The Uncommon Sense of Leadership - By Jerry Connor, Jessica Parisi, & Stephanie Peskett - Cision
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The Uncommon Sense of Leadership By Jerry Connor, Jessica Parisi, & Stephanie Peskett www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
The Uncommon Sense of Messy Leadership Extraordinary leadership in challenging times And why this may be just what we need for the future 2020 changed the world. The COVID-19 By contrast, a number of leaders and pandemic forced mass lock downs across organizations instead chose action – the globe, causing economic volatility at a and the results were exceptional. These level not seen since the Great Depression. leaders positioned their organizations to Businesses reacted quickly, closing offices provide deep care, supporting their people and requiring thousands of employees through the crisis. Businesses stepped up, to work from home. In many industries, contributing to society in meaningful ways. revenues dried up. Demand for oil slumped. Traditional hierarchies broke down and changes that normally would have taken For leaders, 2020 was messy. Without a years happened in weeks. These leaders way to predict the future, let alone what demonstrated the best of humanity, the best would happen in the following week, leaders of teams, the best of leadership. were challenged by unprecedented rapid, continuous change. This meant leaders “If only we could bottle it up,” said one of our needed to respond to new issues more quickly interviewees, the Chief Learning Officer of a than conventional logic would say is possible, world-leading CPG company. “We have been and deal with a new level of emotions from struggling for years to get our leaders to nearly all their employees, ranging from fear behave in this way… how can we keep it.. how to stress, anxiety, and deep sadness. can we keep hold of the new behaviors and cement them as our new leadership culture?” So how did leaders and organizations react? This CLO had seen the company’s leaders respond in extraordinary ways to the crisis Some chose to “wait and see.” They operated and sought to learn what it was and how to under the assumption that things would cultivate it. eventually “return to normal” and led in essentially the same way as usual. Others For years, the CLO had known that the succumbed to fear and acted defensively quicker the rate of change, the harder it – trying to control things, or “stay strong” was for leaders who tried to control or so others could depend on them, clinging manage the messiness and unpredictability to processes and avoiding talking about of the world to succeed. It was clear that a complex issues like race and mental health. new type of leadership was needed, and it These leaders tried to stick with their tried seemed that the COVID-19 crisis had tipped and tested approaches, letting their people the balance and many leaders had finally deal with their personal issues and concerns found a new way. on their own. www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
Mostly CLO/CTO roles were interviewed as a were often considered “misfits” during part of BTS’ latest research project on normal times. This is the uncommon sense. establishing the future of leadership. To A leader who is willing to admit weakness collect this information, BTS interviewed makes others feel safer than one who Chief Learning Officers from over 40 of the pretends to be strong. A leader who plans world’s top organizations. The goal of this knowing they can’t predict the future is more research was to understand the challenges successful than a leader who has a point organizations experienced – not just of view based on their experience and past reflecting on COVID-19, but looking forward performance. These leaders were the ones into the next few years- which are likely to be that organizations felt role modeled the uncertain and unpredictable – and establish mindsets leaders needed going forward. They the mindsets that successful leaders held offered a glimpse into what extraordinary during this time and would need to maintain leadership would look like in the turbulence of for continued success. This research was the next few years. augmented with data collected from an additional 40 companies who attended focus Why is this important? groups. Crises do not simply come and go. Looking ahead to the future, unpredictable and fast What research was conducted to changing times are nearly certain for the support this article? foreseeable future. Things won’t “go back to normal.” Leaders will continue to face messy In 2020, BTS interviewed more than challenges for years to come. For example, 40 of the world’s most senior leaders businesses have a new understanding of accountable for leadership learning. their roles in creating inclusive, equitable The goal of these interviews was to and diverse cultures. Organizations must understand how the COVID-19 crisis embrace the new normal – the increased has changed what leading companies speed of change, differing working need from their leaders. This patterns (more virtual and global, less title information was augmented this with and hierarchy), diversity of consumption data collected from an additional 40 (increased choices thanks to software and companies who participated in focus digital advancements) and their expanding groups. role in society. To write this article, BTS cross- Over the past decade, some of the mindsets referenced the interview data with the and behaviors uncovered by this research BTS mindset research, which is based have surfaced in the highest performing on data from over 100,000 coaching executives – those successfully leading conversations. transformations and those who led fast-growth companies that pushed the boundaries but also had people who loved The research showed that certain leaders working for them. Pre-COVID-19, leaders with struggled and many of them seemed to be these traits were typically a small minority, stuck in certain habits. It became apparent maybe 5% of the leader population. Post- that certain approaches simply don’t work COVID-19, these attributes have accelerated anymore and leaders who cling to these to be essential for the “norm.” Despite this, approaches are no longer succeeding. By thousands of leaders still struggle to embody contrast other leaders were thriving and this style of leadership – a requirement for succeeding in the “messiness.” Interestingly, future success. these leaders who were more apt to pivot www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
So how can we “bottle this up?” While conducting the research, it became very clear that there were five attributes separating extraordinary responses to challenging times from the ordinary and ineffective. These five attributes form “messy” leadership. How successful leaders Where leaders struggled responded Advocating ecosystem Siloed business and interdependencies and loosely connected societal impact. ethical aspirations. “We only talk about Having the courage to business here.” talk about emotive of personal Issues. Being Leaders feel safe open about bad news. behind a professional Showing compassion. veneer. A focus on process, Focusing on outcomes annual strategy and being responsive and budgeting. in the moment. Being Slow quarterly change ready. management. Seeing multiple Seeing the future possible futures and as a continuation running fast cycle of the past. experiments. The power of not knowing. Vulnerability, The superhero voracious curiosity, syndrome. Being humility and letting go strong and holding of the leader centric onto your expertise. view. www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
Why is this extraordinary? A step shifts.” Level one shifts include experiences like how to be resilient in the face of setbacks, change of maturity is underway. how to adopt a growth mindset, how to The MESSY acronym was selected influence a challenging colleague. Leaders intentionally. “Messy” describes the type at the first line level struggle with level one leader who doesn’t try to control a fast- challenges six times as often as they do level changing, chaotic environment, but finds a two, and mid-level leaders struggle with level way of leading in it. This requires a different one challenges over four times as often as level of maturity. What do we mean by a level two. In other words, level two is unusual. different level of maturity? Yet all the messy leadership attributes require level two shifts. They require a level Over the last fourteen years, BTS Coach, of maturity that is uncommon and was the first mover in scalable coaching, has previously inaccessible to many leaders. coached more than 10,000 leaders per year. With each coaching session, data is It is remarkable that organizations across collected, anonymized, and aggregated to industries share similar experiences with create an immense database that provides their leaders’ responses to challenging times. deep insight into leaders’ experiences. One However, to “bottle it up” and make this key finding from this data was what leaders method of leading accessible, business as admitted they struggled with. From these usual leadership development won’t work. responses, twelve mindset shifts emerged as Reverting to past training, performance the changes leaders found most challenging management and processes will produce and those with the biggest correlation to past results. To maintain and nurture this changes in performance. extraordinary leadership, organizations need to take a different approach. Organizations The twelve shifts were divided into maturity need MESSY leadership. levels. Most leaders struggle with “level one So what is MESSY leadership? From The superhero syndrome. Being strong and holding on to your expertise. Being the leader who makes the calls and decisions. To The power of not knowing. Vulnerability, voracious curiosity, humility and letting go of the leader centric view. Creating environment for others to author the new moves. “Our biggest insight is that striving “If a leader appears to be in solid and or being competitive and being self- in control others wait for them to accepting of self and others are not solve. We need humility. Leaders who polar opposites.” say they don’t know.” – CTO global technology business – CLO global energy business www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
Almost all the stories collected By demonstrating vulnerability, from the research described an these leaders let go of their own unprecedented pace of workflow expertise. The majority of leaders evolution. In days, businesses are in their position because they had managed to shut down huge have been successful, know their offices and move whole operations function, and appreciate sharing “Our culture to work from home or pivoted this expertise through mentorship. is addicted to from being in-person retailers to As the pace of change increases, success. So we e-commerce businesses. Cross- this behavior can get in the way. are afraid to functional teams had come By contrast, extraordinary leaders fail. We give together around an aligned goal were able to hold their expertise our leadership – and achieved results that would lightly and become relentlessly permission to have taken years in normal times. curious. They actively sought be bold but outside and different perspectives they are not Leaders who tried to control this while never losing sight of the ready” failed. It was impossible for them language of their business. In Satya to lead from the front when the Nadella (Microsoft CEO)’s words, pace of change got too fast – one these leaders moved from being mind could not assimilate so much ‘know it all’ to ‘learn it all’ leaders. ever-changing data and direct the flow of each activity. Leaders who An interesting and less obvious were widely respected in normal subtext to this phenomenon is times found their people looking to the differing ways leaders who them for guidance. This was a trap. struggled and extraordinary leaders In more stable times, the strong, looked after themselves. Data lead from the front leaders had from the research indicated that driven their teams to higher and leaders who struggled tried to higher performance. Now they were ‘outsmart time’ when dealing with creating logjams and inhibiting the complexities of managing the creativity. crisis by working longer and more unsustainable hours. The paradox The extraordinary leaders who did is that by letting go of the need to something different – they were the be strong and master everything ones with the inner self-confidence it also opens up a receptivity to to be comfortable showing working differently. Without the vulnerability. These leaders said, need for superhuman powers to “I don’t know,” and asked for help. lead the team through the crisis, They let go of their attachment exceptional leaders were able to driving outcomes and instead to find more space to look after trusted their teams to respond in themselves and focus on the things different ways. Then, these leaders that really matter. were delighted by the speed with which their teams moved and found themselves celebrating changes “We need a new definition of they didn’t ask for. Their people productivity – it is no longer 9 took ownership and made the to 5.” change happen because they knew – CLO, medical services the right things to do for both their customers and teams. www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
From “We only talk about business here.” Leaders feel safe behind a professional veneer To Having the courage to talk about emotive or personal issues. Being open about bad news. Showing compassion. “Compassion is coming to the “Increasing numbers of our younger forefront… not just authenticity but people are upset and angry about deeply caring for one another.” seeing white male privilege at the top.” – CLO, Global CPG company – CTO, global technology business “Leaders who used to walk around now can’t anymore.” – CLO, retailer “Some of the old-guard leaders believe ”Our CEO, together with our CHRO, that their people are not that busy has talked to our people every day because they are at home. It’s really since early March, and still continues because there was a lack of trust to. He knows people are suffering and pre-Covid and this style of manager wants to be fully transparent, offer preferred to oversee and micro- guidance and sense of community and manage, and now can’t do that in serve the team.” virtual environment.” – Head of Talent, US – CLO, global financial organization telecommunications company Emotional connection and messy This meant that leaders who tried to “keep conversation emerged from several things professional” by avoiding sensitive trends. On one hand, many organizations subjects suddenly felt exposed. By contrast, responded to COVID-19 by showing a deep the extraordinary leaders were willing to and genuine concern for their people. In a leap into the void, listening even when it was health crisis, leaders found an extra dose uncomfortable to hear, and feel deeply from of care and compassion for the welfare of what they heard. They were willing to engage their people. On the other hand, in the US in topics that were controversial and in which and a number of other countries, the Black they couldn’t control the outcome. They did Lives Matter movement tapped into a deep so because it was important to their people, sense of unease with privilege and inequality. important to their culture, important to Organizations could no longer avoid talking society, and ultimately because they believed about sensitive issues like race, and in many that change starts with having impossible cases, organizations found their employees conversations. demanding that they engage with time, not just words. www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
Past trainings around ‘engaging others’ or environment, suddenly a whole panoply of ‘flexing your leadership style’ left leaders ill informal communication opportunities were prepared for this new dimension. Compassion not available. Connection needed to happen and courage are best achieved if a leader is within meetings rather than between them. agenda-less. In other words, techniques that Leaders needed to sense their team’s feelings revolve around how to motivate others to and check in directly rather than relying on do a task need to be set aside to focus on informal structures. Overnight, humanity better understanding and connecting with crept into the hourly meeting, with 15-20 the human being. A health crisis naturally minutes of each meeting spent checking in meant that leaders who could make people with one another, talking about family and a feel cared for were able to have a very general sense of wellbeing. tangible impact – whereas the equity crisis demanded leaders learn to handle complex Leaders who were uncomfortable sharing and emotional issues with compassion. bad news, typically out of fear that their people would lose confidence in the firm The challenges of leading remotely also or them as leaders, also struggled through shed a different light on connection. Many the pandemic. Those who believed in being leaders relied on management through transparent with all news gained respect and chance interactions. By walking around, even inspired their companies. People will catching people over coffee, or checking follow leaders who define reality clearly and in between meetings, managers could are part of the team helping fight to turn the check in with people. Shifting to a remote results around. From A focus on process. Episodic management. Attempts to ‘manage’ change. To Focusing on outcomes and being responsive in the moment Being change ready “The VUCA piece has “Is the workforce really “The danger is that as been done to death. resilient enough to we return to the new We need a different consume at the speed normal the urgency for conversation.” with which we have to change will diminish.” change.” – CLO, Global CPG – Head of a Change company – CLO, major retailer Insurance Company “We moved 40,000 people into new roles within 3 weeks, each person with personalized training based on personal gaps. We have been preparing to be agile and always learning, Covid kicked every leadership behavior we had been working on for the last 3 years into high gear and it became our new reality.” – Head of Talent, Telecommunication company www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
when they need it most. Exceptional leaders listened and sensed the moments that had A global CPG business told the the biggest impact. Overlaid on this, many story of moving 14,000 staff out of CHROs recognized they could no longer their Head Office to work remotely. leverage normal performance management The organization had five days to processes given the circumstances. CHROs move from an office-based culture are increasingly moving to ‘always on to running all the same operations feedback cultures’ and embedding richer from people’s homes. “If we had coaching cultures. The more CHROs do even contemplated this in normal this, the more ‘process’ elements of people times, we’d have spent months and leadership take a backseat to the in-the- months working through processes, moment ability for leaders to see what is conducting risk assessments and needed and step in. consulting stakeholders,” said the leader responsible. “But we didn’t The same is true of change. For many years, have time – so we just set the goal talking about and equipping leaders to and trusted people to get on with it. “manage change” has been widely accepted. Remarkably we are now talking about It has become a staple of leadership whether many people ever need to development to learn the “change curve” and come back.” think about the leaders’ role helping people let go of the old and embrace the new. The “old” view of change was s that it has a beginning a middle and an end. The unstated One of the most common characteristics assumption was that there was a “new of leaders who struggled during the crisis normal” after the change. But increasingly was an overreliance on process. Processes leaders are experiencing a world in which are useful ways to eliminate waste and change is constant. The most responsive create consistency in execution. However, in leaders, therefore, expect this and rather times of rapid change it is simply too slow than starting with a mindset of “how do we or not possible to agree how to do the work get through this change” they before beginning. Leaders who thrived in the start with an expectation unpredictable environment focused less on that change is constant process and more on outcomes. In doing so, and with change they created the space within which teams comes opportunity. could achieve amazing results. At BTS, we call this the Change- This same phenomenon is seen in people Ready Leader ™. leadership. Just before the crisis, Jerry Connor, Head of Global Leadership at BTS, published the book The Four Greatest Coaching Conversations, which describes how leaders need to move from regular set-piece one-to-ones to a much more dynamic view of leadership, focusing on the moments when people need help the most. This trend has continued apace. An overreliance on structured conversations is too slow, time consuming, and denies leaders the opportunity to support their people www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
From Looking for clues to the future in the past To Seeing multiple possible futures and running fast cycle experiments “It is the ultimate “People are testing “Leaders find it hard to Rookie experience. around different hold multiple possible Everything is fast. assumptions rather futures in mind… Everyone is watching. than planning around they don’t like the Just got to try sh**. known assumptions.” dissonance.” Let’s just go.” – CTO, telecom – CLO, technology – CLO, global business company agribusiness Through interviews with leaders around their market and imagined the different ways in COVID-19 experience, an interesting tendency which they would evolve. These leaders then emerged. Generally, leaders tended to talk shaped alternative futures and began to lead about their experience in two ways. They with these in mind, constantly adjusting their either described it as a ‘return to normal’ or picture as new data emerged. ‘how the experience has changed the way we work.’ In other words, their responses were This future orientation allowed successful biased to either the pandemic being a short leaders to pursue a very different way of term disruption that would eventually go responding to the crisis – such as rapid away or a fundamental change to the way resource allocation. Pre-COVID-19, a retailer they thought and led. This is unsurprising described how around 25% of its revenue as the human brains is not naturally apt for was online. As physical stores started to holding multiple possible futures in mind and close, this retailer feared the worst. Yet, dancing with the paradoxes and dilemmas within a month e-commerce was now driving they present. 70% of its original turnover. To perform this feat, staff who normally supported physical This frame of mind impacted the way leaders shops rapidly pivoted to trebling the size of dealt with the future. For example, leaders the company’s online business in weeks. The who struggled tended to think in terms of business did not spend any time on complex classic planning processes, taking current trade off discussions, it pivoted fast and trends and projecting them forward to moved its resources accordingly. create a plan. But when the future has so many diverse and difficult possibilities, trying “We went from wait and see to test and to predict what will happen becomes less and learn,” said one interviewee, “like a true less helpful. As a CEO from a global energy version of agile.” Interestingly, several company pointed out, “no-one in their wildest interviewees described how the original vision dreams could have predicted the drop off of the Agile manifesto has been corporatized in demand for oil that we just experienced.” and over-processed. What seemed to be Successful leaders took a different approach. occurring was a return to its essence – Instead of looking at current trends, they genuine fast cycle learning – but based in took their minds into the future and looked a dynamic and constantly evolving view of back. They looked for ‘weak’ signals in the future opportunities and dilemmas. www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
From Siloed business and loosely connected ethical aspirations To Advocating ecosystem interdependencies and societal impact “We need more than “Customers care about business fluency… even “There is a lot more to decide which wells how you responded scrutiny on whether a to close down you to the bush fires and company has grown need to understand Covid. Ethics plus big out of the misery the impact on a range bigger purpose is so of other people.” of social, political and much more important.” environmental factors.” – CLO, technology company – Australian retailer – CEO, Global Energy business Many of the businesses included in the Interviewees consistently described how their study were proud of how they’d responded business had taken positive action in line with to the recent crises, both in looking its purpose. Many pointed out that this was a after their people and in supporting the time when actions spoke louder than words. communities they serve. For example, an African agribusiness described how its Similarly, interviewees reported their belief that purpose needs to come before most effective leaders as being able to profit had helped them through the crisis. see connections and interdependencies. Their operations had to keep running and so By looking broadly, leaders were able to they were reliant on and relied on by local act fast without creating negative side communities. The business quickly pivoted effects. A multitude of interviewees noted from making alcohol out of sugar cane to how silos dissolved as leaders unified and making hand sanitizer – not because this acted promptly to solve pressing issues. was a profitable innovation – but because it Collaboration was no longer confined to was a way to contribute to the community in existing teams, but a natural outcome of challenging times. leaders from across the business seeing a need and deciding to solve it together. This extended beyond organizations. www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
MESSY Leadership for about accountability (reinforcing “I am responsible”), and even the way they run extraordinary times their strategic planning processes (with the The similarities between stories throughout implicit belief that “I need to set out a clear the interview process were notable. The old plan for the future”). perspective of strong leadership, setting a clear direction, taking others with you, and New mindsets such as, “it is okay to be managing through process weren’t right for human,” “we are constantly learning more a messy world. Something new had emerged about the future,” “change is something I and many interviewees felt that this had the learn from,” and “I trust myself to see what potential to indicate a step change in the is needed” carry deep implications, both way businesses are led. for leaders and the way we think about our businesses. This doesn’t mean abandoning the processes, structures, and tools that make organizations effective, but it does “A decade ago, it was the top 1% who mean leveraging them in a much more figured out how to lead in this way – dynamic way. now it is becoming mainstream.” – CLO, pharmaceutical company Examples interviewees spoke about included: • Moving the focus from training to job rotation. Consciously building leaders who feel confident leading across the breadth of the organization. “A handful of us knew how to lead this way. Before we were pretending • Changing the way leaders think about to lead in the old way as well so we customers. From “consumer insight” to weren’t challenged. Now we can be “insights into humanity.” ourselves.” • Shifting the focus of performance systems from set piece events to a more – CLO, financial services dynamic ‘always on’ coaching dialogues with leaders. • Consciously developing different What is also clear is that these glimpses of capabilities. the future will not take root on their own. Organizations will need to rethink the way It is easy to read this list and think it is an they develop, reward, and nurture leaders. evolution of current practice. In reality, across the globe few leaders are at this level. This Organizations need to help their leaders is a significant shift that requires different let go of old beliefs. Mindsets like “I need tools and different approaches. to be in control,” “I am responsible,” “I need to be professional,” and “I need to set out If this shift is made successfully, it will create a clear plan for the future” are unhelpful. extraordinary leaders capable of navigating Unfortunately most organizations reinforce extraordinary times. This understanding will these beliefs in countless ways, from lay the foundation, not only for the coming their focus on process (implying “I need months – but for years to come. to be in control”), to the way they talk www.bts.com Copyright © 2020 BTS
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