Leadership Development

Let’s face it – the way we’ve been approaching leadership development is not working any more.  We’ve been churning out leaders from the same cookie-cutter mold for far too long, and it's just not cutting it in today's dynamic, complex world. This “business as usual” approach just isn’t going to cut it anymore, so we need to reDEFYne leadership as a whole.

The best leaders are always right, right? Wrong.  I know you know the type… they must have the last word in the conversation, they consistently assert rather than inquire, they “just know.” They “may not always be right, but they are never wrong.”

Sometimes the greatest ideas come from unexpected places. That’s why I’m an advocate for “going and seeing.”  

Kelly Smith drew from her aviation experience to develop the Four Forces of Behavior model, which she presented at the 2023 COE Summit. During Kelly’s breakout session, participants were inspired to identify the forces of their own behavior in order to avoid professional landmines and achieve leadership goals. In this blog, Kelly addresses questions inspired by the stories and strategies shared in her Summit breakout session.

In the post-pandemic workplace, organizations are facing a flurry of changes. As the time available to implement change initiatives shrinks, key success factors for sustainable change are often cut based on the belief that they are an optional luxury or will slow things down. This can result in anxiety, confusion, low morale, and potential turnover of high performing employees.

I published my book, Office Optional: How To Build A Connected Culture With Virtual Teams right before the Covid-19 pandemic began. The timing was fortuitous. Seemingly the whole world switched to remote work; what I thought would happen 10 years out was rapidly taking place in a matter of weeks.

For businesses across the country, and around the globe, profitable and sustainable growth is imperative. Every CEO knows it, and the successful ones are focused on it. In today’s competitive marketplace, growth in revenues, customers, and profits will not happen without individual growth. Companies must specifically commit to growing their leaders’ knowledge, skills, perspective, confidence, and creativity.

As you prepare your organization’s at least partial return to the office, I urge you to take the time to reflect on what you’ve learned about the work. Treat the four months since the Covid-19 pandemic sent millions of workers in various occupations to shelter and work at home as an experiment. The slice of the workforce that was able to move their work to home—estimated to be somewhat more than a third of all workers—includes the group known as knowledge workers.

As we reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, we start to wonder how certain countries and regions are able to manage the pandemic better than others. By better, I mean fewer cases and containing the spread within their countries for a sustained period. Through science, we now know that effective containment of COVID-19 relies on preventive measures of wearing facemasks, washing hands, adherence to strict social distancing, monitoring daily health and avoiding public gathering to contain the spread.