There has been much talk of 'New generation leadership' of late which got me thinking about how leaders establish new directions.
One of the hardest jobs for any leader is going off in a different direction. This may only be a small change of direction, but it may be enough for existing followers to stop following. Those followers may somehow feel betrayed by this altered course. “After all that I have done, and now we are doing this?!”
Cutting a fresh path is both harder and easier for a new leader.
It is easier because there is no baggage to jettison, no inconsistency to defend and no loyalty to the past to retain for retention’s sake. And there can be plenty of quoting of George Santayana about ‘those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it’ and so forth. The new leader is at liberty to both praise the old warriors and then, almost in the same sentence, make a virtue of departing from their strategies.
But it is also far harder because there is no guarantee that a new leader will bring the followers of the old leader with them. The new direction may just be too novel and be seen as too much of a break with the past. Existing bonds of friendship and trust will have to be rebuilt by the new leader, as they are now the leader and the world has changed.
The critical judgement comes in how bold to make the new direction. Will it just be ‘new’ in name only? Or will the new leader ‘boldly go where no one has gone before’? How will the new leader judge how bold to be, not just at the start of the new leadership journey but as it continues?
The best leaders have people that they can rely upon and trust to give them independent, full and frank feedback about whether their ‘boldness quotient’ is on the money or not.
How is your ‘BQ’ right now?
(How do you know?)
How will you stay ‘bold’ and avoid the ‘new’ becoming the ‘new old’
(How will you know?)
My thanks for you your introduction and ideas about boldness. I feel that they will give many people a valued perspective for managing their boldness in challenging and/or opportunistic situations and circumstances. My team find boldness a very variable dynamic having taken-up the challenge of developing and introducing new management innovations in work based inspired learning. Sustainability of boldness has been and still is a roller coaster ride in the application of the corporate university management concept and its hybrid variations with some countries clamouring for our know-how whilst at home here it results in strong even hostile reactions from traditional academic institutions.Boldness seems to be well connected to personal energy and the degree of satifaction we get from making progress and if the outcome from being bold takes a disproportionate amount of energy for the satisfaction achieved in one situation then other more rewarding options are taken. Perhaps we are experiencing revisiting some old paths at home that have been abused in one way or another and must continue cutting fresh paths. We would be interested in your comments on choice and direction.
ReplyDeleteHi JonInteresting that the theme of boldness seems to focus on what the 'leader' brings to the table.One of the issues with leadership is that this should be a feature at all levels within an organisation but is often seen as a top down characteristic. So I would argue that boldness is something that needs to be part of the culture of the organisation at all levels i.e. the 'leader' would only tap into the existing culture. New leaders rarely change the culture in a significant way - it takes time to change. So it is not surprising that boldness is lacking in a risk averse culture even if a new leader is telling staff to 'just do it'. If the organisation really wants to be bold, start to change the culture, dispose of the old rules and trust staff to do the right thing.
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