Early in the pandemic, Josh Bersin called it the Big Reset: “The Coronavirus is accelerating one of the biggest business transformations in decades.”
As the business landscape evolves and employees reassess their priorities, leadership is changing as well. To reset thinking on what it means to be a leader today, we asked other thought and business leaders for their perspective. This is the third in our series.
One of the key factors found in “Great Leaders” that is frequently under emphasized is Teamwork. My experience is that building great teams, then developing and enabling them to work together is rarely evaluated when selecting leaders. A leader that takes advantage of the variety of their team’s skill sets, then getting those same team members to work together toward a common goal almost always results in success. At almost every level of my career, I witnessed teamwork skills were undervalued by many leaders. Be a great “team player” and a great “team leader” to greatly increase your odds of business success.”
-Charles Ansley, President and CEO, Symon Communications (Retired)
Great leadership is centered around empathy. Empathy for your clients and the challenges they face. Empathy for your people and their individual needs. If you can truly step into your key stakeholders’ shoes and empathize with their vision of great, all else falls into place.
-Eugene M. Kublanov, Principal, KPMG Consulting
A great leader will inspire others to fly. That inspiration comes from a building of trust through communicating a vision, being accountable for it, and making the people your focus.
-Steve Rudderham, Head of Global Business Services at AkzoNobel
Leadership is having an optimistic vision for the future, envisioning the possibilities of what could be, and then being able to communicate it in a compelling enough way that others want to follow you there.” (It’s really the combination of the two skills, –first having the vision and second having the ability to describe it in a compelling way that others can get excited about).
-Kathy F. Bernhard, KFB Leadership Solutions
Here are links to the previous blogs:
If you’re inspired by these perspectives on leadership today, stay tuned…there’s more to come! And if you are interested in crafting your own contribution, please email me at janis@issg.net