In last week’s newsletter, I explored the Voyage stage of the journey to change leaders to become less directive and more empowering.

Before you read any further, I must declare that the source is an article in the May-June 2023 edition of Harvard Business Review. I acknowledged the authors last week. You can read the article entitled The Leadership Odyssey for yourself.

Inspiration: https://hbr.org/2023/05/the-leadership-odyssey

Image: Karen Ferris 2023

The premise of the article is that it is not easy for leaders to become less directive and more empowering. It is a lengthy and often arduous process.

The authors studied 75 CEO successions, involving 235 candidates. They discovered that the transformation is not a single event but unfolds over time and takes many twists and turns. It’s a long journey with three stages: the departure, during which leaders recognise the need to change and leave behind their old ways of working; the voyage, during which they encounter obstacles and trials that teach them important lessons; and the return, when they arrive at a new understanding of what kind of leader they need to be.

This week I explore the Return stage of the journey.

3. RETURN

Leaders embark on the return part of the journey after the challenges of a somewhat long and arduous voyage. The learnings are now embodied, and a more empowering leadership style emerges that can be utilised widely. Learning does not end here but it becomes self-sustaining.

SUSTAINING

Your learning becomes self-sustaining. This is learning by doing. It is the persistent, self-initiated pursuit of excellence in leadership. You must keep applying your learning in different contexts to retain it for the long term. Sustained learning helps you think and behave in new ways.

Consistent and conscious practice over time forms new behaviours and ways of thinking. Neuro-scientifically speaking, this is how we form new neural connections and pathways (also known as “neuroplasticity”).

Through repetition and practice, these neural patterns overtake old ones, so you can think and behave in new ways.

Continue to solicit feedback on your performance and act upon it.

ADAPT

When applying your learning you also need to be able to adapt your leadership style. You need to know when to be directive and when to provide direction and be more enabling,

There will be situations you face where a more directive leadership style will be called upon. You must make that judgement. The good news is that you now have a broader repertoire of leadership skills so you can adapt as needed.

With a directive style, you are typically the person who defines the solution and then tells the team or individual what to do.

With a non-directive style, you help the team or individual arrive at the solution themselves usually by asking guiding questions. You empower them to do so.

Directive and non-directive leadership could be described as “push” and “pull” techniques. Each will bring about different outcomes.

If you want people to comply and get fast results, you will choose “push.”

If you want commitment and changes in behaviour. If you want to empower people to solve problems themselves and be more self-sufficient for the future, you will choose “pull.” “Pull” takes longer but has a long-term impact. Pull techniques also tend to be more effective in persuasion and overcoming resistance and can be used to help stimulate critical thinking.

If your building is on fire, you will use a directive leadership style. You will decide the solution – that is, get out of the building – and you will tell (direct) your employees what you want them to do. You are not going to be a non-directive leader and encourage employees to work through the problem themselves and develop their own solutions. That would be tragic!

SHARE

Now that you are in the Return stage you can share your and amplify your learning. You can use what you have learned on your journey to increase your organisation’s capacity for developing its workforce. Here are some examples.

In your team meetings, you have become acutely aware that there is little questioning, challenging decisions, or robust discussions taking place. You talk to some trusted members of the team and uncover that there is a fear of reprimand or repercussion if decisions are challenged, This is because this has been the way it has worked in other teams. You learned on your journey that for people to give feedback openly and honestly, there must be an environment of psychological safety. You embark on an undertaking to make sure everyone in the team has the shared belief that the team is safe for risk-taking. You then share your proven approach with other leaders and upcoming leaders in the organisation.

The performance management system in your organisation recommends that leaders provide feedback on performance to every member of their team, on a bi-annual basis. It is clear to you, that if that was the cadence of the feedback you had received on your learning journey, your journey would either have been tremendously extended or failed. As a result, you work with HR to overhaul the entire performance management system whereby leaders are expected to give employees feedback on performance at least once a fortnight and the bi-annual review becomes just a formal recap of the previous six months. Based on regular feedback, everyone is enabled to learn and improve in short bursts over an extended period which results in greater retention of learning and better outcomes as learning can be applied immediately.

PREPARE

The journey is never over. If we look back over the last two decades, the leadership style successful organisations require has shifted from an autocratic style towards a more collaborative approach fostering greater teamwork, productivity, innovation and creativity.

What will be the required leadership style in another 20 years? There are many predictions floating around.

Leaders may need to be agile, highly entrepreneurial, socially conscious, and digitally savvy. They will need to lead through ambiguity and uncertainty, managing a diverse workforce. They will need to possess cognitive flexibility and be innovative, adaptive and collaborative.

The world is changing so fast that those predictions may or may not stand but we do know that in 20 years’ time, leaders will need different skills and competencies than they have today. We can certainly make some informed assumptions.

You must start to prepare for that learning journey now.

To embark on the journey, you must recognise that you will need to change, as your current behaviours will be an impediment to your future success and that of your teams and organisation.

Be prepared to learn, unlearn, and relearn. Accept that your learning is never complete. What you learned yesterday may become obsolete and you will need to unlearn and relearn. This is not easy and is emotional work.

American businessman and futurist Alvin Toffler made this prediction more than 50 years ago in his 1970 book, Future Shock. He knew that the challenges ahead of us could not be met by a linear approach to learning and skills.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

You must be ready to respond and adapt as we continue to be disrupted.

Wrap

I can only conclude the third in this series of Changing Leadership article with the closing words of the HBR article as I could not say it any better.

“More than ever, we need leaders who can harness ingenuity and foster engagement. At the top level of organizations, success requires a broad repertoire of people skills that make it possible to lead others indirectly on a large scale. For many executives, gaining them will involve a journey of transformation, one that’s likely to be longer and more difficult than they’d imagined—but ultimately also more rewarding.”

Bon voyage!

CHANGING LEADERSHIP - RETURN - A THREE-STAGE JOURNEY