How a new leadership training model is shaping new leadership behaviors and practices
Today’s organizations are aggressively seeking leaders that will bring their company into the future. To build and maintain a competitive advantage, and grow an organization at scale, business leaders must groom talent with forward-looking leadership development programs that will help leaders triumph not only over current challenges, but also welcome new challenges.
Evolutionary Development: Preparing Leaders to Thrive in the Digital Era
While leadership development is something everyone is quite familiar with, evolutionary development is a relatively new concept. Because of its multi-disciplinary nature, it brings out some prominent characteristics like positive approach, accountability, agility and self-awareness. This leadership training model is less about day-to-day execution, and more about the values and beliefs that fuel productivity and innovation amid rapidly-evolving business challenges. Such people are dedicated to the ever-continuing process of learning and never give up even after failing in completing a task over and again.
Key traits of an evolutionary leader:
Committed to transformation
We all know – Change is the only constant and evolutionary leaders are not scare to admit this. They continuously strive to adapt to the changes that happen around them, be it organizational, technology-led, or any other. Their thought process will always be to remain in congruence of such transformation and make their team pass through the change without much hassle, keeping things in place as much as possible.
Heroism in the form of teamwork is appreciated
They understand that any task can only be accomplished if the whole team comes together and take up their responsibility. New ideas, insights and perspectives are always welcoming under their leadership, which also makes the team feels valued and heard.
Keeping all the stakeholders interconnected
Evolutionary leaders have a larger idea of the people they are working with and they consider all as equal constituents for accountability. Their thought process goes way beyond the win-loss thinking and they believe in creating long-term relationships.
Not afraid of taking risks
The best thing about such people is that they don’t shy away from taking risks. However, this makes them vulnerable, but this transparency helps in building trust among the entire team. For them, these risks involved are quite small when compared with the goals of organization.
Innovation is always on your mind
Though leaders have a proven track record backing them for an activity for execution of a task, but evolutionary leaders will never say ‘no’ to an innovative idea. They are open to look for new and creative ways to take up the same task and find better ways of completing it.
Self-awareness with an eye to evolution as whole
Evolutionary leaders mostly possess an array of skills to build an efficient team, they might lack a few skills or are still in progress of developing those. Such people are completely self-aware and will never keep others in the dark. While they keep upgrading their skills through constant learning and experience, they would keep their team mindful of the entire picture, owing to continually develop as a whole.
Listen carefully, implement accordingly
Hearing out patiently what others have to say is probably the most important thing that one can do. It is crucial to listen to everyone and then pick up pieces to take up a task and complete it the simplest way. This is one quality such leaders are layered up with. This quality makes stakeholders feel heard, valued and they wish to offer more in their role.
Taking the ownership
One is certainly living in a bubble if he believes that the task is not going to be problematic during the process. Leaders make sure that they take the ownership of any goof-up that happens during the entire process. Sometimes, it is tough for leaders to reach out to their teams and point out mistakes, but they understand that being uncomfortable is one of the shortcomings that comes with leadership.
Get a copy of the Guide to Evolutionary Development to learn how this new leadership training model can transform your organization’s leaders or support strategic succession planning.
