We help high potentials understand how their style of communication is impacting on their relationships with their colleagues, subordinates, manager and other stakeholders in their ecosystem and what the consequences and knock-on effects of this might be.
A key challenge for all leaders today is to be consistent in their leadership behaviour and decision making. This is an important factor in building and maintaining the trust of their people. They also need to be role models of the leadership behaviour identified as critical for giving life to the desired culture that will deliver the expected results. Central to being able to exercise conscious control over their behaviour as leaders is having a good level of self-knowledge.
In effect “speaking truth to power” means having the capacity and ability to take a stand on an important issue. It means giving yourself the power to dissent in the face of greater strength and power.
The notion of a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world emerged from the US Army as a means to describe the environment arising post-cold war with the appearance of multilateral and non-state threats. It is an apt description for the environment that business now faces with significant disruption coming from political, economic and technological developments. How do we equip high potential employees and others for navigating this world while retaining their engagement and commitment to the company?
Currently there is huge excitement around an array of new and disruptive technologies impacting on the world of HR. All together it makes for the potential transformation of a HR profession that has traditionally been hampered by weak, ineffective and poorly designed processes and systems. Yet behind all this positive optimism and ambition the question of HR’s underlying business influence remains? To succeed with the new generation of “smart products” HR professionals need to focus on the question of personal and business benefits; putting to one side the ‘hardware and software” features that characterise many new solutions.
The development of Business Partnering within the finance function has been growing rapidly in recent years. The need to demonstrate more value-added contributions beyond the consolidation and reporting of the numbers is a consistent challenge for many finance professionals. Today’s modern finance function talks of thinking innovatively and becoming a real business change agent. Any finance function is a complex organisation that encompasses many different roles and responsibilities such as management reporting, audit, tax, treasury, investor relations and compliance. The potential for functions to be disjointed, isolated and misaligned is strong. So, transitioning to a fully-fledged business partnering model and role is not an easy one.
Any corporate leader will need to be resilient in the face of accelerating change and continued discontinuity. The fact is that life in today’s corporate environment is tough and demanding and continues to challenge many in terms of their work life balance and sense of engagement. Life in most corporate environments is arduous and takes a toll on even the most enthusiastic and committed of leaders and that is where individual resilience becomes crucial.
Three scenarios that crop up often in my coaching practice are:
• Will I be good enough? – The fear of something I have not experienced yet.
• Negotiating the right compensation package in internal promotions.
• Managing people who used to be peers.
The value of this book for me is the way that Jeroen captures the key elements of strategy execution in simple and practical ways. Strategy is complex and strategic execution is complex. However he provides memorable shorthand models and images getting to the essentials that every leader responsible for executing strategy should have to hand.
From the lens of a coach committed to serving others and helping them to become everything they can be, here are my key Take-Aways' from this book.