Followship - Solushiens

Why leadership agility is critical to company success

Posted on February 28, 2021 by rob.thomas

What is the future of leadership? We have spent the past year researching this topic and interviewing executives around the world.

We learned that the future is already here and that your organization’s survival is based on a number of key factors—including its ability to be agile.

The markets of today and tomorrow reward organizations that have the capacity and willingness to adapt. Market leaders have established cultures and management approaches that encourage creativity and rapid innovation. These approaches, commonly referred to as agile, encourage leaders to pivot faster in response to our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.

Many companies are attempting agile transformation, but without the shift in traditional leadership mindset, abilities, and development, they will be unsuccessful. It’s like putting a square peg into a round hole.

The business case for a new leadership model

We live in a fast-paced, ever-changing, disruptive time and it’s not slowing down.

Since 2000, 52% of Fortune 500 companies no longer exist.
Currently, 75% of all VC-funded startups don’t survive, 33% of small businesses fail, and only about 30% of family-owned businesses make it into the second generation.
If that isn’t concerning enough, the CEO turnover rate in 2018 was the highest we’ve seen in 10 years.

Here are more troubling stats:

Twenty-one % of millennial workers say they’ve changed jobs within the past year.
Only half of millennials anticipate they’ll still work at their company one year from now.
Nearly half of non-millennials say they’re open to different job opportunities.
Two out of three U.S. workers experience professional burnout.
Eighty-five % of employees worldwide show some level of disengagement.

We are experiencing a time of rapid innovation and advances in technology and digitization. Consumers are constantly changing what they want and need, and their expectations have never been higher, demanding 24/7 personalized service.

We are living in the “now” generation.

What are the implications? Organizations, teams, and employees need to be nimbler than ever, which implies leaders need to be agile to create agile teams and organizations.

Are you an agile leader?

What is leadership agility?

Simply put, leadership agility is the ability to effectively lead organizational change, build teams, and navigate challenging business conversations.

The five key drivers of agile leadership

The agile leader has the ability and capacity to assess risk, decide courageously, and act quickly to meet the rapidly changing environment while producing results and develop others’ capacity to do the same. We have identified five key drivers of agile leadership and 10 leadership competencies that can be leveraged, at scale, to change how organizations work and get work done.

The five key drivers of agile leadership are:

Integrity: Integrity is the foundation of agile leadership. Actions are driven by values and principles, which make leaders reliable and trustworthy. They have developed a depth of self-awareness, character, and purpose that naturally inspires those around them. Integrity is the most important leadership attribute, but it’s often overlooked or considered to be something that leaders simply have or don’t have. But we believe that any leader can develop integrity. The combination of self-awareness and accountability accelerates the development of leaders so their mindsets and behaviors are governed by principles of integrity.

Innovation: Agile leaders have an innovative approach. They exhibit a natural curiosity about their environments, introducing and encouraging new ideas and creating a learning culture. The agile leader’s role is less command and control and more facilitative. Think of an agile leader as a curator or a gardener who invests in team growth. With an unrelenting commitment to serving customers, they are willing to challenge the status quo and drive change.

Urgency: Agile leaders embody a sense of urgency. They bring focus to the organization by establishing challenging goals and maintaining a steady cadence. They make decisions quickly with imperfect data to keep the organization moving forward. Agile leaders decentralize decision-making by abandoning hierarchy in favor of self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Companies who follow the discipline of talent optimization know that selecting an organizational structure that supports the business strategy—and then updating that structure as needed—is key to success.

Engagement: Agile Leaders create engagement across the organization. They are inclusive across boundaries, generations, and geographies. They span up, out, across, and down complex networks of stakeholders to encourage cross-functional collaboration to generate optimal performance. Another key to talent optimization is the idea of developing leaders at every level. Agile leaders pull multiple levers to build engagement in individual contributors—and they understand that engagement begets productivity.

Direction: Agile leaders create direction for the organization and align people and resources to fulfill it. They focus on removing impediments and empowering teams to self-organize and take charge of their work. They are transparent in their communication and encourage a free flow of information to rapidly adapt to change. Agile leaders create an agile culture based on shared organizational values that align with your business and people strategies. Do you want a high-performing and engaged workforce? An organization that is aligned to your purpose, vision, and strategies? Be an agile leader.

Leaders, these questions can help you determine your agility.

These five key drivers of agile leadership and the 10 agile leader competencies are identifiable, observable, and measurable behaviors that are critical for a leader’s success. As you read through these, ask yourself, am I an agile leader? Is my leadership team agile? What do I and my leadership team need to do to be more agile? What does my organization need to do to be more agile?

Self-awareness: How aware are you of your natural leadership attributes and strengths? Organizations that use talent optimization know that self-awareness helps leaders at all levels establish emotional intelligence. How do you show up under pressure and stress? How would you rate your ability to work effectively with a variety of different people and situations?
Accountability: Are you taking ownership of your and your teams’ responsibilities and results? Are all members of your team and organization holding themselves accountable?
Challenging the status quo: Are you having courageous dialogue, asking the tough and unpopular questions? Are you curious and comfortable in challenging the norms and sacred cows?
Decisiveness: Are you able to make decisions, even if you don’t have 100% of the data? Are you able to take risks and pivot in a new direction?

Are you self-aware?

Use this checklist to identify gap s . >>

Used with permission from our partners at Predictive Index. Original post found HERE

Nothing said is everything…

Posted on February 12, 2021 by rob.thomas

What Leaders Need Most…Followers!

Posted on February 5, 2021 by rob.thomas

Is leadership truly effective without informed and committed followers? How successful can teams be without all members striving to work well together? It is interesting to note if you do an internet search for leadership books, you will find it very difficult to get to the bottom of the list. If you do a similar search for books on following, the list is sparse. Many people have written about how companies “rise and fall” on leadership. Most agree with the premise of the importance of leadership. However, we believe equal or greater focus should be put on the ability of individuals and teams to follow well. We believe following well is one of the best ways to learn leadership. We believe leaders become leaders within companies because they demonstrated the qualities and attributes becoming of a leader. Spending an unwarranted amount of time asking those same leaders to adapt to fit the teams they lead, without also hyper-focusing on each team member’s understanding of how to adapt to the unique positive traits of the leader, is counterproductive.

Visit our website www.solushiens.com to learn more or to schedule an appointment to discuss our Followship™ training services.

How Do I Know What I Think?

Posted on January 12, 2021 by rob.thomas

I heard a quote credited to E.M. Forster stating, “how do I know what I think until I see what I say…” How do I know what I think, until I see what I say? This profound question sent me on a reflective journey this week unlike any I can remember. The question made me consider a wide range of things like diversity and inclusion (D&I), career aspirations, fear and anxiety, strategic planning and execution, society in general, and much more.

Diversity & Inclusion: As we make snap judgements about people, how do we know what we think until we see what we say? How do we know all people in any people group are a certain way until we know someone from said people group? I venture to say, we really don’t actually know how “they” are until we have met ALL of them. I spoke about this in a presentation to a regional Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) group a few months ago. In the address I made the comment, “Social psychology is to diversity & inclusion (D&I) as on-base percentage is to the “Money Ball” story. Leaders with corporate responsibility and hiring authority will most likely hire the types of people they are familiar with… Especially leaders who are intent to mitigate risk of failure and to increase the odds of outcome achievement.” In other words, people will promote what they know. In the case of D&I, people will hire and promote who they know (figuratively of course). If hiring authorities are not personally familiar with the value of a diverse group of people, he or she is less likely to willingly hire a diverse team, especially into positions of leadership. In the Money Ball story loosing was the symptom and low on-base percentage was the underlying cause. A lack of D&I is a symptom and social psychology is the underlying cause. The real tragedy is most people make snap judgements about entire groups of people based largely upon assumptions as opposed to firsthand knowledge. How do you know what you think until you see what you say?

Career Aspiration / Fear & Anxiety: I had a conversation this week with a young professional about career aspirations. She communicated uncertainty about her ability to be successful in a job she’d never done. I reminded her of two things: 1) how do you know what you think until you see what you say and 2) embrace failure and/or the potential of failure, because a point of failure is the only way to recognize the need for improvement. There is no improvement apart from failure. Attributes and efforts make people successful, not the jobs they do. I advised her to stop looking for a job and to work to pay attention to what she loves. I encouraged her to find a place in which she can do the things she loves most often. Passions are catalytic to successful pursuits. Jobs are to passions as 501 (c) 3 is to non-profits. 501 (c) 3 is simply the tax code giving non-profits the right to function as they do. Jobs simply give people the right to function for organizations as they do. Non-profits pursue missions, not the tax code. People should pursue passions in their vocations and not jobs. We went on to discuss how the fear of failure is based on assumptions more so than factual knowledge. You don’t know what your worst fears are like until you experience them. You don’t know what you actually think about your worst fears until you see them come to fruition. Until you experience the reality of your pursuits, you don’t know what you think about them. How can you know what you think until you see what you say? My statements aren’t meant to negate the need for risk awareness and caution. They are not meant to inspire recklessness. My words are intended to free you from the crippling affects of fear and anxiety by seeing before formulating an opinion.

The E.M. Forster quote could be turned into a book, maybe even a series related to all of the places my reflective journey took me this week. Until I or one of you decides to write such a book I hope you remember to challenge what you believe you think. Ask yourself, “how do I know what I think until I see what I say?”

Remember, nothing said is everything, but everything said is something…

Charles Pulliam… Until next time…

You Stink… Want the Job?

Posted on November 20, 2020 by rob.thomas

I love living in a time, in a country, and with a mindset of learning. Not everyone who has lived past the half-century mark embraces the magnificence of continual learning. Many opt for being good at what they know and focus on a future in which learning is no longer required. Who made up what it means to retire anyway? I personally want to do what is progressively next until what’s next is death. Maybe it’s just me. After all, I am past the half-century mark and you know how those types of people are…

So, everything thus far has been beside the point. You see, recently I made a monumental discovery about the value of pessimism. I lived most of my life believing people want to be friends with, work with, hire, and follow people with positive attitudes (true statement by the way). I never realized how the hyper-positive attitude expressed by my words was a barrier to being taken seriously. I remember being interviewed by an executive search firm for a CEO position. At the end of what seemed like an awesome conversation the recruit told me about how nice of a guy I was. He went on to tell me he did not think I was ready to lead his client’s company. I spent the better part of the next couple of years reflecting and trying to figure out why that successful, but misguided recruiter made such an inaccurate assessment. Without even giving me the chance to meet his client, “you’re not ready” was the response. It was very clear I was passionate about the mission of the company, had the educational credentials, previous experience, compensation expectations, and availability to do the job. What was unclear, to me at least, was what in the world could make me seem not ready? I recently discovered the most probable answer was a lack of realistic pessimism.

I spent the interview answering questions with a great deal of positivity and enthusiasm. I spoke of success as if it was all there was. Don’t get me wrong, I was not being arrogant. I spoke of the value of teamwork and collaboration. I spoke of the fact none of the successful things I’d been involved in were due to my knowledge and know-how, but of the team’s. I clearly expressed the successes as being the ability to play to my strengths and team up or hire to my weaknesses. Having a good understanding of what the job entailed, I knew the successes I highlighted were exactly what the job description and recruiter by explanation of the issues were looking for. So, how could it be I was not ready!? The answer is, my one hundred percent glory story made me sound naïve and unbelievable. My responses made me sound like one of two things were true. Number one, I had not experienced enough or done enough to reach a point of failure, or I missed the failures, risk, and difficulties faced by others under my watch. If either case were true, I was not ready to assume the position in question. Blasted HINDSIGHT!!!! (grateful).

Any of us would be leery of a doctor who planned to do surgery on us or one of our loved ones, but failed to mention the risks. We would be skeptical about an investment opportunity being sold to us as a “sure thing.” Too good to be true is too good to be true. If we as leaders, express ideas about vision and the future, but fail to express the risks, potential difficulties, or potential costs, we seem less believable, ill-equipped, and untrustworthy. Someone who expresses the hopefulness for the future without communicating a pessimistic ode to the risk of potential missteps comes off like person who is ill-prepared to lead in a world of uncertainty. People want to follow and invest in leaders who have been battle tested. Leaders who will not blindly lead into the minefield of the marketplace without the metal detector of risk awareness. Credibility comes with an understanding of risks.

As you strive to demonstrate positivity by putting your best foot forward, don’t be afraid to mention the times you stepped in dung along the way. The conversation about how you overcame could prove invaluable.