership Development.
This trend in the approach to Leadership Development originates in the essence of the person and radiates outward to enrich others, going beyond competencies and skill-building to character and personal development.
The emerging trend is to drive powerful organisational development interventions using a two-pronged approach of traditional and transformational development methods. This practice is based on the belief that leadership is not about doing; it’s about knowing and being. Leadership comes from our values, principles, experiences, beliefs and essence.
More and more organisations are actively looking at how to better enable their leaders using this approach.
Organisations are using a mix of traditional methods like training, projects, action learning etc. and coupling them with deeper transformational methods like external coaching/mentoring, Human Behaviour Process labs and building strong internal coaching programs to sustain this ongoing development process.
This trend is leading to another change in how leadership competencies are laid out. While most organisations have clearly defined competency frameworks, more and more organisations realise the importance of considering competencies that promote the overall development of an individual and are moving away from traditional “critical” leadership competencies like business knowledge, decision-making, marketing, etc.
Many organisations have started leveraging competencies like Building Self-Insight, Listening and Receiving Feedback. In fact, a recent review of literature in the field of leadership development throws up 53 competencies associated with “global leadership” (Joyce Osland - Executive Director of the Global Leadership Advancement Center at San Jose State University). They found that each of the 53 competencies could be categorised into one of six core dimensions: 1. Relationship (competencies related to developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships) 2. Traits (core personality or habitual behavioural tendencies) 3. Business Expertise (expertise in global business knowledge) 4. Organising Expertise (skills relating to organising and structuring human and administrative processes in global contexts) 5. Cognitive (core internal information processing tendencies) 6. Vision (the ability to discern where an organisation should go and the capability to rally subordinates to strive to achieve the vision)
This is an important development in this field and as organisations look at leadership development, defining and tracking the right competencies – which are in sync with our landscape and people realities becomes crucial.
The changing corporate landscape, leaders changing demographics and realities and new trends in Inside-Out Leadership Development, lead us to our next question – how many organisations have the capability, expertise and resources to deploy such a model to develop their leaders?
Center for Leadership Studies – University of Exeter
Clearly, there is a shift – we are now focusing on specific individuals through customised and experiential modes – leveraging external experts and partners as co-creators and coaches on this ongoing journey.
As you notice, another significant trend is that of leveraging external coaches. Many organisations are happy doing just that – but a word of caution – if the coaching program is not integrated with the overall leadership development approach; you may end up with something half-baked on both ends.
In conclusion, Leadership Development initiatives have to be sponsored and supported right from the top. In most cases, successful initiatives have been those where the CEO of the organisation has been the first person to undergo a developmental intervention.
One big emerging point is that organisations NEED to start looking beyond competency development as the “cure” to effective leadership. With the changes in the environment, the need is to help leaders explore their own inner- self, their talents, fears, and passions - all with the intent of unleashing that untapped potential.
Finally, this approach needs to be ideally co-created with a strong external consultant and be sustained over a period of time.
So, are you ready to explore the paradigm that “there is no difference between becoming an effective leader and becoming a fully integrated human being”?
Author – Gatik Chaujer Leadership Development
Facilitator & Coach, Storyteller, TEDx Speaker & Co-founder @ TransforME
Gatik Chaujer is the co-founder of the global, award-winning Leadership Development firm, TransforME. A passionate facilitator, coach & keynote speaker, with 20 years of training and coaching experience, his own journey is a story worth listening to!
Driven by his mission to transform a million lives, Gatik’s uniqueness lies in his inane ability to connect, spontaneously share, be mindfully present and bring humour to learning!
Gatik brings to the table business insights and a strong understanding of training & development practices. His expertise comes from his deep exposure to both; being a Global Training leader in large organisations and having spent substantial time in corporate training and consulting.
With over 30000 facilitation hours and 700 coaching hours across 150 clients globally, Gatik’s methodology is focussed on using the ‘Inside Out’ processes to break and create new behavioural patterns for his clients. His expertise lies in the areas of Leadership Development, Leadership Team Synergy, Storytelling & Influencing Without Authority.
Gatik has partnered with clients across industries on creating end-to-end learning interventions. Over the years, with his partner Sandra, he has created an amazing blend of unique methods like T-Group, Gestalt, Storytelling, Projective cards etc that ”make change happen”.
A completely family-oriented man; he enjoys spending time with his beautiful daughters, Keisha & Kyra and his wife. Gatik is an explorer at heart and often drives up into the mountains to tread untrodden paths. Quite health-conscious, he loves his daily morning run and enjoys a good game of squash or tennis once in a while.
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