What makes a leader highly effective?

Think of a highly effective leader. What qualities, traits, and behaviors come to mind when you think of any highly effective leader?

• Did you think of a leader who stays calm even in stressful situations or someone who loses his temper often?
• Did you think of someone who listens patiently or someone who talks a lot?
• Did you think of an approachable leader or someone bossy?
• Did you think of someone who is open to suggestions and feedback or someone who is “always right”?
• Did you think of a leader who is open to trying new ideas or someone resistant to change?
• Did you think of someone who genuinely cared about your well being while completing the tasks or someone
• who only focuses on results while ignoring people?
• Did you think of someone who inspires or someone who irritates?
• Did you think of someone who easily picks up the team’s mood or someone unaware of how others are feeling?
• Did you think of someone who routinely appreciated your efforts and results or someone who only criticized your mistakes?

Read The single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success.

Emotional Intelligence

When we compare the behaviors and traits of highly effective leaders with average leaders’ traits, the difference is obvious. And that difference is emotional intelligence.

Salovey and Mayer (1990) defined Emotional Intelligence as the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions’

Daniel Goleman brought the term emotional intelligence into the mainstream with his book Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ. The book was published in 1995 and became a bestseller.

Measuring “intelligence” and predicting future success

Scientists and researchers have been trying to define intelligence for many years. For almost the entire last century, intelligence was measured using IQ or Intelligence quotient. IQ is the measure of cognitive capability – one’s ability to think, reason, learn and recall. Intelligence quotient tests generally include reading comprehension, vocabulary, arithmetic, and reasoning. It was believed to be an accurate predictor of future success and was used in schools, colleges, and job screening.

Predicting future job performance is the primary reason for screening candidates using IQ in organizations. However, IQ seemed to be a fairly inaccurate predictor of future success. Many people with high IQ end up doing poorly in professional and personal lives, while people with below-average IQs often succeed and prosper. Howard Gardner came up with the theory of multiple intelligences that proposed that intelligence is more than just IQ. Daniel Goleman popularized the concept of Emotional intelligence measured by EQ or emotional quotient.

IQ vs. EQ as a predictor of success

Daniel Goleman proposed that EQ was a much better predictor of success at work and in life. He cites numerous studies to drive home the importance of emotional intelligence. People with the highest IQs and brilliant technical skills don’t do very well in their careers and life. On the other hand, people with average and below-average intelligence and technical skills are highly successful in their careers and personal lives. Numerous studies done over the years have validated that EQ is three times more accurate in predicting future success as compared to IQ.

IQ is like an entry ticket.

Technical skills are needed for any profession. To be employed in their respective professions – an accountant needs to understand the basics of finance and accounting, or an engineer must know the basics of engineering. Technical skills are like an entry ticket – they are needed to get in. However, once a person has entered the profession, how far she will move up the career ladder depends a lot on emotional intelligence. If two people with similar IQs and technical skills enter the profession simultaneously, who will move up the career ladder faster? The answer is the person who has higher emotional intelligence.

Read: What are the ego traps and Leadership Derailers leaders fall for?

Leadership and emotional intelligence

Leadership is primarily about emotional intelligence. By the time one reaches the leadership level, it is a given that they are technically sound. The differentiating factor, then, is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence competencies have a 3/4th contribution to a leader’s success. Successful leaders demonstrate the EQ competencies of self-awareness. They are calm and grounded, understand others’ feelings, build relationships, are driven and self-motivated, etc. Failed leaders often are critical, tend to lose control of their temper, are defensive, and lack empathy.

Read: How to become a better leader? What does it take?

The four main components of Emotional Intelligence

The four main components of emotional intelligence are

1. Self-awareness
2. Self-management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management

Self-Awareness

It is the ability to be aware of how we are feeling, what our emotions are at any given moment and what is the cause of these emotions. Self-awareness allows us to see ourselves as we are and identify our strengths and areas of improvement. According to Daniel Goleman, self-awareness consists of the following three competencies.

• Emotional Awareness: Recognizing one’s emotions and their effects.
• Accurate Self-Assessment: Knowing one’s strengths and limitations.
• Self-Confidence: A strong sense of one’s self-worth and capabilities.

Self-management

Self-management competency is the ability to respond instead of reacting. It allows us to remain calm even when we feel strong emotions like anger, frustration, jealousy, or other negative emotions. Without self-management, we may lash out at people and act on our impulses. Self-management competency ensures that we are aware of how our behaviors can affect relationships and, ultimately, our goals and regulate our emotions.

Self-management consists of the following six competencies.

• Emotional Self-Control: Keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
• Transparency: Maintaining integrity, acting congruently with one’s values.
• Adaptability: Flexibility in handling change.
• Achievement: Striving to improve or meeting a standard of excellence.
• Initiative: Readiness to act on opportunities.
• Optimism: Persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks.

Social awareness

Social awareness competency includes empathy – which is the ability to sense what the other person feels and understand their needs and concerns. Being aware of the environment, people, and situations and being able to manage social interactions.

The social Awareness cluster contains three competencies:

• Empathy: Sensing others’ feelings and perspectives and taking an active interest in their concerns.
• Organizational Awareness: Reading a group’s emotional currents and power relationships.
• Service Orientation: Anticipating, recognizing, and meeting customers’ needs.

Relationship Management

It is the ability to connect with others, build positive relationships, and positively influence others.

The Relationship Management cluster contains six competencies:

• Developing Others: Sensing others’ development needs and bolstering their abilities.
• Inspirational Leadership: Inspiring and guiding individuals and groups.
• Change Catalyst: Initiating or managing change.
• Influence: Wielding effective tactics for persuasion.
• Conflict Management: Negotiating and resolving disagreements.
• Teamwork & Collaboration: Working with others toward shared goals. Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals.

Emotional Intelligence is a pre-requisite and an essential part of becoming a good leader. Lack of emotional intelligence in leaders results in disengaged employees and reduces business performance.

Read:  Which is the best leadership development program?

Would you like your leaders to develop their emotional intelligence competencies? Would you like the leaders to stop the derailing behaviors that undermine team performance and cause disengagement?

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching.

That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you simply don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

References

http://www.danielgoleman.info/daniel-goleman-how-emotionally-intelligent-are-you/
https://www.mbaknol.com/modern-management-concepts/four-components-of-emotional-intelligence/

Building a team culture where the best ideas win – Ray Dalio radical transparency

Building a team culture where the best ideas win is any leader’s top priority.  Would you like to do it for your teams? When I ask this question to leaders – almost everyone raises their hand.  When it comes to knowing how to create such a culture and commit to investing time, energy, and effort to achieve those goals – leaders are not so clear.  Ray Dalio and his radical transparency have successfully built a team culture where the best ideas win and has grown his company to be the largest hedge fund in the world.

[lwptoc]

Harsh email feedback

Take a look at the following email. It is harsh feedback given by one employee Jim to another employee Ray – in a large company.

From: Jim

To: Ray D

Cc: Lionel K, Greg J, Randal S, David A

Subject: Feedback on meeting

 “Ray – you deserve a “D-” for your performance today in the meeting … you did not prepare at all because there is no way you could have and been that disorganized. In the future, I/we would ask you to take some time and prepare, and maybe even I should come up and start talking to you to get you warmed up or something, but we can’t let this happen again. If you in any way think my view is wrong, please ask the others, or we can talk about it.”

Regards

Jim

Who is giving feedback and to whom?

What is your guess about the designations of Jim and Ray?  One would assume that Jim must be the boss and Ray must report to him. Hence the harsh feedback from the boss Jim to his employee Ray, regarding his bad performance during a meeting.  This is what happens in most organizational cultures, where a senior person gives such a candid feedback to someon junior.

Well, that assumption would be wrong! In this case, it is exactly the opposite!  Jim Haskel works for and reports to Ray Dalio, and Ray is the founder of Bridgewater Associates.  Started as a small firm in 1975 from his apartment, Bridgewater Associates is now the world’s largest hedge fund with more than $160 billion assets under management.  Ray Dalio himself is worth a cool $18 billion.

In most organizations, no employee would dare to share such critical feedback with someone higher up the corporate ladder. If they did send such a critical e-mail to their company’s founder, they probably would get fired!  But Ray Dalio did not fire Jim.  Instead, he shared this critical email internally with all the employees.  If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he then shared it openly at a TED talk for the entire world to see! You can watch Ray Dalio’s radical transparency TED Talk.  Ray understands that to build a team culture that learns, innovates and grows, radical transparency is essential!

Why would a top leader ask for such candid feedback?

Why do you think Ray would do something like this?  Was he out of his mind? Not really!  It is one of the guiding principles Ray Dalio follows at Bridgewater Associates.  He calls it radical transparency.  He encourages employees to openly share real-time feedback with anyone, irrespective of designations. 

However, there is a catch.  Share the feedback with the respective person – not with others. If they catch an employee talking behind someone’s back three times – she can be fired!  All meetings at Bridgewater Associates are recorded on video and seen and critiqued by anyone inside the company. 

Ray Dalio has the emotional intelligence to understand that leaders cannot improve without a culture of honest feedback.  Building a team culture requires honest feedback.  Leadership coaching and leadership development have a responsibility to create awareness in the leaders that feedback is important.  As Ken Blanchard puts it – Feedback is the breakfast of champion leaders!  

Ray Dalio and Radical Transparency principle

Ray Dalio credits this principle of radical transparency for the success of his company.  A culture of 100% honesty allows all ideas to be discussed and debated.  Ideas may win based on their merits and not based on the designation or the influence of the person presenting the idea.  Dalio says that this meritocracy of ideas has allowed Bridgewater to think independently and sprint ahead of many well-established fund houses to become the largest and most successful hedge fund in the world.  Ray Dalio has built a team culture and his  company where the best ideas win – by creating a culture of open and honest feedback through his radical transparency principle.   One of the most important leadership skills to develop is to be able to give and receive honest and constructive feedback. Imagine the employee engagement in any company where the leader solicits and accepts such honest and constructive feedback.

Successful companies build a team culture of sharing honest feedback. 

Bridgewater Associates is not alone in implementing a culture of honest feedback where everyone’s performance, and ideas, are shared and debated openly, leading to improved performance and meritocracy of ideas.  Pixar is another company that credits its success to having a culture of candid feedback.  Google founder Larry Page believes in brutally honest feedback. The purpose is to arrive at the best possible solution for a specific problem. Honest feedback allows all ideas to be discussed and debated to find the best solution.  In today’s fast-changing and VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world,  it is crucial to be agile and nimble. Without a culture of honesty, transparency, and open feedback, it would be difficult to stay ahead of the curve. 

Read Team coaching – Everything you wanted to know about it.

Build a team culture of candid feedback in your organization

• Would you like to improve the performance of your company? 
• Will you like to sprint ahead of your competitors?
• Would you like your teams to be more innovative and change-ready? 
• Then you need to improve the transparency in your organization? 
• How is the quality of feedback in your organization? 
• Do teams share feedback openly? 
• Do the best ideas win?  Or are people afraid to speak their minds? 
• Do they talk about the “elephant in the room” – the difficult problem and the real issue everyone knows about but no one wants to talk about?  Or do they just beat around the bush? 
• The equation is simple!

Read – Organizational Culture Change Example – Alan Mulally Ford Turnaround Story

Good leadership behaviors = Open and transparent culture = Business performance.

Would you like to improve the quality of the feedback within your organization’s teams and improve the engagement and performance of your employees and the team culture?  We offer Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching TEAM coaching – a yearlong intervention that helps create a culture of sharing open feedback.  In fact, it delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth for the teams. 

We offer our New Age Leadership – NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching.

That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

References

Ray Dalio’s TED talk

If you prefer to watch the video version of this article, click the video. 

This article was originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/creating-team-culture-where-best-ideas-win-tushar-vakil/

Google’s Project Oxygen – How Google identifies potential leaders

Google is one of the most successful companies today. It is also one of the most analytical and data-driven organizations. They rely on hard data rather than opinions. As leadership development is both science and art, how does Google handle leadership assessment and development?  How does Google identify if someone has the potential to be a great manager or leader?  Read further about Google’s Project Oxygen. Get the pdf file of Google’s Project Oxygen.  Google also updated the Project Oxygen questions to reflect the growth and complexity of the company and change in how work gets done.  The new list of Project Oxygen questions is at the end of the article.

[lwptoc]

Google’s Project Oxygen initiative to identify good leaders at Google

In 2008, an internal team of researchers started ”Project Oxygen” to determine what makes a great Google manager. They called this project “oxygen” as managers are the lifeblood of any organization.

Google’s employees are mostly engineers and do highly technical work.  Their tendency was to focus on core technical things – programming, coding, debugging, etc.  Their perception was that management was a distraction that took them away from “real” work!  When the company was small, the founders, Sergei and Larry, had a flat structure with no managers!  Everybody reported directly to them. 

Then Google grew and there was a need for managers and management. How do you convince the technically brilliant employees who make decisions based on data and information, and work in a company that believes in a flat organization – that managers and management are important and add value?  

The answer was to provide them enough data through research that clearly shows teh importance of managers and management! Through manager feedback surveys over an extended period of time, Project Oxygen identified eight behaviors that predicted managerial success. The success was measured through many factors and included employee turnover, employee satisfaction, and team performance. Later they added two more behaviors to the list for a total of 10 “Oxygen” behaviors and aligned their leadership and management development training programs to develop these behaviors. 

Although these 10 behaviors were correlated with managerial success, in statistics, correlation doesn’t prove causation! Google confirmed that these 10 behaviors were indeed the cause for better managerial outcomes in two ways –

1. They confirmed that these 10 managerial behaviors preceded employee outcomes and not vice versa. 
2. They confirmed by switching employees and managers that when an employee is working under a manager exhibiting these behaviors, her performance improves. 

What are these 10 behaviors, and how do we know if a leader has these qualities? As it turns out, asking just the 13 questions to the manager’s direct reports does the trick!  Twice a year, employees rate their managers on a Likert scale in an anonymous survey. The leaders who rate high on these 13 questions have a statistically significant correlation to future performance measured by turnover, satisfaction, and performance. 

Just 5 minutes to identify a good leader?

The feedback takes about five minutes for each employee’s time!   Jeff Haden, the contributing editor at Inc.com, wrote an article titled – Here is how Google knows in less than 5 minutes if someone is a great leader.  You may read the article here https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/heres-how-google-knows-in-less-than-5-minutes-if-someone-is-a-great-leader.html   This simple leadership assessment is very effective in determining the quality of one’s leadership.

Read – The single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success.

Here are leadership evaluation questions as part of Google’s Project Oxygen.

1. My manager gives me actionable feedback that helps me improve my performance. 
2. My manager does not “micromanage” (get involved in details that should be handled at other levels). 
3. My manager shows consideration for me as a person. 
4. My manager’s actions show that he/she values the perspective I bring to the team, even if it is different from his/her own. 
5. My manager keeps the team focused on our priority results/deliverables. 
6. My manager regularly shares relevant information derived from his/her manager and senior leaders. 
7. My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about career development in the past six months. 
8. My manager communicates clear goals for our team. 
9. My manager has the technical expertise (e.g., coding in Tech, selling in Global Business, accounting in Finance) required to manage me effectively. 
10. I would recommend my manager to other Googlers. 

Then Google asks employees to complete two other questions.

1. What would you recommend your manager keep doing? 
2. What would you have your manager change?

Click the link to download these question Google Project Oxygen pdf  –

Google’s Project Oxygen Pdf

Leadership is mostly about people, not only about technical skills – even at Google!

Although Google hires only the most technically sound employees, note that only one question (question number 9) is about the manager’s technical skills. All other questions are about the soft skills or the behavior of the manager or leader! Even for a company like Google, hiring only the most technically sound Engineers and programmers, what matters in their managerial and leadership effectiveness is behavioral skills or emotional intelligence. 

Daniel Goleman’s research has proven that emotional intelligence quotient or EQ is much more accurate in predicting future success than intelligence quotient or IQ.  IQ and technical skills are like the entry ticket to a career – technical skills are needed to get in the job. However, how far a person will progress in his/her job will depend on the behavioral skills and emotional intelligence exhibited.

The equation is simple: 

Leadership behaviors create culture, which in turn affects employee engagement, which in turn drives business results.  Leadership behavior (which creates organizational culture) is the single biggest factor impacting organizational performance. Jack Welch (former CEO of GE) labeled organizational culture as a lasting sustainable competitive advantage. 

Leadership development is critical for an organization to survive and thrive in today world’s ever-changing business environment. Would you like to assess and develop your leaders?   

• Identify and develop your high potentials?   
• Develop bench strength for succession planning?   
• Help leaders transition up or across through leadership development?   
• Deal with “derailers” (unproductive behaviors of otherwise successful leaders that cause team conflicts and holds them back from further success)? 

Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360) for your leadership team

The GLA360 is rooted in groundbreaking research conducted by Marshall Goldsmith (#1 Leadership Thinker and Executive Coach), involving CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, global thought leaders, and international business executives of organizations on 6 continents. The GLA360 articulates and measures the top 15 most pressing competencies for today’s global leader. It shows leaders the areas they need to develop to succeed in a competitive business environment.

We offer our New Age Leadership – NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching.

That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you simply don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

21 Wayne Dyer quotes that are Life-changing

Wayne Dyer quotes are life changing and inspirational. Wayne Dyer was an author and a motivational speaker. He has written many books that have become bestsellers. His first book, Your Erroneous Zones, sold more than 100 million copies and is one of the top-selling books of all time. His talks and books have inspired millions around the world.

His quotes are both inspiring and insightful.  He has motivated millions around the world with his books and talks.

Here are some of the best quotes by Wayne Dyer – carefully selected.  Hope they inspire you as well.  Take some time to read the quotes, may be even read them twice.  And ponder over the meaning and insights in each quote.

Quotes by Wayne Dyer 1-10

1. You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.

2. Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.

3. The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.

4. Change the way you see things and the things you see will change.

5. If you don’t make peace with your past, it will keep showing up in your present.

6. If you believe it will work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you believe it won’t, you will see obstacles.

7. The only limits you have are the limits you believe.

8 .Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

9. You will see it, when you believe.

10. You are important enough to ask, and you are blessed enough to receive back.

Wayne Dyer quotes 11-21 continue below. 

Two of the most inspiring stories are on YouTube as a video.  They are must watch.  You will see hundreds of people in the audience crying when he narrates them.

1. The story of Teddy

2. The amazing butterfly story

Quotes by Wayne Dyer 11-21

11. Don’t die with your music still in you.

12. My goal is not to be better than anyone else, but to be better than I used to be.

13. Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.

14. Within all of us is a divine capacity to manifest and attract all that we need and desire.

15. Heaven is a state of mind, not a location, since spirit is everywhere and in everything.

16. Judgments prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.

17. Let the world know why you’re here, and do it with passion.

18. The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.

19. Never underestimate your power to change.

20. There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

21. Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

9 Bonus Wayne Dyer quotes below

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If you are enjoying reading these Wayne Dyer quotes, you will love the following quotes articles

1. Galvanizing and encouraging John Maxwell quotes 

2. Inspiring and insightful Tony Robbins quotes

You will also enjoy reading these articles

1.  How to use the compound effect to supercharge leadership development 

2.  Top elements of leadership development  

3.  How to get promoted and avoid mid-career crisis 

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Bonus Wayne Dyer quotes

22. I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not.

23. Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.

24. I am thankful to all those who said no. It’s because of them, I did it myself.

25. How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

26. When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

27. Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves.

28. It’s easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk, and change.

29. If you don’t make peace with your past, it will keep showing up in your present.

30. When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out, because that’s what’s inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.

Future of leadership – Are your leadership skills & your leadership programs future-ready?

I read the recently published “The Self-Disruptive Leader,” – a study by Korn Ferry, of 150,000 global private sector leaders and their leadership skills.  The future of leadership is transforming. The report revealed that only 15% of the leaders have the skills to be great leaders in a rapidly changing business environment to design a future leadership program that keeps up with this transformation.

You may read the entire report here  https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/kfpublic/korn-ferry-disruptive-leader.pdf

I usually summarize the key points as it helps my learning, retention, and clarity.  Sharing and discussing with fellow professionals brings in diverse perspectives and new insights. I have found that this is an effective way to bring in / adopt some cutting-edge ideas in leadership thinking into our organizations.

Future of Leadership skills

Below are my brief notes from the report on the Future of Leadership skills

• Rapid change: The combined effect of global mega-trends has forced organizations to evolve rapidly, sometimes frenetically.
• Comprehensive study: Korn Ferry delved into 150,000 leadership profiles worldwide (18 major world markets)
• Only 15% of leaders are future-ready: The analysis revealed that, on average, only 15 percent of private-sector executives worldwide have what it takes to be truly great leaders in the rapidly changing business world.
• New skills for future survival: A majority of leaders can’t decide and take smart actions quickly enough, motivate people effectively or build trust—all of which is needed to ensure their organization’s survival into the future.
• “For the last hundred years, we have taught leaders that control, consistency, and closure are the principles of business leadership. They trained all of us in this approach.”
• Old models are outdated: Models of business leadership are based on what has worked successfully in the past, but we are not in the same business era anymore.
• Emerging leadership competencies: “But dramatic changes to the global business environment mean that this is no longer sufficient—trust, purpose and energizing others are now central.”

The future of leadership is  Self-Disruptive

The future of leadership is  Self-Disruptive and includes leaders who can: 

• Transform themselves
• Help their organizations transform.
• Question and shift their own and others’ mindsets
• Base their leadership success on their way of being rather than their skill at doing. 

This group represented the highest-performing leaders globally – as measured by factors that include compensation to company growth.

They defined the five leadership skills and qualities for future leaders from the analysis and turned it into an easy-to-remember acronym ADAPT. 

ADAPT – the ability to Anticipate, Drive, Accelerate, Partner, and Trust

Leaders will need to retain this self-disruptive outlook to succeed in the future.

• What can leaders do to inculcate the self-disruptive habit and competencies?
• How can leadership development professionals bring about the changes in curriculum or approach to get the leaders future-ready?

ADAPT framework is quite similar to agile leadership. It requires unlearning the ways that have made the leaders successful in the past. It requires letting go of long-standing organizational norms and getting into new and uncomfortable ways of doing things. To transform your organization from routine to agile ways of working requires courage from the top leaders.  

In today’s rapidly changing world – business is undergoing a continuous transformation.  Leadership needs to keep up and  “ADAPT” to such a world. Leadership development is critical for any organization in today’s VUCA world.

Read: Developing leaders to thrive in the new normal

How to design a future of leadership program for this new reality

Traditional leadership development methods involve using a defined curriculum, leadership models, case studies, and examples based on what worked in the past.  With the current business environment of rapid change, these models of learning are insufficient.  No curriculum can cover each situation’s intricacies that vary by the leader’s personality and experience, the position, the company, and the business environment.  No two leaders are in the same situation, and hence one size fits all leadership methods are ineffective.

Three things that can help keep up with the rapid pace are

1. Customized diagnosis

Every leader is different.  No two leaders are exactly alike.  They have different backgrounds, different upbringings, different life experiences, different strengths, and different areas of improvement.  A customized diagnosis is essential.

2. Individual help and support

Leaders are busy.  Leaders also have to portray a confident image.  We train them not to divulge their weaknesses. If they did, it might not go very well with investors and stakeholders!  Although they need help, they will rarely admit it in a public forum like a training program.  That is the reason that most leaders opt for executive coaching.  It offers confidentiality, individual help, and support to the leader.

3. Using team intelligence of the leader’s stakeholders (team members)

No one is as smart as all of us!  Leader’s stakeholders are in the best position to know the uniqueness of their own situation.  They observe the leader in action.  They are aware of the culture of the organization.  They have more combined knowledge about the problems and the solutions facing them than anyone else.  Hence their inputs are precious.  Their suggestions will help the leader a lot more than any new leadership model they may learn in a leadership training program or an executive education program.

Read: Organization-wide Leadership development plan example template – a real-life case study

Is there a future leadership program that meets these 3 requirements?

We offer Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centers leadership program that meets all these 3 requirements.  It is a future leadership program that works in a disruptive world. It includes customized 360 diagnoses; it offers help and support in the form of one on one coaching, and it involves the combined intelligence of all the leader’s team members who know the right solutions suitable to the unique needs of the leader and the organization.

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader are aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you don’t have to pay us.

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A version of this article was originally posted on LinkedIn by Tushar Vakil https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/only-15-leaders-future-ready-tushar-vakil/