Coronavirus gifts us a new rite of passage for leaders and organisations. An opportunity to be better, do better and better serve all stakeholders.

The challenges inherent in this new world of work are deserving of us embracing a more progressive, enabling leadership style that puts people first and business second. It is also a necessary shift if we are to truly focus on recovery and start the important transition to a better normal.

Drucker Forum 2021

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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With Covid-19, there is both an intellectual and an emotional case for leaders to step back and reflect on how they can lead their people. Command-and-control, hero leaders have no place in the present or the future. Leadership needs to be inclusive, transformational, conscious, collaborative, and humane. It must be a vehicle by which organisations and their workers can contribute to building a brighter and more sustainable future for everyone.

Prior to the pandemic we were already swimming in a sea of change. We have long known that there is a problem with leadership in that old models are untenably flawed. This, and the backdrop of shifting customer priorities, the blurring of traditional boundaries between employer and employee and the replacement of wealth and status with purpose and meaning, combine in calling for a rethink on how leadership should work.

Facing the storm

As stakeholders push the envelope on ethical credentials and Covid rides roughshod over businesses and globalised markets, we find ourselves exposed to a perfect storm. Economic, environmental, fiscal, cultural, and political crises are colliding and creating the space where pledges and words need to be put into action with a commitment to change things for the better.

Although there is no true parallel in recent history to today’s pandemic’s shocks, the last time the world experienced a milestone of this magnitude, the global economy was plunged into freefall by 2008’s financial market crash. Valuable lessons were there to be learned as the banks found themselves being bailed out by taxpayers but paying a high reputational price as public confidence and trust in financial institutions collapsed.

Issues such as trust and integrity took centre stage as the public blamed the banks and their leaders for the jeopardy caused. As Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, points out in ‘Values’, ‘The global financial crisis was as much a crisis of culture as of capital.’ For Carney, finance had lost track of its core values of fairness, integrity, prudence, and responsibility resulting in a ‘crisis of values as well as value.’

Leadership for the human imperative

Today, as we continue to grapple with the global pandemic, blame is being levelled at the world’s figureheads and senior leaders for not doing the right thing, at the right time, in time. Vulnerability and fragility have played out with huge human and economic costs, reminding us that humanity is very much at the mercy of mightier forces. Although piles of debt and misaligned incentives are not to blame this time, the crisis of values is still making its presence felt. We see with some repeated experiences, that values and purpose still hold an important place in society – and should also do so in business.

Many, though, have been touched and moved by expressions of kindness, empathy, and care as we have dealt with furlough, home schooling, isolation, and remote working. It is this spirit, the human imperative, that leadership styles should embody.

Good leadership must be fair, effective, and impactful if it is to have a meaningful legacy. It should demonstrate care in a world that has become high on carbon and hooked on growing wealth for the few. We need to re-engineer what strong leadership is by listening to our people, our customers, one another and learning from lessons in the past.  

Like the climate crisis, this is just one piece of the challenging jigsaw puzzle we face. Leadership and work need to be decoupled from money, power, and dominance. By cultivating a new mindset of empowering and caring for others and the systems we work within, only then can we be part of the solution, not the problem.

About the Author:

Gina Lodge is CEO of the Academy of Executive Coaching. She has more than 20 years’ experience in management and is an accredited executive coach.

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
#DruckerForum

Peter Drucker’s wisdom and experience endures both through the current crisis and the rebuilding going forward. The world is in a period of great uncertainty, and although being caught in the eye of the storm feels like a unique experience, there is always another one brewing.

Leaders will have recognised that the leadership style that may have supported their company surviving and hopefully thriving through the first phase of the pandemic will be different from the one needed to lead them out of it.

Drucker Forum 2020

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the fully digital 12th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “Leadership Everywhere” on October 28, 29 & 30, 2020.
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Five-year strategies and plans are no longer relevant to the challenges we now face. In a crisis, time is of the essence. Falter or delay and you can be rapidly lost and left behind. 

Agile action on a ‘what’s next’ basis and frequent communication with the team while keeping a calm head and focus will be imperative to leading well.

In her book Leading through Uncertainty, Jude Jennison notes that “It takes an exceptionally skilled leader to balance the energy of driving results with the softness of nurturing in complete harmony”.

What leadership skills, then, do we need to navigate through periods of uncertainty? 

Hal Gregersen, a speaker well known to Drucker Forum audiences, believes executives should be talking less and questioning more. In his self-explanatorily entitled book Questions are the Answer, Gregersen describes humans as complex systems with potential just waiting to be released. A coaching approach – asking questions rather than telling – can unlock the answers by enhancing capacity for original thinking and problem solving.

Leaders need to embrace new operating models. Agility is vital, and the key to success will lie in adapting leadership styles to the stage and rate of change. As American academic Leon Megginson observed in Lessons from Europe for American Business, “According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”

As many have commented, Covid-19 has concentrated years of economic and social change into a few short months. For example, remote working is helping companies to thrive. Surprised executives note that working relationships are not adversely affected, while employees reap the unexpected benefits of much reduced travel costs and the ability to spend more time with their families. Companies benefit from reduced overheads, the planet from a drop in travel.

Change breeds further change, and perhaps with changes to home working policies vacant office blocks could be repurposed to fill the shortfall in housing. Travel companies will need to develop new pricing models for those commuting to the office two days a week instead of five.

Yet the heart of leading into the post-covid recovery must be a focus on investing in the quality of human relationships for a better working world.

Recovery is the third phase of crisis leadership, writesMerete Wedell-Wedellsborg, executive adviser and clinical psychologist, in Harvard Business Review, in which the human dimension of trust, transparency and autonomy must be paramount.

Understanding and sharing purpose and values both inside and outside an organisation help to create an environment of psychological safety, allowing people to take risks and feel supported. In this new world order, leaders must recognise and be grounded by common humanity.

Margaret Wheatley puts it this way: “We need leaders who recognise the harm being done to people and planet through the dominant practices that control, ignore, abuse and oppress the human spirit. We need leaders who put service over self, stand steadfast in crisis and failures, and who display unshakeable faith that people can be generous, creative and kind.”

About the Author:
Gina Lodge is CEO of the Academy of Executive Coaching. She has more than 20 years’ experience in management and is an accredited executive coach.

[Link: –Leading into the Post-Covid Recovery]

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the fully digital 12th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “Leadership Everywhere” on October 28, 29 & 30, 2020.
#DruckerForum

When James F Moore published his seminal The Death of Competition in 1996, he described being asked by several business executives ‘how they could increase their capacity to cope in a corporate world where change showed no signs of slowing down’.

Much of the strategic guidance offered by the book still holds weight, but what we’re still seeing is the need for a profound management shift. Fast forward to 2019 and executives are still asking the same questions.

Drucker Forum 2019

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 11th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Power of Ecosystems” taking place on November 21 & 22, 2019 in Vienna, Austria.
#GPDF19 #ecosystems

Competition is so fierce that ecosystems have evolved to the point where delivering value creation for the customer is central to businesses winning or losing. As Moore notes, better tools are needed for business development and market creation. However, these tools, such as coaching, are not always being deployed because some bosses are too scared to let go of the reins.

As we move into the digital economy, the biggest challenge facing organisations is not from technology, but from workplace culture and the need for managers to adopt new ways of leading.

A recent Harvard Business Review article argues that an alternative to the command-and-control style of leadership has failed to emerge. It highlights leadership research carried out by MIT analysing how two long-established companies have identified and adapted three leadership styles, described as ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘enabling’ and ‘architecting’.

Investigating the role each plays in the organisation’s performance, it identified ‘a shared belief that leadership should rest with whoever is best positioned to exercise it, regardless of title’.

In organisations run on such a collective leadership footing, coaching becomes a major element in cultural and organisational design. A coaching approach is favoured by many high-performing businesses that understand its contribution in managing change and developing competitive advantage.

Traditional coaching has emerged as a key tool and talent where leaders are equipped with coaching skills for everyday use. Under their influence, cultures become more open and employees gain the space, time and support to overcome self-limiting beliefs, free up their imagination and maximise their potential.

In the age of automation, companies must rely more on their employees’ innate human qualities such as lateral thinking and creativity to unlock performance. Liberating our people creates new knowledge and gives the capability to lift entire organisations and enable leaders to cope in volatile environments.

In our new sharing economy, where individuals, businesses, services and products are more connected than ever, there is no room for isolation at the top of business. Purpose, values and the importance of community and wider society are becoming ever more fundamental in their influence on ecosystems.

Business leaders’ own ecosystems will need to better serve the wider world; and a systemic approach to management where all the connections are coached will be crucial if organisations are to continue innovating and creating best value for stakeholders. Our leaders need self-awareness, commitment, humility, trust and purpose to enable their workforces and ecosystems to work for the greater good of all.

Perhaps it’s fitting to give Moore the last word: “We need a range of voices – a diversity of inputs – and the skills to listen, appreciate and respect each other.’’

About the Author:

Gina Lodge is CEO of the Academy of Executive Coaching. She has more than 20 years’ experience in management and is an accredited executive coach

This article is one in the Drucker Forum “shape the debate” series relating to the 11th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Power of Ecosystems”, taking place on November 21-22, 2019 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF19 #ecosystems