\u201cOne part Churchill, two parts Princess Diana\u201d was how one of our clients recently described what was demanded of her as a successful leader in a modern day organization. This was certainly an intriguing mental image, but one which made sense as she went on to describe her experiences. What she said also reflected what we have learned from working with the fifteen organisations who are using Heartbeat -large and small organisations in retail, manufacturing, technology, logistics and education \u2013 and supporting their leadership teams.<\/p>\n
Leadership is certainly a bigger issue than ever. Not that long ago we expected those at the top to be great managers and make sure that the processes worked and that outputs were achieved efficiently. Top bosses were often great technicians and this reflected the nature of many organisations \u2013 we had more large scale industrial operations such as coal, steel and mass produced manufacturing in which the key issues were knowing what to do and when. Now, there are more service and knowledge based businesses in which the personality, approach and personal commitment of people have a much greater direct impact on business success and senior individuals have a key role to play in activating them.<\/p>\n
From this work, we have spotted some big shifts in what effective leadership really looks like now. Of these, the three most pronounced changes to leadership which we\u2019ve noticed are: the need to communicate a vision and then engage people in it at every level, the huge impact of trust as the fuel of leadership, and the growing necessity to give people freedom within a framework.<\/p>\n
Heartbeat has helped leaders in our client organisations establish this connection and have conversations on a larger scale by giving access to people\u2019s feelings and comments in real time and enabling them to respond to issues while they are relevant and fresh.<\/p>\n
The challenge is that at the same time as trust is becoming ever more important, we are less and less inclined to give it. Our faith in politicians , figures of authority, professionals and experts is declining rapidly, so organizational leaders have to work harder to make connections and build links. Heartbeat has been helping our clients do this by being open to feedback \u2013 good and less good \u2013 and responding to it directly in a human way, rather than in a dry, sanitized manner months after the issue was most relevant.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne part Churchill, two parts Princess Diana\u201d was how one of our clients recently described what was demanded of her as a successful leader in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n