In today’s business world of ever increasing change, it is always easier to justify focusing on the immediate needs of the bottom line or latest crisis; and pay less attention to the underlying issues that ultimately drive long-term success.   One of top underlying issues for most organizations is leadership development.   Companies that develop effective and adaptable leaders are those that stay ahead of the change curve, learn to adapt and consequently grow and prosper. Are today’s employers confident that they are producing managers and leaders they need for the future? According to a Harvard Business Publishing Survey of Global Executives in September, 2013: “leaders lack the skills to achieve strategic goals, and the need to develop stronger leadership capability extends to middle managers, who are being asked to do more than ever before.”  Only 32% of the 800+ respondents believe that their organizations have the right leadership talent and skills to achieve their organizations’ strategic goals, according to the survey results There is little doubt that today’s management believe in principal that there is a clear connection between the quality of an organization’s leadership practices, and subsequent intentions by employees to stay with an organization, perform at a high level, and apply discretionary effort.  Let’s take a look at what Leadership Skills and Development Practices are needed in today’s business environment. Leadership Skills to Have and to Develop: Commitment, Resolve and Perseverance – driving every aspect of the organization towards a singular unified purpose. Risk Taking – breaking conventions and…

In our earlier post we mentioned our work with Kaplan and Kaiser the authors of the book The Versatile Leader. Today we would like to open up for discussion the concept of leadership versatility. From our perspective leadership versatility is the capability to flex as needed on a pair of opposing leadership virtues. We work with leaders to aspire to versatility in a two-sided sense. For example being direct and respectful of people's feelings or if you are a team leader who doesn't hesitate to provide direction can you remember to perform the complementary function of asking for other's input? All of us over time develop a bias and hence a preferred behavior or mindset that would impact the examples above. We tend to then either over-use and/or under-utilize those leadership behaviors. This translates to leaders getting out of balance and in some cases "lopsided". "Lopsidedness" occurs when a leader combines extreme over-use of one strength in combination with the complete disregard for it's leadership opposite. The classic example is someone who is very strategic/visionary and on the flip side pays no attention to how their vision will get operationalized. In a very real sense the dominant preference crowds out the weaker side. So here is an exercise to try on right now. Think about your very preferred ways of leading...a list of one word adjectives. Follow that up with identifying the complementary opposite of each of those preferred behaviors. Take note of how long/hard it is for you to come up with the…