The Great Resignation, a global recession, tight budgets, employee turnover and a record number of burnt-out leaders have created the perfect storm for organizations to find new ways to stay resilient.
The solution? Grow your own leaders by investing in the teams you already have.
Looking to your own leaders
In the midst of this rapidly changing landscape, organizations are ramping up their spending in leadership development. But unfortunately, with a 14-billion-dollar price tag, the rising investment into leadership development is not working.
A great leader can transform an underperforming team into one that punches above its weight. Still, leaders are leaving in record numbers — and if this trend continues, the financial consequences could be dire.
Strong leadership has the power to impact performance, growth, revenue and engagement directly. Research shows high-growth firms where managers received basic training saw performance increases equivalent to 2.5 employees and leaders who paid more attention to their team members saw a 6.6 percent increase in store-level revenue after just six months. Studies also found leadership attention significantly improved employee job satisfaction, stress and mental health, and gave the greatest influence over engagement, commitment and motivation.
But now, leaders not only need to deliver on increasingly stretching business goals. They’re also responsible for upholding ethics, increasing diversity and inclusion, protecting wellbeing, delivering on environmental goals and a host of other new and complex expectations. So, it’s really no surprise that 70 percent of leaders are overworked, with two-thirds of leaders wishing they didn’t even have to manage people at all.
Traditional models aren’t working
Most traditional leadership models — including agile, transformational and purpose-driven leadership — don’t move the needle to leave a lasting impact. Simply put, they don’t go far enough. The truth is that while models provide some of the skills and necessary foundation, they don’t quite accurately address the core of what makes great leaders great.
My team and I reviewed over 200 papers, including two meta-analyses, which covered over 10,000 participants’ process studies in more than 50 organizations to uncover what new managers really need to survive in today’s challenging landscape, and we extracted five core competencies, which we organized in a way to make them distinct, learnable and ready to be applied to not only support company’s growth — but internal growth as well.
The 5 core skills to build competence
Align: Focus on what matters.
Managers need to create enough clarity so that people can focus their attention, do the right things and feel motivated to do so. Alignment is achieved by connecting individual purpose to organizational purpose and goals.
Boost: Generate energy and commitment.
Boosting is a combination of individual wellbeing and the wellbeing of others. It’s about creating positive emotional energy within the team. Employees who feel supported by their organizations and managers tend to have higher wellbeing and job satisfaction, which leads to lower turnover.
Connect: Work as one.
Relationships are built on trust. One of the ways you can achieve connection is through creating an environment where diverse perspectives are welcomed and encouraged.
Deliver: Get results.
Managers must follow up on the direction they’ve set to make sure things are going as planned, at pace and at top quality. In short, it’s about delivering on promises, on time and in style. Being able to deliver means having a clear direction, accountability and a culture of trust to drive superior business performance.
Enable: Equip people to achieve more.
Much like in the world of sport, when a manager is an effective coach, their skills and expertise will enable others to reach their full potential.
Teams that are autonomous but receive a high degree of managerial performance feedback outperform other teams. Investing in the future of your leaders with a science-backed solution, mixed with opportunity for internal growth and success is a fail-safe way to protect your organization during uncertain economic times. Mastering these core competencies has the potential to pay immediate dividends and offers a solid foundation for emerging leaders poised to enable and even transform high-performing organizations.
