The modern leadership gap and opportunity.
This article is an interesting, thought provoking read.
My thoughts:
Titles don’t make a person a leader. Some managers are good leader's, and some are not. People that don't have teams reporting to them in the organisation are capable of exhibiting leadership skills superior to many, if not most, who have “manager” or “director” in their title.
Why? It's called 'domain' or ‘subject matter expertise’ leadership. And this, in my view, is a pain point in many large firms; an opportunity for the future of work.
Domain leadership vs. people leadership
When we hear the word leadership our internal biases default to people leadership/ managing others. But leadership is really about coaching, mentoring, influence, vision, energy, inspiring the art of the possible, which is often incremental to the job at hand. You can influence people without being the person who signs off on their vacation requests.
Domain leadership, rooted in subject matter expertise, is the kind of leadership that comes with influence in a particular domain. Domain leaders are constantly adapting and evolving with trends and relevant pain points in the market. They practice 'growth' stances as part of a growth mindset. We understood this as we intentionally built FIFTH P Strategy Consulting, where a lean, high impact team hard-coded foundations that would go on to win multi million pound transformation projects with coveted super-brands from the likes of McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) , Bain & Company, EY, PwC and Oliver Wyman, where the model had been built around a Partner rainmaker and generalist consultants (often 28 yr old Ivy League MBAs). In the retail world, this is not enough. We needed a hybrid warrior; one who could do detail and big picture, strategy AND execution, at pace. Retail is detail.
Domain leaders with people skills are so rare that most recruiters/ businesses wouldn't know how to spot them. The snow leopard of the corporate world; they eventually defect to consulting firms or startups citing 'politics' or limited opportunities for growth/ learning/ inspiration/ impact, as the top reasons why.
New hires want to work with experienced, inspirational, competent leaders who bring vision, energy and smarts. Theirs is a symbiotic vs parasitic relational dynamic; relying on agreements between parties (alliance) which lies in stark contrast to the often political and self-serving behaviours in the 'line'.
The future of work just might be on the domain leader’s side. And if these skills are not rewarded in traditional firms, they will build these in startups, creating new jobs and sustainable ways of innovation in order to make that which no longer serves us irrelevant.
Improving these 'skills' is crucial to reducing toxic workplace cultures.
SOURCES:
#motivation #inspiration #domain #expertise #learning #growth #adaptability #mindsets# excellence #agilityatscale #vitality #impact #youarewhatyoudonotwhatyousayyoudo
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