Succeed as a Leader in the New Leadership Era

Everyone knows that leadership skills have greatly evolved and continue to do so. Gone are the pure command and control days, in favour of deep collaboration, leadership with purpose, a focus on self-awareness and empathy. Just like every major evolution, it’s hard to appreciate the magnitude of the change when we are stuck in the moment, but if you look back to how you used to lead (or were being led) 10 years ago, and what it looks like today, it’s actually hard to miss.

This is why in many cases, if you’re a leader who’s been leading for more than 10 years, whatever got your here probably won't get you there. And change can be daunting.

When I speak to leaders and executives, their number one objective is something along the lines of ‘I just want me / my team to be successful in this new ‘era’. Where do I start?’. Here are a few tips I’ve gathered to get you started.

Before you start reading, note that I didn’t say QUICK tips. They all require deep introspection and a real willingness to redefine yourself and your style, take some risks and learn from the journey.

1. Rethink your definition of success.

If your only goal is money, power or status, it’s going to be hard. Hard for you, hard for your team. Success needs to include a vision, something greater than the P&L, something to inspire followership. This is a world where employees, at least the good ones, have lots more choice. They don’t really have to follow you if they don’t align to your vision. And if it's not genuine, they will see through it.

I’m in no way saying that the P&L (either your own or the organization’s) aren’t important, but they will become a by-product of your success, or a constraint to operate within, as opposed to the end all be all.

So what are you, your team truly working towards?

2. Value learning over being right.

If you’re in this position, you most likely have a good education, and amazing experience to draw upon. Those are wonderful assets. However in this fast paced world, deep genuine curiosity, and a real thirst for knowledge becomes even more important. It doesn’t mean that you have to read 10 business books a month and all the blogs. Or that you have to attend all the conferences and leadership training programs. Including some of those practices in your learning routine is definitely good and will broaden your horizons, but I offer you two easier, probably more impactful places to start that don’t include jamming your already packed schedule.

First of all, rethink how you lead meetings, who you include, how you invite different perspectives, the questions you ask and your own willingness to truly listen, learn from the answers and allow them to shift your own opinions.

And secondly, dedicate some time in your already scheduled daily interactions to discuss failures or things that didn’t go as planned. What did you learn? How are you going to do this differently next time? Normalize messing up. But don't miss the opportunity to learn from it.

3. Help someone today.

Leadership is about collaboration. It’s ‘we win’ before ‘I win’.

This also goes back to how you defined success. If you see part of your success in the entire organization reaching its goals, it will feel more natural to offer help to the ‘greater good’, even if that means slowing down your or your team’s objectives.

I would also argue that leaders who start with a collaboration mindset, stop seeing the organization’s objectives as a finite set of goals that need to be split up across members of the executive team (Operations works on cost cutting goal, Marketing works on growth goal, Tech works on innovation goal, etc), and find ways to unite groups across organizational structures in order to achieve even more. It’s not about splitting the pie, it’s about growing the pie.

And if you’re still not convinced, at the end of the day, I’m also a true believer in karma… One thing I'm certain of, is that you're going to need help one day, and what goes around, comes around.

So to use my kindergartener's words: whose bucket did you fill today?

4. Get some help.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of being a couple of great leaders' ‘jerk-meter’. They would send me their draft sensitive emails with a note along the lines of "do I sound like a jerk if I send this?". The reality is that they were pretty self aware, and just for asking this question, I knew they were not actual jerks. But I was able to help them reframe their message as I understood the meaning under the words, and had their best interest at heart.

So do you have someone to keep you accountable? Someone who cares about you, and will call you out on your biases and unproductive behaviours? Find that person. A colleague, a team member, a coach, a spouse?

Beyond all, remember that every change is a process. It comes with ups and downs.

In a future post, I will discuss how to increase your resilience to allow yourself to take risks and be able to manage the bumps in the road that come with it.

But for now, take a deep breath, pick your first step, and appreciate the journey.