High Impact Leadership Online Short Course PDF

MODULE 5 UNIT 2 The thinking and practices behind high impact leadership © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved cam.ac.uk Table of contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Thinking like a high impact leader 2.1 Contextual insight and knowledge base 2.2 The mindset of a leader 3 4 5 3. Actin...

MODULE 5 UNIT 2 The thinking and practices behind high impact leadership © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved cam.ac.uk Table of contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Thinking like a high impact leader 2.1 Contextual insight and knowledge base 2.2 The mindset of a leader 3 4 5 3. Acting like a high impact leader 3.1 Nurturing good practices 3.2 Cultivating skills 3.3 Building confidence and resilience 5 6 6 7 4. Conclusion 9 5. Bibliography 10 © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 2 of 10 cam.ac.uk Learning outcomes: LO4: Illustrate your role in building the confidence and resilience required for taking action. LO5: Analyse the leadership capabilities and practices that are required to deliver the level of change needed in business. 1. Introduction What are the capabilities of a high impact leader? In Unit 1, you learnt about the values that underpin high impact leadership. In this set of notes, you will delve into further detail on the topic of high impact leadership, learning about the mindset, knowledge, skills and practices that are necessary to become a high impact leader. These notes draw on the Cambridge Impact Leadership Model to illustrate the necessary thinking and practices that underpin high impact leadership. First, you will learn how to think like a high impact leader. This entails developing the right mindset and contextual insight to deliver positive, purposeful leadership. Then, you will explore what it means to act like a high impact leader. This includes nurturing good practices and cultivating the skills that will enable you to be a confident, resilient leader capable of delivering the level of change needed in business. Although the values, thinking and practices covered in this course are incredibly beneficial for high impact leaders, it should be noted that no one individual is likely to encompass all the capabilities listed here. As such, it is important to embrace diverse leadership styles and a breadth of approaches to enable the development of collective leadership capacity. 2. Thinking like a high impact leader What does it mean to think like a high impact leader? The thinking of a high impact leader entails understanding future leadership challenges in order to deliver value in the long term. As you learnt in Unit 1, values form a crucial aspect of leadership and can inform how a leader thinks and makes decisions. Aligning leadership with personal values can lead to positive, purposeful leadership that is fit for the future. As Grayson, Coulter and Lee (2018:10) suggest, “the very act of thinking about the future helps to shape it”. In this section, you will learn about developing contextual insight and how this shapes the mindset necessary for high impact leadership. This involves developing knowledge and thinking skills that enable you to understand how macro trends are shaping the societies, economies and systems in which your leadership is positioned. Thinking like a high impact leader also involves navigating new boundaries with stakeholders through networking. Networking, however, can be a challenging process. Ibarra and Hunter (2007) note that networking, which can be defined as “creating a fabric of personal contacts who will provide support, feedback, insight, resources, and information”, is often viewed as “simultaneously one of the most self-evident and one of © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 3 of 10 cam.ac.uk the most dreaded developmental challenges that aspiring leaders must address”. In order to facilitate thinking like a high impact leader, it is necessary to embrace the discomfort of the unknown and to understand how to engage and effectively communicate with many different types of individuals. Module 8 will cover networking in further detail. 2.1 Developing contextual insight and knowledge base Two crucial capabilities for high impact leaders are developing contextual insight and broadening your knowledge base. Future-fit leaders will be expected to lead effectively in a number of different contexts and with a number of diverse individuals. Delivering the level of change expected of today’s businesses and navigating complexity requires broad insight as well as cognitive, behavioural and emotional development (Korver, 2016). As you will have learnt in preceding modules, the changing context for business means that societal expectations of business and leaders have drastically evolved. In Module 2, you explored various big trends that are affecting business and, in Module 4, you learnt about the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) context that future-fit leaders will need to navigate. High impact leaders therefore need to consider how to develop their contextual insight. Developing insight into the changing context for business and evolving societal expectations involves: ● Analysing and understanding the science and data that informs the trends that shape how businesses operate; ● Developing the abilities to assess risks and opportunities; ● Understanding the context of stakeholders; and ● Gaining insight into the evolving societal expectations for business. (CISL, 2018:14) In addition to developing contextual insight, it is beneficial for high impact leaders to grow a knowledge base for innovation that creates new forms of value – both commercially and for wider society. Building a knowledge base involves: ● Critically analysing innovative and transformative business practices; ● Understanding how to deliver business performance and societal outcomes through innovative business processes, products and models; and ● Recognising the opportunities and capabilities that businesses have to create value beyond its own context. (CISL, 2018:14) Module 7 will cover the topic of innovation in further detail. © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 4 of 10 cam.ac.uk Developing contextual insight: Consider your professional workspace and those with whom you work. Do you know and understand your team members well enough? Do you think that your understanding of your workplace (the geographic location, the sector, or the industry) is sufficient for a future-fit perspective? Can you expand on this contextual insight in some way? 2.2 The mindset of a leader Thinking like a high impact leader means honing your leadership mindset. As Korver (2016) notes, this requires cognitive, behavioural and emotional development to refine your “self-awareness, empathy, openness, ability to develop trust, and respect for differences”. Hougaard, Carter and Afton (2018) consider self-awareness as “the starting point for leadership” and define it as “the skill of being aware of our thoughts, emotions, and values from moment to moment”. These particular interpersonal skills are not always nurtured in leadership programmes. However, drawing on research from a number of studies, Hougaard, Carter and Afton (2018) come to the conclusion that self-awareness can be more helpful to leaders than an MBA. This is not to say that MBAs are inadequate in preparing an individual to lead an organisation, but rather that the training in such programmes can be linear and may potentially impose a particular type of logic on leaders at the cost of other skills. In such cases, the leadership approach neglects the value of developing self-awareness and a willingness to understand the mindset of others. Developing the mindset and thinking skills necessary for leading change in complex systems involves: ● Adopting a systems thinking approach to better consider the big picture; ● Understanding the VUCA context and its complications; ● Being able to adapt and evolve thinking; and ● Establishing short-term priorities and decisions with a view to the long term. (CISL, 2018:14) 3. Acting like a high impact leader Having learnt how purpose, values and thinking underpin high impact leadership, you will now explore the actions associated with this approach to leadership. In this section, you will learn about which practices to nurture, as well as the importance of cultivating skills and building confidence and resilience. © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 5 of 10 cam.ac.uk 3.1 Nurturing good practices How does high impact leadership manifest? One of the clearest means of assessing leadership is by observing the actions, behaviours and practices that effective leaders use in their leadership approaches. Actions and behaviours are practical realisations of organisations’ purposes and values, which are supported by the necessary mindset. The following practices are suggested for high impact leaders: ● Developing “the drive, commitment and tenacity to get things done, alongside the wisdom to understand critical windows of opportunity”; ● Cultivating an “active appreciation for diverse perspectives and contributions and an inclusive and empathetic approach to engaging with others”; and ● Actively experimenting, “nurturing creativity, adaptability and agility to drive innovation”. (CISL, 2018:15) As suggested by these practices, high impact leadership is reliant on nurturing leadership attitudes and practices that can deliver change. Many of these practices are reliant on an evolving leadership perspective that nurtures an open and authentic approach. For many leaders, this also means developing a greater sense of social and emotional intelligence. Reflection: How do you begin to assess your level of social and emotional intelligence? You might be interested to learn how CEOs Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Ursula Burns have expanded their businesses using emotional intelligence. 3.2 Cultivating skills High impact leadership can be further understood by observing particular skills. Specifically, high impact leaders are those people with the skills to build “personal and collective resilience to sustain ambition and motivation over the long term” (CISL, 2018:15). As much as leaders will leverage their personal ambitions and strategies to focus their purposes, there are also many skills and capabilities that can enable effective and high impact leadership. The Cambridge Impact Leadership Model suggests that having an impact at the systems level involves specific skills, such as: ● Developing strategic thinking, planning and change management skills; ● Understanding how to deliver change across systems; ● Building the ability to collaborate beyond traditional business boundaries; ● Honing listening skills; © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 6 of 10 cam.ac.uk ● Encouraging dialogue; ● Building trust; ● Navigating tensions; ● Drawing on personal and institutional voices; and ● Harnessing the power of storytelling. (CISL, 2018:15) As you have learnt in Module 4, strategic thinking is greatly enhanced by drawing on a systems perspective that enables leaders to view the interconnected nature of systems. Module 4 also covered the benefits associated with leading collaboratively. In Module 6, you will learn how to draw on storytelling to influence the wider system. The particular skill set of a high impact leader therefore includes a number of interpersonal skills. In order to inspire and motivate those who work alongside them, an effective leades should work on clarifying their personal role and contribution to the organisation, as well as building confidence and resilience in themselves and others. This also requires a degree of personal self-awareness so that you can appreciate the contributions made by others and understand how the different roles in an organisation contribute to change (CISL, 2018). 3.3 Building confidence and resilience In Video 1, Justin Ash shares his experience as a seasoned leader, discussing the ways in which leaders can instil and encourage confidence and resilience, and how high impact leaders showcase their leadership capabilities. Video 1: Confidence, resilience and leadership capabilities. © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 7 of 10 cam.ac.uk As discussed in the video, leadership capabilities can be strengthened by two qualities: confidence and resilience. Confident actions enable high impact leaders to execute their strategies, while resilience allows them to persevere and learn through challenging times. Kraemer (2011) suggests that true confidence is the key to being able to live personal values and convictions. Moreover, “confidence grows, in part, as we understand our core values and increasingly align our actions with those values” (Peregrym & Wollf, 2013:4). Thus, the better a leader understands the fundamentals of their leadership, the better they will be at aligning their actions with their values and sense of purpose. Confidence also entails being an active listener and working to incorporate the ideas of others. An insecure leader may feel threatened at the prospect of incorporating others’ views and may feel the need to dominate with their own ideas. However, a confident and secure leader will be open to others’ voices and ideas, incorporating them even if they differ from their own. Resilience can be defined as the “ability to withstand disruptive shocks, manage complexity, and recover from tough times—but it also implies evolution, nimbleness, and long-term thinking” (Gitman, 2015). As much as this suggests that resilient leaders are those who can weather complexity, resilience also entails a certain way of thinking and the particular skills that enable this. First, resilient leaders will possess broad contextual insight of the challenges and opportunities that their organisation will encounter. Second, resilient leaders will be “adept at engaging with a variety of stakeholders” and also show “flexibility and a commitment to ethics and impact” (Gitman, 2015). Finally, resilience entails the ability to interpret trends and engage in systems thinking. Resilience is a skill. You can work on building your own resilience as well as your ability to enable others to be more resilient. Sostrin (2018) suggests three strategies for building resilience, as outlined in Figure 1. Figure 1: Building resilience. (Adapted from: Sostrin, 2018) © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 8 of 10 cam.ac.uk The first strategy is to “work your plan”. This requires resilient leaders to understand the value of planning and how to adapt the plan when facing challenges. In this context, resilience means that when there are challenges, your plan is flexible and able to be stretched without breaking; a plan that is inflexible will not be able to endure in a similar manner. You therefore need to rely on problem-solving and innovation as well as working on your own physical, mental and emotional well-being. The second strategy is to “win the inner game”. As complex challenges can take a toll on your cognitive ability, it is vital for resilient leaders to pay attention to how their mindsets affect their performance. By focusing on their own thought processes, resilient leaders are able to understand which factors of their own thinking can interfere with their leadership. Here, a focus on values and sense of purpose can help leaders realign themselves when addressing challenging or unexpected situations. The third strategy for building resilience is to “leverage every micro adversity”. When you encounter adversity, respond to the challenge by viewing it as an opportunity for learning. Learning from challenges will help you to build your resilience, strengthening the way you respond to adversity and better positioning you for encountering future challenges. Learning how to lead yourself through adversity will also enable you to lead others through their challenging times. Ultimately, confidence and resilience are qualities that can be developed through observation and practice. In the research task that follows these notes, you will have an opportunity to further research this topic and develop your own understanding of how to respond to adversity. Explore further: When facing challenges in your leadership career, confidence and resilience can be the difference between success and failure. You might be interested to learn how Susan Tynan, founder and CEO of Framebridge, approached using confidence and resilience to succeed in business. You can also learn ways to improve your resilience at work. 4. Conclusion Research conducted by CISL (2018:11) indicates that there is a growing consensus among leadership experts that: Whilst thinking has always been an important dimension of effective leadership, the new challenges that leaders face require equal – if not more – weight on character, underpinning values, ethics as well as personal worldviews, attitudes and sense of agency, and on the specific skills and capabilities that are important to deliver change. In these notes, you explored the leadership capabilities and practices that are required to deliver the level of change needed in business. In particular, you learnt about the thinking and practices that underpin high impact leadership. Leaders who wish to have a positive impact and effect change embrace the self-development required to fully understand the © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 9 of 10 cam.ac.uk context in which they operate. This requires self-awareness and a willingness to develop the necessary leadership mindset. You also learnt about the practices and skills expected of high impact leaders. These include capabilities such as confidence and resilience, which enable leaders to take action. 5. Bibliography Gitman, L. 2015. What does it take to be a resilient business leader? Available: https://www.bsr.org/our-insights/blog-view/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-resilientbusiness-leader [2018, July 31]. Grayson, D., Coulter, C. & Lee, M. 2018. All in: the future of business leadership. London and New York, Routledge. Hougaard, R., Carter, J. & Afton, M. Self-awareness can help leaders more than an MBA can. Available: https://hbr.org/2018/01/self-awareness-can-help-leadersmore-than-an-mba-can [2018, July 31]. Ibarra, H. & Hunter, M.L. 2007. How leaders create and use networks. Available: https://hbr.org/2007/01/how-leaders-create-and-use-networks [2018, July 31]. Korver, L. 2016. Developing global leaders. Available: https://www.executivedevelopment.com/developing-global-leaders [2018, July 31]. Kraemer, H. 2011. From values to action: the four principles of values-based leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Peregrym, D. & Wollf, R. 2013. Values-based leadership: the foundation of transformational servant leadership. The Journal of Values-Based Leadership. 6(2):1-13. Sostrin, J. 2018. Build your leadership resilience. It’s an act of defiance. Available: https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Build-Your-Leadership-Resilience-Its-anAct-of-Defiance?gko=eb158 [2018, August 1]. University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. 2018. Rewiring leadership: the future we want, the leadership we need. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. © 2018 University of Cambridge All Rights Reserved Tel: +44 203 457 5774 | Email: [email protected] | Website: getsmarter.com Page 10 of 10