Following up on my December 9, 2021 post “Twelve Takeaways From Leader to Leader Issue 102,” about the Fall 2021 issue of Leader to Leader, where I am Managing Editor, this post focuses on Winter 2022.
The takeaways begin with the Frances Hesselbein and Sarah McArthur column, the first in their new roles as co-Editors-in-Chief. That is followed by the main articles in the issue, plus each of the two ‘From the Front Lines’ articles, which are based on my interviews with important researchers about their recent work, and its importance and relevance to our readers. I’ve included links to all of the articles, and a brief description of each author and ‘Front Lines’ interviewee.
Seeing opportunity in change
Authors/Columnists: Frances Hesselbein & Sarah McArthur; Co-Editors-in-Chief, Leader to Leader
Article: “Tradition with a Future”
Sample quote:
“In March 2020, we (Frances and Sarah) spoke frequently on the phone about the current state of affairs around the world, as we were rapidly shutting down due to the spread of the coronavirus. During one of our conversations Sarah asked, “How will we get through this?” Frances answered, “We will get through this together.” And that is always the answer, isn’t it? It isn’t always what we do first, but it is always the answer. We will get through this together.”
New ways to measure productivity
Author: Dorie Clark, marketing strategy consultant who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business
Article: “Long-Term Thinking in a Short-Term World”
Sample quote:
“Almost no one likes the results of the short-termism we see around us: the relentless frenzy, the endless hamster wheel, the aggressive pursuit of goals that quite possibly aren’t the right ones. But it takes strength to go against the prevailing culture. That’s both internal strength, because we have to face down uncomfortable questions about who we are and what we really want, and external strength, because we have to deal with bosses and colleagues and clients who are still used to measuring productivity through face time and volume.”
“Lead With We” collaboration
Author: Simon Mainwaring, founder/CEO of the strategic consultancy We First
Sample quote:
“We work With society. In partnership With others to Lead cultural conversations among consumers and citizens beyond. In turn, this shapes culture at large and exercises a measurable, positive impact on society. We work With—not against—positive trends and pressing needs in that wider culture—political, environmental, social, and economic. We seek to Lead—not just respond to—that conversation, and the shifts in thinking and behavior it inspires. Multiple businesses further interact with each other, forming interconnected coalitions—wider We’s—thereby broadening our combined reach and scope of impact. Within our industry and then, of course, cross-sector. Even with our ostensible competitors.”
We need future-facing organizations
Author: Deanna Singh, Founder and Chief Change Agent of Flying Elephant, an umbrella organization for four social ventures
Article: “Building Bridges: Harnessing a Critical Leadership Skill for a Diverse World”
Sample quote:
“Those in the C-suite know just how disruptive a lack of commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion can be. Since the summer of 2020 and the murder of George Floyd, corporate America, nonprofits, and the public sector have been called upon to respond in ways they hadn’t before. Some future-facing organizations were prepared to take a part in social change, putting out statements, and making visionary promises about what they were going to do internally and externally to do their part. Others faltered, losing clients, brand loyalty, and employees due to their inability to let go of the way they did things in the past. Whatever their initial response, most leaders now realize that a DEI strategy is necessary to maintain a competitive edge, top talent, citizen support, and the patronage of customers.”
Blending new and old critical leadership traits
Authors: Paul Polman (CEO of Unilever from 2009 to 2019) and Andrew Winston (leading adviser and speaker on sustainable business strategy)
Article: “Becoming a Courageous, Net Positive Leader”
Sample quote:
“It takes a new set of leadership traits to navigate this complicated world—and that’s on top of the traditional list of evergreen leadership skills, the ones that were important 50 years ago, and will be needed 50 years from now. Effective leaders—and that applies to people all over an organization, not just c-suite executives—share many timeless traits: discipline, toughness and holding people to high standards, strategic thinking, intelligence, curiosity, and a desire to understand key drivers of the business like technology. In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world, other qualities, like adaptability and resilience, become critical as well.”
Opportunities to add value
Authors: Liz Wiseman (CEO of The Wiseman Group) and Lauren Hancock (behavioral economist and data scientist at The Wiseman Group)
Article: “The Impact Players of the Workplace”
Sample quote:
“Impact Players see uncertainty and ambiguity as an opportunity to add value, and this outlook translates to actions and behaviors that further differentiate them from their colleagues. The lens through which contributors see their work becomes a dividing line that functions much like the Continental Divide of the Americas, the line of high mountain peaks along the Andes and Rocky Mountain ranges that separates the watershed systems for two continents. West of the divide, all water flows to the Pacific Ocean; east of it, all water flows to the Atlantic Ocean. Similarly, on one side of the outlook divide, behavior flows toward ordinary contribution; on the other side, behavior flows toward extraordinary contribution and high impact.”
Countering physical/emotional isolation in the workplace
Author: Jenn Lim, co-founder of the company Delivering Happiness
Article: “The Greenhouse Model of Organizational Design”
Sample quote:
“Even prior to the unprecedented isolation of the pandemic, the Harvard Business Review said the following in 2019: “Exclusion is a growing issue. We found that more than 40% of those we surveyed are feeling physically and emotionally isolated in the workplace. This group spanned generations, genders, and ethnicities.” But there was a silver lining: “When people feel like they belong at work, they are more productive, motivated, engaged and 3.5 times more likely to contribute to their fullest potential.” In addition, according to BetterUp’s report on The Value of Belonging at Work, high belonging has been linked to a “50 percent drop in turnover risk and a 75 percent reduction in sick days. For a ten-thousand-person organization, this could result in annual savings of more than $52 million. Employees who reported higher workplace belonging also showed a 167 percent increase in their employer promoter score (their willingness to recommend their organization to others). They also received double the raises and 18 times more promotions.”
What great executives and managers do differently
Author: Tania Luna, co-CEO and co-founder of LifeLabs Learning
Article: “Brain-Based Leadership: Using the CAMPS Model”
Sample quote:
“Being a leader is hard. But what makes leadership even harder is the task of leading humans. You’d think that guiding, influencing, inspiring, and supporting people would be simple given that we’re talking about our own species, but this only seems to make matters more perplexing. Despite our many similarities, we humans are infinitely distinct, with individual experiences, identities, backgrounds, advantages, skills, values, and senses of humor.
So, what is a well-intentioned human leader to do? At LifeLabs Learning, we’ve spent over a decade studying what great executives and managers do differently, and one powerful insight from our research is that the best leaders are uniquely attuned to people’s most fundamental brain cravings. Yes, they treat each person as a unique individual, but they also know how to anticipate and address the foundational human needs that all people share. We think of this skill set as brain-based leadership.”
Normalizing the intuitive in leadership
Author: Natalie Nixon, president of Figure 8 Thinking, LLC
Article: “Apply The 3 I’s for Breakthrough Creativity: Inquiry, Improvisation and Intuition”
Sample quote:
“Think of leading with intuition as three concentric circles. Wonder is at the core because stillness and observation are required for us to hear that little voice inside. The second circle is discernment—finding the strength to act on our intuition and speak up. Rigor often comes into play here as we dig deep to find the data to back up our intuition. The outermost circle comes from making a practice of listening to and acting on our intuition. This is the point at which intuition becomes an essential tool in our leadership tool kit. As Kelley Black, founder and CEO of Balancing the Executive Life, put it, “The rational mind can be self-limiting. We need to normalize the intuitive in leadership. Intuition in leadership is critical because it helps you see a broader field.”
Radically reshape your relationship to uncertainty
Author: April Rinne, trusted advisor to well-known startups, companies, financial institutions, educational institutions, nonprofits, and think tanks worldwide
Article: “The Flux Superpower of Seeing What’s Invisible”
Sample quote:
“Not a single person in any culture sees the full picture. The best anyone can do is become aware of, and then learn to see, what they are missing. The way we see anything—and everything—is influenced by our social norms, which emphasizes certain values and goals over others. Of course, social norms serve an important purpose. Norms help ensure that individuals grow up with values, skills, relationships, and the capacity to contribute to society. They help keep order and stability. However, by and large, any set of social norms represents only one way of seeing and being in the world: one slice of an infinitely broader human spectrum.”
Learn about the Velocity Mindset®
Author: Ron Karr, former president of the National Speakers Association
Article: “The Psychology of Leadership”
Sample quote:
“To become an effective leader, one must exercise the mental and emotional qualities that unite others in the pursuit of a shared, ideal outcome. This does not mean dictating how people must act or feel. It certainly does not mean manipulating or tricking them. Rather, it means knowing how to correctly perceive their situation, to encourage them so see the ideal outcome (theirs and the group’s), and to help everyone focus on tasks that support that outcome.
This process is a part of a concept I call the Velocity Mindset® (or velocity for short). Borrowing from the physics definition of speed with direction, it means that expending effort of any kind must be coupled with a clear view of the desired outcome or results. Speed alone, without direction, is merely a recipe for burnout. Velocity in a business leadership context also includes alignment—recognizing that success is never a solo act. Having buy-in from everyone on the team—from upper management through the rank and file—is a geometric multiplier of leadership success.”
Redesigning systems to be more human
Author: Amelia Dunlop, Chief Experience Officer for Deloitte Digital and leads their Customer Strategy & Applied Design practice
Article: “Elevating the Human Experience at Work”
Sample quote:
“Elevating the human experience is, necessarily, for all humans. It is not about elevating one group or identity above another or at the expense of another. It is not about unleashing someone’s potential as a worker, as someone can show outwards signs of career progression and not feel loved or worthy. It is not about “Leaning in” to the system as it is today, which privileges Whiteness and male-ness. “Leaning in” can imply that the problem is with the people for whom the system is not optimized: Black, Brown; women; members of the LGBTQ community and all the ways these identities intersect. (As a side note, these labels of “White” or “Black,” “Male” or “Female,” serve to divide us from our shared humanity and shared need for love and worth. And yet, they are also needed, so that we can really see each other and understand how our experiences differ as a result of the intersection of our identities.) Too often people are told that, to be worthy, they must work harder, show up as more perfect, and be willing to play the game as defined by the current system of rules. “Working twice as hard for half as much,” one gay Black friend put it. Elevating the human experience is about redesigning systems to be more human.”
The Best predictors of success
Article: “The Importance of the Employee-Centric Manager”
Sample quote from Dr. Jack Wiley, organizational psychologist, author, and leadership consultant:
“Intelligence or cognitive mental ability is typically the very best predictor of success as a manager. But my research clearly implies that emotional intelligence is a big factor as well. Being an employee-centric manager presumes the ability to understand how others are feeling and to manage one’s own responses accordingly. It also helps if a manager is conscientious, fair, and honest. It is best to assess for these attributes in the hiring stage, but managers can also be developed to display more effectively each of the eight attributes of the employee-centric manager.”
How common are chief digital officers?
Article: “Clarifying the Role of the Chief Digital Officer”
Sample quote from Sven Kunisch, Professor; Aarhus University, in Denmark:
“Based on our sample of large and public firms (S&P/Standard & Poor’s 1500 firms), we find that the chief digital officer is a relatively new role and by far not as common as one would think. The first incidences appeared in 2003 and 2004. Until 2010, less than 20 firms had a chief digital officer. Since 2010, their prevalence has increased notably. But even in 2018 only a minority of firms had a chief digital officer (only about 5% of S&P firms). So whether or not a firm has a chief digital officer is an important choice.”
Sample quote from Sebastian Firk, Professor; University of Groningen, in the Netherlands:
“The idea of the article was to gain a better understanding of the diffusion of CDOs and the rationales behind installing such a position across industries and countries. The article is based on an analysis of about 1000 corporations from the U.S and Europe and has three key findings. First, CDOs are increasingly common across industries and countries with diffusion rates ranging mostly between 20% and 30%. Second, the acceleration and coordination of digital transformation can be seen as the main benefits the CDO position can deliver. Corporations that experience high urgency to transform (e.g., the business model is prone to digitization) or high coordination needs (e.g., a multinational business group) are thus more likely to install a CDO position. Finally, we reveal that the coordination of digital transformation becomes increasingly important for the CDO position. This suggests that, beyond digital expertise, it is important for CDOs to possess general management skills.”