Leadership in the New New-Normal
Leadership is about how we lead, not just about what we do.
How we lead involves:
- Competencies and capabilities – are we trustworthy?
- Skills, Knowledge, Aptitude – are we competent?
- Capability to handle volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity – are we resilient?
- Credibility to nurture and sustain success – what values drive us?
Understanding Leadership Capacity
Capacity to Lead – the practice of leading
To lead, to drive performance, and to be resilient and adaptable in the divisive face of the “new new-normal”, we need a framework for personal and professional growth, including what we believe and think, what we can do, and what we can use.
The Three-Legged Stool of Leadership Capacitation
Leadership Capacitation is a 3-legged stool:
- There is the Mindset Leg [Why we need to act]: attitudes, beliefs, and perspectives, which shape our ability to adapt and grow, including mental frameworks, motivations, and resilience influencing our perceptions of challenges and opportunities.
- There is the Skillset Leg [What we need to do and Who is doing it]: abilities, competencies, and expertise, including both technical skills [proficiencies acquired through training and experience] and soft skills [interpersonal and communication abilities, critical thinking, problem-solving, leadership, and teamwork].
- There is the Toolset Leg [How, when, where we are doing it]: tools, technologies, methodologies, and resources we leverage to accomplish tasks, solve problems, and achieve goals [software platforms, Big Data, data analytics, AI, robotics, etc.].
Bridging the Gaps
Among the challenges we encounter are the gaps between the different legs:
- The gap between Mindset and Skillset is often missing a correct mindset to do the job
- The gap between Skillset and Toolset is often missing tools to do the job
- The gap between the Toolset and Mindset is often missing strategy to do the job
These gaps should be seen as opportunities to build:
- develop the mindset needed to optimize the skills to get the job done;
- develop the skills needed to make effective and efficient use of the tools;
- develop the tools needed to enable the mindset to implement successful strategies.
Developing as an Agile and Innovative Leader
By filling these gaps, we can identify the competencies we need to develop our capacity to lead. Our capacity to lead in the face of the dysfunctional “new new-normal” demands that these competencies be agile and innovative.
Agile Leadership Competencies
Being agile means having the ability to adapt, respond quickly, and thrive in uncertain environments by focusing on flexibility, continuous improvement, collaboration, and delivering value iteratively. It is a culture that empowers us to be resilient, learn from feedback, and pivot direction to meet evolving needs.
Innovative Leadership Competencies
Being innovative means implementing creative ideas to develop new solutions; it involves curiosity, experimentation, problem-solving, and a culture of continuous learning and growth. It is an action-oriented attitude that combines imagination with practicality to address challenges and create positive change.
Capacity to Lead – Competency Framework
MINDSET | OPPORTUNISTIC
- We grow from experience
-
We develop “habits of the mind”
- How we think
- How we decide
- How we act
- How we react
- How we accept
- How we reject
- How we desire
- How we ignore
- We overcome self-deception [self-worth]
- We shape our lives – we shape the world
SKILLSET | SUPPORTIVE
- Critical thinking/leadership skills
- Communication/listening skills
- Interpersonal/persuasion skills
- Information/management skills
- Job-specific/customer service skills
- Time management/team skills
- Problem solving/analytical skills
- Collaboration/networking skills
TOOLSET | BUILDING
- CRM: Customer Relationship Management
- SRM: Supplier Relationship Management
- Process/Operations Management
- Product/Quality Development
- Collaboration/Productivity
- Social Networking/Business Intelligence
- People Development
In a business context, an Agile and Innovative Leader is
- Influencer: using interpersonal skills to affect the actions and decisions of others both non-coercively and ethically
- Responsible: balancing social and environmental issues with competitive advantage, business success and profits
- Cultural/Multicultural: promoting diversity in multiple contexts and aligning responsibilities to competencies, not to social differences
- Contextual: interpreting and reacting [pivoting] to changing and volatile surroundings
- Constructive: using personal power and skills to affect the behavior and decisions of others by effectively using the different types of power in different contexts
- Intentional: assessing personal performance, being aware of strengths and weaknesses, taking steps toward continuous improvement, achieving personal best
- Thinker: having the cognitive ability to make connections, integrate, and make practical applications of different actions, opinions, information and situations
- Consensus Builder: exhibiting the ability to convince people to see common good among differing view, using listening skills, managing conflict, creating solutions
- Change Agent: having the courage to raise challenging questions that might be perceived as threats to the status quo by others and proactively rising to challenges
- Mission Oriented: communicating how individual performance influences perception of peers and colleagues on how to accomplish objectives and goals
- Future Minded: having a forward-looking mentality and sense of direction, with a sense of what the future might be like, along with acceptance of the challenges ahead
Success is obtained only by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. When you solve problems, all you do is guarantee a return to normalcy. Peter Drucker.
Victor Deyglio, Founding President, The Logistics Institute
This blog is the sixth installment in the series The New New-Normal. We recommend reading the blogs in sequence:
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