Shift Your Leadership from THEN to NOW
A few years ago, I was invited to my executive coaching client’s Linda leadership funeral. It was a lighthearted celebration and jokes were flying left and right. Fortunately, we did not bury Linda – she was very much alive. Instead, we buried some of Linda’s leadership traits that had served her well in the past but had stopped being useful to her.
Linda first started out as an analyst, and she was stellar. She was detail-oriented, knew all the facts, and worked superbly independently so of course she got rapidly promoted and in no time oversaw a department consisting of 50+ people. But being a boss did not come naturally to Linda. Due to her strengths as an analyst, she tended to get lost in the details of her people’s jobs and often micromanaged them. She would attempt to delegate but would then lose trust in her team’s performance and pull back the reins.
Over the course of the next eight months of our coaching engagement, Linda did the hard and deep work of looking deep within herself with radical humility, asking herself: What is it that makes it difficult for me to trust my team? How can I get there? In parallel to doing the deep introspection work, she started to solicit regular feedback and suggestions from her colleagues on how to improve.
Linda started to turn the ship around, steadily improved and is now a much stronger leader. She NOW spends 80% of her time in meetings and gets things done through her people. She NOW takes pride in the great work her team members do and has shifted to become a strong leader and coach.
Like Linda, many of us struggle with how to best lead our teams in today’s fast-paced, messy, cutthroat business climate. We face challenges that did not exist twenty or even ten years ago. But the prevailing methods of leadership come from the past, having been handed down from past generations of managers and executives.
But what worked back THEN does not work NOW.
The old ways of leading do not reflect new realities and are failing to inspire new generations. Outdated leadership approaches reduce productivity, increase turnover, squash the potential of our people, and ultimately kill profits. But what if the way we lead our teams matched the pace of our rapidly changing world? What if we shifted from top-down, command/control leadership to a more bottom-up, purpose-driven, and human-centered approach?
Over the last few years, I have been on a mission.
A mission to distill what I have learned as a leader in business, academia, ultra-endurance competition, and in complex international peacekeeping operations and as an executive coach for the last 20 years into what makes for great NOW leaders today and beyond.
The 5 THEN to NOW Leadership shifts are the results of this research.
Applying the 5 THEN To NOW Leadership Shifts will help us to lead to win in today’s complex and uber-competitive business climate. So, here they are:
Shift #1: The Leadership Funeral
From THEN hanging on to old habits to NOW embracing new, fresh, more relevant ways of doing things.
Shift #2: Radical Transparency
From THEN secrecy and ambiguity to NOW radical transparency.
Shift #3: Tough on Results, Tender on People
From THEN avoiding conflict and letting standards slide to NOW holding the line.
Shift #4: Eyes on, Hands off
From THEN micromanagement to NOW empowered execution at the front line
Shift #5: Champion of the Culture
From THEN sole focus on talent to NOW champion of the culture.
As a leader and coach, I have experienced first-hand what happens when leaders and managers let go of outdated THEN leadership and embrace NOW leadership: Their teams prioritize the right things, are nimble, and more innovative. Team members are empowered to make decisions more quickly and execute them faster. And they report higher job satisfaction and stick around longer. All of which helps the bottom line! And who wouldn’t want all of that?
Are you ready to be part of the evolution?
