Everything we have ever known about leadership and management is being challenged. Our hard-wired beliefs about how to improve performance and create engagement is being pushed to the limits every day of every week.
Leadership Development is a completely new game if you want to have a sustainable transformational impact that is felt at every level. Here are just a few of the things we are being challenged with.
Tell vs. Sell vs. Simply Make a Connection
We have moved from a tell mentality to a sell (buy-in) mentality to one that is about making a real connection. A leader’s ability to make a meaningful connection with team members is crucial to building a high-performance team. As a species, we have a natural and innate need for connection. This is a brand-new skill for many leaders and one that takes time and often a completely new look at relationships at work.
Feedback Doesn’t Work?
Recent studies show that feedback doesn’t work. OMG… who would have thought. If we really think about it, this does make complete sense. How do you feel when someone says, “Can we chat for a moment?”. If you are a frontline employee or frontline supervisor and you hear these words, I want to meet to give you some feedback, from your boss it can invoke a rush of cortisol that impacts brain function. Then we wonder why our feedback sessions don’t really work.
Action Combined with the Right Energy vs. Instructions and Expectations
Leaders are being watched, observed and monitored by their employees every single day. What we do and how we do it matters significantly more than what we say. The leader’s energy tells the story and the story is what matters. Energy management is at the core of great leadership.
Self-Development vs. Developing Others
How can any leader believe that their role is to develop others when they won’t take the self-development to challenge themselves? Creditability and authenticity are at stake very time a leader tries to push, pull and / or coach another towards development when they themselves are unwilling to be on the self-evolution pathway.
As artificial intelligence and machine learning are on the rise so is our need to fully understand the human condition, positive human psychology and what the human truly needs to be in a state of high performance. We are being challenged to step up to the leadership plate in a way we have never been asked to before.
We hope you take the challenge. Our New World Leadership™ Series is beginning again in June.
