The need for integral leadership has never been greater. Consider this excerpt from an article in a recent issue of HBR that emphasizes the need to balance seemingly paradoxical leadership characteristics:
"We used to accept, for instance, that leaders could be either great visionaries or great operators. No longer. Companies now need their top people to perform both roles—to be strategic executors, in other words. They’re also expected to be tech-savvy humanists, high-integrity politicians, humble heroes, globally minded localists, and traditioned innovators.
"Not only did large majorities of survey respondents agree on the importance of those roles, but they also voiced alarming concern about leaders’ lack of proficiency in them. Addressing a company’s leadership gaps, however, is not merely a matter of building individual executives’ skills. Although that’s certainly desirable, the need to improve collective leadership is urgent."
The authors, Paul Leinwand, Mahadeva Matt Mani, and Blair Sheppard, go on to recommend a four-pronged approach:
Identify the roles required for transformation.
Assemble the right people.
Focus your executive team on driving the transformation.
Take ownership of your executive team's behavior.
And they recommend that for this kind of reinvention, it must start at the top. It "will have to cascade downward to build leadership muscle throughout the organization. But the place to start is in the C-suite. Surround yourself with talented people who can balance seemingly paradoxical leadership behaviors and challenge one another to collectively accomplish big things. Most importantly, make sure your leadership team truly leads—setting aside the time and energy to define a bold agenda and launch the ambitious initiatives that your future relies on. Failing to do that will be a costly mistake. Succeed and you will have a powerful team that can position your firm to thrive in an increasingly complex world."
Here's a link to the full article.
If you'd like to explore ways to develop integral leadership skills in yourself, your team, or your organization, reach out to RPC today.
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