There have been, and will forever be, aspects and elements of leadership that remain consistent. For example, there will always be something to do: A task to complete, an objective to achieve and a goal to accomplish. Likewise, there will always be leaders, and there will always be followers. They will not necessarily occupy roles that conform to traditional, hierarchical norms. However, leaders will continue to be the people that are responsible for delivering targeted outcomes in a manner that actively engages and reliably retains key talent. And followers will be the people that—for lack of better terms—will continue to do what needs to be done!
Few would argue that surrounding this modest core of timeless stability, the forces of leadership are in a continual state of flux. Organizations are embracing diversity, striving for equity and mandating inclusion like never before. Structurally, the flow of decision making and responsiveness have (for all intents and purposes) been reversed. Decisions that used to uniformly flow from the top down are now informed and initiated from the bottom up. In specific terms, what’s different? Plenty! Consider the following as a starting point for cultural analysis:
- The workplace itself – Gallup research suggests that 32% of employees are “engaged.” Over one third of U.S. workers changed jobs last year. Four generations constitute a workforce that is deployed in remote, hybrid and flexible configurations.
- Embracing leadership as a skill – Over 40% of employees identify their top workplace frustration as “a lack of effective soft skills training.” Providing leadership training exclusively to managers creates an “us vs. them” cultural dynamic.
- Managing performance – 67% of supervisors admit to considering remote workers easier to replace than onsite employees. Only 22% of employees feel their manager has a clear direction for their team. Research continues to verify that employees do not leave organizations; they leave managers.
- Enhancing skills – The half-life of a skill set today is approximately 5 years (and dropping rapidly). More than 1 billion jobs—about one-third of jobs worldwide—are likely to be transformed by technology in the next decade.
- Managing change – Constant change results in burnout (also referred to as “change fatigue.”). Sixty percent of U.S. workers feel powerless in the face of change. In 2016, 74% of employees were willing to support organizational change. In 2022, that number had dropped to 38%.
The paragraphs below summarize how leadership has been impacted by each of these organizational realities, and provide perspective on the implications for leadership development moving forward.
Modern Workplace Leadership
How is it possible that only 32% of employees in this day and age are engaged at work, and that this percentage has remained consistent for decades? How many corporate engagement initiatives have been launched, abandoned and then launched again, since organizations began tracking engagement metrics?
With the benefit of hindsight, one component the majority of those initiatives have in common is that they target management: “Here are best practices you can employ with your departments and teams to enhance employee engagement.” Perhaps this is something we should do differently moving forward.
What if the target of these initiatives is the employees? The premise of such a proposal would be personal ownership: You are in charge of your own engagement! You spend an inordinate amount of your time at work. What a waste and disappointment it would be if there were aspects of your job you could enhance, improve or positively impact—and didn’t! What about owning your readiness to perform and taking an active role in “contracting for a leadership style” with your manager?
“Top-down” engagement initiatives have failed to hit the mark for far too long. Organizations need to augment those traditional practices with concentrated efforts that originate from the “ground-up.” In this pursuit, there must be clear evidence of strategic consideration for the ever-expanding spectrum of work environments (i.e., in office; hybrid; remote).
Leadership As a Skill
The age-old question has been, “Are leaders born, or made?” The age-old answer? “Absolutely!”
There is no doubt that some people seem to have a natural sense when it comes to effectively influencing others. They see the root causes of problems and challenges the rest of us struggle to identify or miss altogether. They inspire those around them to step forward with confidence instead of being paralyzed by fear of the unknown. They listen and empathize, and build trust with others, and so on!
There is also no doubt that even the most talented natural leaders benefit greatly from leadership skill training and coaching. Not only can the best get better, but many that truly struggle with aspects of leadership can improve significantly.
As with any other skill, the key to developing mastery is to isolate the fundamentals, provide awareness of what those fundamentals are and how they can be employed, practice those skills in real-world settings and measure their impact on results.
With ever-increasing regularity, leadership is being identified as a skill for everyone in the organization (not just those who have been promoted into a formal leadership role). Learning how to effectively influence fosters collaboration, helps employees resolve conflicts, provide and receive feedback and make difficult decisions with less than perfect information.
Beyond that, adopting a perspective that identifies leadership as a life skill is an investment by organizations in the well-being of each employee, because the training and coaching you receive at work improves your leadership effectiveness in every aspect of life.
Performance Leadership
Traditional systems of performance management were created for a comparatively static world–and one could argue those systems served their purpose quite well for an extended period of time. That system commenced with performance objectives. At the beginning of the year, managers held structured meetings with each of their team members and documented what was going to be accomplished and how it would unfold. Planned and unplanned feedback would be provided by the manager throughout the year to ensure things stayed on track. At the end of the year, the manager would provide a formal evaluation.
Traditional performance management failed to account for the dynamic nature of our world. Objectives that were clear and seemed reasonable in January, are often obsolete and archaic given all the change that takes place by May. Feedback was also a mechanism that sounded better on paper than it turned out in reality. It frequently became a manager-driven narrative on things that happened (or didn’t happen) in the past, with limited tangible connection to what needed to be done moving forward.
This is why “performance management” is quickly becoming “performance leadership!” Management is what you do when you know what good work looks like, and others can benefit from your direct experience. Leadership is what you do when you have no idea, no blueprint and no directions! Leaders have very little to reference or rely upon, outside of the people with whom they are “forming a relationship with around the work.” Alignment is key, agility is imperative and multidirectional feedforward rules the day!
Skilling Talent
Hiring people has always been a bit of an adventure. Most organizations go through some version of a multi-tiered process to identify the best candidate for the job. This process usually begins with resume screening. Reviewers try to match the story being told on the resume to the realities of the work requirements for the position. The next phase is a phone interview. During the interview, the hiring party seeks to “dig a little deeper” on one resume item or another and gain an understanding of the candidate (i.e., are they a cultural fit?). The in-person or Zoom interview is the culmination. Sometimes in Teams or in a series of rotating one-on-one interviews, the candidate and the company further explore if “the fit” is mutual.
What happens then? In many cases, the company in question has more qualified candidates (any of whom would fulfill the requirements of the position and be cultural fits) than they have positions. At this point, the objectivity of the process usually takes a turn. Because any of the candidates will “work,” but—which one should we hire? Interviewers then put objectivity to the side and tell stories about their favorite candidate, based on the feeling they had during the interviews. The two subjective categories that have the most decision power are:
1) What kind of learner is this candidate?
2) What kind of leader is this candidate?
What we know with beyond reasonable doubt is that the changing nature of our world is not slowing down as we move forward. And what you know and contribute today, may actually be of little consequence tomorrow. This means how quickly you learn, and how effectively you lead, become paramount, regardless of the skill set currently featured on your resume.
Change Leadership
When you think about it, if it wasn’t for change, people wouldn’t care as much about leadership. Stay with this thought for a moment.
- If people learned how to do something and it stayed with them forever, leading people would be far less challenging.
- If an employee’s motivation and commitment to perform tasks was never challenged by boredom or their personal life, leading people would be far less challenging.
- Perhaps most of all, if the macro environment would simply leave us alone and allow us to march into the future, leading people would be far less challenging!
Back to reality, because none of this is ever going to happen! Change is pervasive on a macro and micro level—and yes, they can absolutely be connected! In an organizational context, the connection between change and leadership is profound. When change happens, your readiness to perform shifts. Change can render your existing skill set obsolete. Faced with the prospect of this reality, it can simultaneously impact your confidence, commitment and motivation.
And for the record, gone are the days when organizations “manage change.” Organizations have been forced into a configuration in which they must “lead change.” The effectiveness of this effort is a function of how well managers and employees recognize change, adapt to it and align around the steps that must be taken in response.
Learn More About Leadership in the Modern Workplace
The Center for Leadership Studies is the global home of the Situational Leadership® Model. This model has been helping leaders, around the world and across industries, effectively influence others for over 50 years. It has always been “a follower-driven model.” And we wholeheartedly believe that is the primary reason Situational Leadership® is more relevant today than ever before!
In keeping with this article, we have designed our flagship offerings (Situational Leadership® Essentials and Situational Performance OwnershipTM) to provide leaders at all levels of an organization with practical solutions to the challenges identified here:
- Content has to be available to Modern Learners in a variety of modalities to provide a consistent experience for each leader, regardless of format.
- Leadership is a skill! Organizations realize that leadership is a skill that is critical not only in the ranks of people management, but also at the base of the organization, where the work is actually performed.
- Situational Leadership® has long been a language of Performance Management, which is why it can be effortlessly leveraged as a language of Performance Leadership.
- Learning and leadership are foundational skills of the future. The half-life of existing skill sets will continue to decrease. Situational Leaders are catalysts in the re-tooling and up-skilling we know the future will continue to present.
- Situational Leadership® has always been a language of change. The same model that has been used traditionally to help managers align their approach with the performance needs of their followers can also help followers contract for the leadership style they need to respond to the unexpected.
Leadership has never been something you do to other people—it is something you do with them! And the Situational Leadership® Model continues to help leaders at all levels do just that!
