From pain to gain

Leading thriving people and sustained performance.

I don’t think it’s a secret that we like leadership. More than like it, we believe (and plenty of data supports it) that leadership underpins an organisation’s success. Having great leadership, whether positional or not, throughout your organisation means that employees understand how their work contributes to wider business outcomes, have a better experience, have strong relationships, are enabled to do their best work and perform to higher standards. That’s a compelling argument for developing leadership capability.

In today’s current conditions borne out of years of a pandemic, war, environmental pressures, and global financial constraints, being a good leader feels even harder. We know the impact that just the economic state alone is having on businesses, our clients are experiencing it and we are supporting them through it. In challenging times, command and control, tighter reins, and short-term fixes seem like the answer. We’re here to help you understand that they won’t get you through, surviving let alone thriving. Enabling your people to seek their solutions, take accountability and harness their capability will see your organisation developing smarter, sustainable solutions which produce long term outcomes. How do you get your people working this way? – through strong coaching and leadership support. Great leaders build leadership capability within their people, they don’t see people as followers who can only operate when told to operate.

Any leader has a direct impact on those they lead and how their organisation performs. Being deliberate about what that impact is, is what distinguishes a great leader. Good leadership is a lifelong practice, continuing to learn and unlearn as new challenges and opportunities present themselves.

It’s important for every leader to set the direction, motivate and align people to purpose and priorities, and model the desired behaviours for the team to adopt.​ With so many facets to organisational leadership, it is important to consider what areas you naturally lean into and identify where you could (and should) be investing more time.

We have developed a framework to provide leaders with guidance on what’s important to focus on to effectively navigate a complex business environment and ultimately sustain organisational performance.

Live Values – Company values should be the articulation of how people work in your organisation. They are the expected behaviours that demonstrate how people treat each other, make decisions and perform. This can only occur when leaders are actively modelling the values. “Of all the factors that we assessed in our research, the one that makes the biggest difference in how well senior leadership teams perform is the clarity of the behavioural norms that guide members’ interaction”.(i) How conscious are you of the behaviours that you are exhibiting, whether others are watching or not?

Translate Vision – It is expected that leaders set the vision for the organisation, but that is really the easy part. The harder part is sharing and explaining the vision, taking people on the journey to what it looks like when that vision is realized, helping them to connect the dots. Can you easily interpret your vision so that your people understand it?

Communicate Purpose – Why you exist as an organisation and what is different in the world because of this is what many people join an organization for. They stay because they feel connected to that purpose and hear the story regularly and are inspired by this. How are you communicating your origin story?

Deliver Strategy – Purpose and Vision are simply a story if there is not a robust, actionable strategy in place which gets you from your current state to the future state you articulate in your vision and purpose. Strategy is not an annual event with a capital S. It is the work of your organisation and leaders are responsible for its delivery. How often are you discussing your strategy?

Guide Operations – A key aspect of leadership is good management which pays attention to performance. Good management does not equal doing the do. It is enabling people to think about the work they do and approach it in ways that deliver the best results. A guide leads the way and sets a clear direction. How much doing are you doing?

Create Culture – Culture is an output of the experiences you design for your people to be at their best. How you are is how your organisation will be. If culture is not deliberately created, it will default to the things you subconsciously expect and accept. How would you describe your culture?

Enable People – The true demonstration of leadership is the number of leaders that you develop in your organisation. This is about how you model the way, equip people with the tools they need and then get out of the way. Where are you getting in the way of your people?

We encourage you and your leadership teams to challenge yourselves around how you are showing up for your organisations, to be honest if you know you can do better, and to seek out support to ensure you feel equipped to do better.

I like this quote from Harvard Press

"Of all the factors that we assessed in our research, the one that makes the biggest difference in how well senior leadership teams perform is the clarity of the behavioural norms that guide members’ interaction."

Wageman R, Nunes DA, Burruss JA, Hackman JR. Senior leadership teams: What it takes to make them great. Boston: Harvard Business School Press; 2008.

(i) Wageman R, Nunes DA, Burruss JA, Hackman JR. Senior leadership teams: What it takes to make them great. Boston: Harvard Business School Press; 2008.