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Leadership Now

Guest post by: Debbie Payne

Article Overview: Challenge, growth and opportunities help us grow as leaders. Find a couple of people to help you dig deep and tap into your own leadership wisdom now. How can you develop the top five critical leadership development needs: coaching skills, cross-department knowledge, financial acumen, negotiating skills, and business ethics?

Leadership Now

Leadership has been extensively studied for many years. Theories and models have been constructed, developed, revised and replaced. We still are challenged with actually defining leadership. Shifts in thinking and research about leadership over the years have led us through various approaches stemming from psychology, biology, sociology, balancing tasks and people, skills and competencies, and now we are exploring complexity in systems.

Today we wrap together all of the history on leadership, add in diversity, technology, demographics, globalization, ethical business expectations, sustainability, social networking, security, environmental issues, customer expectations, talent shortage, interconnected integration, and the constant changing environment and we come up with a very complex system. Leaders at all levels of an organization are swamped with this complexity. What is a leader to do?

Making meaning, creating sense out of the complex chaos to aid in effective decision-making is what outstanding leaders need to do today. They need to find ways not to operate with a black and white mindset, but in the shades of grey. Relating to and weighing all factors in this complex environment to each particular situation. They become “flexors”, people who are able to adjust, be resilient, and shift their own beliefs and mindsets as they become influenced by others; including their direct reports. These higher order skills of thinking, of relating, of influencing, of sense making, of having an open mind are sometimes referred to as soft skills. Leaders need these skills whatever we decide to call them. Can they be taught? Can they be learned? Do they arise from Training? Mentoring? Coaching? Experience?

Is what we do in leadership development what we hope leaders will do when they lead? Pink (2005) argues we need to become more “high concept” and “high touch.” High concept is a “kind of artistic creativity and inventiveness” and high touch is the ability to “understand the subtleties of human interaction.” As we create new approaches to leadership development the models themselves need to pay attention to and create space for both inventiveness and complex human interaction. Bennis (2003) says there are four timeless leadership attributes: “ability to adapt, ability to engage others in shared meaning, ability to present an authentic voice, and the existence of a positive purpose.”

From the Leadership Development Survey 2005 we find the top five characteristics that make execution of strategy more likely: openness to change, interpersonal communication, support for innovation, flexibility, group communications. Furthermore, the survey also tells us the five critical leadership development needs are: coaching skills, cross-department knowledge, financial acumen, negotiating skills, and business ethics.

As you find leadership opportunities in your organization, are faced with challenges, and work on your own personal growth and that of the people around you be reminded that the richness of connected humanity can provide for exponential leaps in leadership development. As you develop and grow your self-directed learning muscle and learn from the experience be also reminded that it is part of the answer to part of a question. Make the journey meaningful, be authentic with your voice, find a positive purpose, and be adaptable with your learning partners,maybe consider using the Tri-namics System for development. Find ways to elevate your coaching skills and practice them, bring in knowledge from various parts of the organization, be inventive with your activities and goals and pay attention to the complexity of the human interaction as you communicates. These will all contribute to your growth as a leader now.

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Article Tags: coaching, critical leadership, leaders, leadership development, leadership skills, leadership wisdom



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