We are now ten months into 2013 and I wanted to look back at an article I had seen in January- linked HERE. I was searching for recent trends in leadership for a class and was pulled into this article. I thought this would be a good time to reflect on some of the assertions this article had made in order to understand if it was on the mark or not with what my experience is revealing.
The first assertion made by the article is that “You must lead change”. I am finding that my company is in the midst of developing roles called “change managers” or “change coordinators”. In addition, processes that are seeing drastic change are seeing much more scrutiny than in the past. Instead implementing and running, we are actually taking the time to ensure some level of success and stability prior to moving on to the next new thing.
The second assertion, “Good managers will be hard to find”, has definitely been taken to heart by my company. There have been several high level meetings regarding the lack of depth in many of the management positions and ways to improve this depth. This is uncharacteristic of a large company with a lot of employees to help fill the “bench”. The company has definitely taken to the idea of growin gtheir own team to fill these positions. Over the past 10-15 years this is not something the company had been doing a good job of Typically, new leadership would either come from the outside or from other sectors of our own company that had taken the time to develop leaders.
The thrid assertion suggests that “people-leadership skills will be more highly valued”. I am seeing some of this, in principle. I think that the organization I am a part of is leaning more to the concept of leaders being more involved with helping their team’s success directly and compensating slightly for this. I have been praised for being able to influence without having the authority to officially lead. This has opened a few doors for me that may not have been there had I been recognized as a good leader that wasleading through the use of authority. The difference can be profound for a team. Another aspect of this assertion is getting the team engaed in order to get results. I can go out and build 20 widgets that will sell like hotcakes, but it will take me away from other things. Leadership will get the team to build these widgets without a lot of oversight or input.
The fourth assertion the article discusses is that leaders are now seeing different challenges than have existed in the past. This means that there is no “playbook” for leaders to referrence. The establicshment of multi-level leadership is something the article predicts will develop and help leaders to identify the correct path. Development is something that will need to take place but patiencewill need to be a part of the equation.
The final assertion is that the “Boot Camps” of the past will go away. The expectationis that organizations will stop trying to cram a ton of information into the minds of their team all at once. The expectation is that training programs will be revamped to be more engaging and insghtful.
So, thinking of the 5 predictions made in the article here is what I have seen this year in my organization:
- I see my organization moving in the direction of empowering all of the leaders of the organization to lead change.
- I also see my organization reacting to the concept that good leaders will be hard to find. The decision makers of the team are striving to identify the next level of leaders and to devlop them into something that will help the team succeed in the future.
- The leaders of my organization that can motivate their teams are being moved up and rewarded accordingly. This is a change formt eh apst in that it had always been the leaders of the team’s that were the highest performers that were rewarded. This was not representative of the benefit a good leader could bring. For instance a team may perform at a high level simply because they did not encounter any issues. Where another team may perform at a reduced level but overcame a lot of obstacles to get there and therefore needed to be motivated more by the leadership team.
- I have not seen much actiity regarding the fourth and fifth seertions. There does not seem to be any immediate activity toward changing the organizational structure to meet the suggestions made in assertion #4. The fifth item is something that may become a part of the organizational makeup in the next two years but there is no vision of this currently.
What kind of changes have you observed in your teams this year?