Influential Leaders have several components in place, working together, which I call the leadership formula, which compels people to join in with and embrace their leadership.
The leadership formula usually involves a number of fairly simple concepts. Yet, despite the simplicity of such concepts, there still appears to be a dearth of great leadership at a business, political and world level. Even though there seems to be some “modest” improvements on employee engagement reported by the Hay Group 2013 there is still much to be done.
In their most recent research, “”, Hays have concluded leaders need to improve on three levels, cognitive, emotional and behavioural
[pullquote style="left" quote="dark"]Cognitive Leaders need new forms of contextual awareness, based on strong conceptual and strategic thinking capabilities. They need to be able to conceptualize change in an unprecedented way, again based on conceptual and strategic thinking. Leaders need to exhibit new forms of intellectual openness and curiosity.
Emotional Overall, leaders will need to be much more sensitive to different cultures, generations and genders. They will need to demonstrate higher levels of integrity and sincerity and adopt a more ethical approach to doing business. They must also tolerate far higher levels of ambiguity.
Behavioural Leaders must create a culture of trust and openness. As post-heroic leaders they must rethink old concepts such as loyalty and retention and personally create loyalty. Collaboration – cross-generational, cross-functional and cross-company – will be their watchword. They must lead increasingly diverse teams.”[/pullquote]
While the research shows a marked progression and depth to the skill set required of a leader, and are vital components of the leadership formula, they miss out essential components of the formula. Without these missing components, the change needed to develop our leaders for the future may well be slow and fraught with difficulties.
Expectations of our leaders are increasing Ethical and value centred leadership seems to be the emerging priority across the globe. The world needs leaders who can pull it from the current state of chaos. Certainly enhanced cognitive, emotional and behavioural skills and competences will help to make that change.
According to Mike Myatt In the USA alone, it is estimated that some $170 billion has been spent on leadership development. The danger is though, we approach the problem and waste many more billions in misguided leadership programmes which miss important components of the leadership formula.
The missing parts in the leadership formula are the filters which our thinking, emotions and behaviours are sieved through. These are our beliefs, and our ability to envision a future.
Cognitive, emotional and behavioural excellence is to no avail and the leadership formula is incomplete when the belief system those skills are filtered through is somewhat blinkered, limiting or biased. Without vision, then no-one is going anywhere, and we remain at Groundhog Day, repeating the same mistakes, making the same future from yesterday and remain in our respective comfort zones.
What I have seen from people who have inspired and influenced the world, such as Ghandi, Luther King JR and Mandela for example have been some basic beliefs and a clear vision which have freeing and unifying beliefs. These are similar to:
- We are all equally as valuable
- There is only love or fear of love
- We can create our reality
Such leaders and truly successful business leaders, also have a capacity to envision a future and enable great loyalty and enthusiasm from teams and the public when their vision includes the precepts of:
- Anything is possible
- Our vision is for the greater good of all
- What we can imagine we can create
If you add these two elements to cognitive, emotional and behavioural skills, then you have the ingredients for all possibilities, and a chance to shape the world; the organisation or the team anyway you want. They are the 5 components of a successful leadership formula, which, if done well could change the world for the better.
You can find out more about the People Discovery Leadership Model, by visiting our leadership development information page.
This great article is from the People Discovery blog, associated with The e.MILE People Development Magazine: the Magazine is currently running a series for the 6 months April to September 2014 based on the challenges identified by The Centre For Creative Leaderships report 2013 Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of our subsequent issues and posts
Great article on leadership. There are so many good points here that it’s difficult to know where our current leaders should focus their attention. It definitely is going to be challenging but rewarding if our leaders can get their ducks in a row.
Janis, thanks so much for your positive feedback and comments. I agree there is lots to be done, but I do think as you point out, the process will be extremely rewarding if our leaders do indeed “get their ducks in a row”. Thanks for your input. Appreciated.
I wonder how many generations it will take for these two extra components, over and above Hays conclusions, to become universally accepted? I sense a turning point as the generation I grew up being managed by withdraws. Interesting that the delightful blue graphic contains a formula that expresses Newton’s Second Law – I believe the shift proposed here is as fundamental as the shift from Newtonian physics to quantum theory, and I look forward to Hays updating their research accordingly, probably in about ten years.
Well said Chris, it is the shift from Newtonian to Quantum and it beggars belief that many of us are still in the dark about the astonishing findings of quantum science, even though the findings have been available for many years now. Progress is indeed slow, but I do believe it is like a forming a snowman out of a snowball (sorry Christmas themes on my mind right now) as we roll more snow, the snowball gets bigger more quickly! Thanks for your brilliant insights as ever :)
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First, I want to thank Christina Lattimer for recommending this site to me.
This post is admirable in its simplicity, but deep thoughts. I like the simple rules it applies to leverage the quality of leaders. The point that is of fundamental importance is having a shared goal for ALL. I think a great leader should find this requirement indispensable. I discussed this issue in several presentations such as
http://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/the-lagaan-of performance
Christina Lattimer- I am glad I found about your lovely and informative website
Thank you so much for your very kind comments! I’m very glad you are finding the site a useful resource. The link you have provided doesn’t seem to work. Would you like to re-post it?
Many thanks
Christina