Leader in Today's Challenging World

Rapid and unprecedented changes are taking place in the business world as humans develop in their cognitive abilities, and these are further fueled by the advancement in technology, leading to increased dynamism in humans thought process. Global provocations in the print of climate change and the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic are also crucial factors that are impacting business landscapes and how people react. These altering phenomena, in no doubt, have piled up immense pressure on leaders to be more proactive, calculative and strategic in their approach to meeting up with the ‘ever-growing’ demand and challenges posed by the modern-day world.

In other words, flourishing as a leader in these challenging times requires a blend of the right skill set and mindset. While often positioned as contrasting, it is important to highlight that both are very significant to the success of any establishment, albeit at varying levels of prioritization. Having the right skill set required to execute a particular task yields and boosts confidence, more so that you are then able to develop them, and even learn new ones. However, there is a ceiling to one’s development if the right mindset is missing. Depending on skill sets only will obscure opportunities to improve oneself and limit the mind’s flexibility to be creative and adaptive.

According to Owen (2017), the difference between the good and the great is the difference between your mindset and your skill set. The value of mindset cannot be overemphasized. Having the right mindset helps to achieve beyond the technical know-how and capabilities of an individual or a group. It is what galvanizes one’s ability to function with purpose and direction. One key exemplary characteristics of an effective leader is to be visionary anticipating the future. Without the right attitude, habit and behavior, it will be an uphill climb to inspire vision.

In order words, for a leader to inspire people and growth, he or she needs to cultivate a growth mindset that will be flexible to adapt to ever changing scenarios. Being strategic is about spotlighting and analyzing the wholistic dimension of a system, both on the core and soft side. Therefore, it is not just only desirable but essential for a leader to tap into and unlock the soft side of humans in order to optimize the expected performance or outcome. Many people will always be proficient in your skill set, but only a few will share the same mindset with you.

On the other hand, modern-day employers are increasingly redefining their workforce by spending more time on asking potential candidates more attitudinal and behavioral questions to better understand ‘mindset’. There is a transformational shift within organizations from zeroing into skill sets to giving more precedence to mindset as they belief having the latter can determine to a large extent how one can easily acquire the former. When organizations focus on mindsets, they are more than twice as likely to rate their leadership development efforts as effective. This is as evidently presented by Gottfredson (2020) in his survey of 153 organizations to understand what topics translate into more effective leadership development. Meanwhile, organizations will undoubtedly continue to invest in training their workforce to acquire the right skill sets, but what is most likely to garner faster traction in the long term is the sourcing of resources with the right mindset.

Microsoft is a clear example where growth mindset has helped revived its decadence into stagnation and transformed the brand into a powerhouse. Satya Nadella, the current Microsoft CEO, was quick to identify the weakening position of the business upon assuming office in 2014 and one of the key steps to remedying the situation was to build an ambience of trust amongst workers, minimize intra-company competition, and improve talent retention by instilling disciplines and programs that will help create a sense of purpose.

Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that it is not uncomplicated to cultivate a growth mindset. Dweck (2016) argued that it is easy to be susceptible to rolling back into a state of fixed mindset, which poses as an effective recipe to getting stuck and comfortable with one’s skill set without nurturing growth opportunities.

As it is commonly said, everyone has values but not everyone exhibits good leadership values. Values are essentially the make-up block of our actions and behaviors. These are intrinsic, abstract traits that define the standards by which we make decisions and choices. Our ability to lead effectively and drive success is determined by the range of values we embody as individuals. Leadership types and styles are strongly influenced by personal values. Therefore, it is essential for any leader to have a clear understanding of his or her personal values.

In a behavioral analysis, Badr, Gray, and Kedia (1982) established a strong interrelationship between personal values and strategic decisions by studying two sample groups of graduate business students across fourteen business decision scenarios from two countries. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that there will always be different conclusion or judgment to a single situation by different people, even in the same circumstance, which then suggests or infers that we all have distinct and differing personal values.

Meanwhile, as with many things that change as we grow and learn, personal values can also be developed. While some may appear cast in stone, others can go through different formative stages as we pass through different life’s situations. We can be deliberate and intentional in our steps to making a change to who we are. Values are open to change. The priorities of values can change over time, in order to meet new and emerging needs (Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987). These changes can be achieved through conscious learning and coaching.

Meanwhile, demonstrating the right values as a leader is very important because they will impact the performance of your workforce and dictate the success of your organization. Firm commitment to one’s personal values can attract more respect and can be seen as basis to be trusted more. It will be highly beneficial to choose one’s leadership values to develop. However, there is the tendency for a leader to lean more towards some values than the others.

One of the key values of a leader is to empower others and this can be achieved by simply delegating to them and trusting them with more responsibilities which undoubtedly helps to foster growth. As the country lead at my former place of work, I figured junior colleagues were less confident in their relationship with both internal and external stakeholders. This was simply because they were often delegated simple and basic tasks which does not even help them maximize their job descriptions. This in turn shielded them from opportunities that can make them more vocal and noticed in the business. My approach was to deconvolve certain achievable tasks from the mid-managerial level to the junior team members, allowing them the opportunity to directly interface, manage and take ownership of small client accounts. This served as confidence boosters for them, and I believe the outcome of this empowerment act is as good as your guess. They experienced rapid development.

Being visionary is another valuable strength of a strategic leader. Seeing the bigger picture helps a leader to create a sense of purpose and direction among colleagues. According to James Kouzes and Barry Posner, “there's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing”.

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Likewise, a strategic leader must exude empathy and be humble. Both values play even more vital role in the current socio-economic context we find ourselves. The prevailing clime has posed significant mental and physical challenges to employees whereby many have had to deal with medical conditions or witness the death of loved ones and/or colleagues due to Covid-19. It has never been more important for leaders to demonstrate these core values in order to optimize performance across their workforce. Evidently, leaders of many establishments globally are activating their flexibilities by adapting to a hybrid framework to allow onsite engagement at critical times and virtual approaches to ensure continuation of tasks while also encouraging more family times to cope with stress. From a personal point of view, this model has evidently helped my team to even inject more dedication to their responsibilities and have also helped manage their work-life balance.

According to the famous quote by Sri Mulyani, development is an endurance exercise with incremental improvements. This implies that development is not necessarily linear, but it can be consciously planned and systematically achieved with appreciable gains. The journey of development practically involves mastering skills, incorporating them into behaviors, and then making them habitual. It is however important to identify and outline the right set of skills that need to be developed. In order to accomplish this, your main objective(s) to develop must be purpose-driven, clearly articulated and led by soundly evidence-based principles. Be satisfied with answering the ‘why’ question on why you need the skill. By so doing, you are most likely to have all the expected outcomes in proper view focus even before the learning process starts.

In many cases, there is a strong correlation between the success of any organization and the personal and professional development of its leader. For example, Warren Buffet asserted that good communication skills can lead one to earning fifty percent more money over one’s lifetime. Interestingly, he admitted he was absolutely terrified of public speaking at the early stage of his illustrious career, but he knew he had to do it if he must succeed. He laid out a clear plan and worked on it, and the rest is history. One could infer that his journey to developing in this case involved acknowledging his own weakness, identifying what skill he needs to improve and piecing together a plan to overcome the barrier, but most importantly, he was driven by a purpose: the desire to make more money. In other words, a strategic leader needs to ensure to put in place personal and professional development plan which is in consistent and in alignment with the strategic objectives and vision of his or her organization.

There are clear benefits to personal and professional development on strategic leadership especially when developmental aim and objectives are thoroughly planned. The popular SMART framework for goal setting is a way to ensure plans to develop have a real impact on strategic leadership.

In totality, acquiring new skills will help build confidence and boost efficiency. Learning from trainings and mentorship programs are ways to notch up motivation. These are ways to demonstrate to employees that you care about their growth and progression in the business. The credibility of an organization is at an advantage when the workforce is energized by being able to see a roadmap for growth, and this in no doubt will ensure employee retention rate is at an appreciable high level.

Engaging in regular self-reflection and self-assessment over my ten years of professional career has been instrumental to my personal and professional growth. Being able to identify areas of strength and improvement has helped me achieve my objectives in line with my set expectations and timelines. I work with a well-structured organization with global footprint, where thriving successfully means possessing the right set of skills, attitudes and competencies. Indirectly, this constantly puts me under intense pressure to want to develop and improve on all fronts but over the years, I have come to realize that focusing on and activating my strengths that are consistent with my personal values and the vision of my organization will be more beneficial and help accelerate my growth.

From a personal perspective, I would say that my strengths as a leader are the ability to show empathy at different levels of situations, and that I am creative and always looking to solve problems. Both competencies have always stuck out as common denominators in essentially many of the 360° feedback sessions I have engaged in during my career with colleagues and managers. I have in some cases also sought feedbacks from clients I work to ensure I have a bird’s eye view of myself. Below screenshot from my LinkedIn profile recommendation section by a former client further amplifies how I am being perceived, in this case from an external assessment in the area of empathy and problem-solving.

I believe my emotional intelligence helps me to plug in well into different situations and empathize as a leader in the right way. This means in most cases, I am always looking out for the well-being of my colleagues’ team, putting myself in their shoes both on a personal and professional standpoint, and making sure I put their needs right before mine. Similarly, my creativity helps me to encourage others to explore new and creative perspectives when solving problems as I essentially enjoy coming up with new ideas and perspectives. With increasing business challenges in many organizations, I find both competencies very valuable in helping me to achieve results.

In order to lend more credibility to the internal and external views, and help identify other strengths and improvement areas, I have adopted a competency framework known as Strengthscope competency wheel because it is designed to help authenticate how to bring the best to work, and to life, every single day through the discovery and development of strengths. Based on my inputs for evaluation, Strenghtscope benchmarked me with many established competencies of a leader and has helped streamlined my seven main ones which are in no order: compassion, courage, creativity, detail orientation, initiative, leading and results focus. I find the results from this framework to be very consistent and acquiesce with my personality and professional life. Kindly refer to the next page to view the visual for the results.

My ability to withstand personal risk, pressure and difficult circumstances makes me courageous. My colleagues always would say that I am a man of my conviction and I believe this is because I take tough stands and challenge the status quo even if they are not popular positions to take. This strength has made me more confident and resilient as a leader in my organization. On being detail-oriented, this is not unconnected to taking pride in the accuracy of my work and ensuring consistent high standards of delivery. I am wired to always strive for perfection in the quality of my work, no matter how small the task may be. It is habitual for me to check and willingly redo my task to ensure accuracy to meet others’ expectations and requests.

Likewise, I like to be proactive in taking initiatives to make things happen and achieve goals. This includes regularly solve problems or acting before being required to do so and independently anticipating and dealing with any problems or roadblocks to task completion. On another note, I often personally feel obliged to take the lead in influencing and motivating others to contribute to the goals and success of the team and organization. Many a times have my colleagues frequently turn to me for direction and also asked to speak on behalf of the group.

Lastly, my function in the organization has morphed into a more result-oriented role and this is because of my strong sense of focus on results, driving tasks and projects to completion. I am very keen on conveying a strong sense of urgency and drive issues to closure. More compelling is my strength to maintain a strong focus on the goals of the organization and the resources available to achieve those goals.

In totality, our strengths are the qualities that energize us and enable us to perform at our best. By getting the balance right between developing my strengths and reducing performance risks, I believe I will achieve higher levels of resilience as a leader, so also confidence, positive engagement and desired success. It is the feeling of being needed that produces high expectations and high performance, especially when your peers have those high expectations of you. People like to compare themselves to others, and they also like to perform against standards, especially if they had a role in setting the standard, and if it is achievable.