In the “Old days”, the leader was the boss; he (and it usually was a male) took decisions on his own – and then came out of his office and told his subordinates what they were to do. The problem was that often, decisions taken in this manner, did not result in any real change. The boss had to supervise, push, cajole, threaten, reward or punish and still many decisions achieved little real change.
Today, leaders are not bosses; Today, if you boss good people, they go elsewhere.
Today, we spend between 50-80% of our time in conversations, meetings, digital exchanges or face-to-face exchanges. Why? Because it is how we create value. It is our production challenge.
Indeed, the challenge of a leader today (of whatever sexual identity) is to bring a diverse group of stakeholders together around the “big questions” facing the team and to really create an environment where defences can drop, people can express their honest opinions, creativity and innovation can flourish and new solutions can emerge – while achieving full buy-in from everyone involved in the decision-making process. Then change happens. Smoothly. Easily.
This video explains just how you can do that.