Developing leaders at all levels

Leadership is more than simply a role;

it’s a capability to be developed, actively managed and reinforced. The attitudes and behaviours of leaders are a key influence on strategy execution and corporate culture.

Leadership is about making things happen. This calls for a deep understanding of the context in which you operate, and involving people throughout the organisation.

According to Accenture Strategy, for leaders to be effectively engaged and enabled, you need a framework for building a culture of distinction, and an architecture that links:

talent identification and selection
career pathways based on distinct levels of leadership
leadership development interventions aligned to each career turning point

Leaders distill what is happening in the marketplace and share this knowledge with employees.

Leaders invite employees to think in terms of experience as well and to take ownership of the company’s success.

Leaders keep things practical. Strategies real.

High-performance organisations, deal effectively with 2 key leadership elements:

the ability to think strategically about the future

the ability to manage change in building a culture of distinction and a high performing workplace

Creating a high performing workplace that Supports Engagement, Motivation and Growth

Organisations are under increasing pressure to achieve performance improvements and maximise the contribution of every employee.

Performance management is one of the most critical issues organisations face

The importance of performance management as a critical pillar of HR practice has forced more and more organisations in introducing a High Performance Workplace (HPW) framework to empower high performance teams.

It all boils down to culture, leadership, and employee engagement.

The 4 Capabilities Leadership Framework

The 4 Capabilities Leadership Framework integrates the 4 critical components of leadership required to drive change.

Sensemaking: Making sense of the world around you and determine where your organisation is going

Sensemaking is the capacity to quickly assess a constantly changing environment, and continually readjust as you take in new information and impressions about markets, technologies, and competitors.

Successful sensemaking will allow you to generate insights that guide future action for the organisation and foster better decisions in uncertain environments.

Relating: Developing key relationships within and across organisations to foster trust and consensus

To be successful, you must master two key skills: inquiry and advocacy.

Inquiry is listening and understanding what others are thinking and feeling.

Advocating is taking a stand and trying to influence others, while also being open to alternative views, resulting in more effective dialogues and stronger connections.

Visioning: Creating a compelling vision of what is possible in the future

Visionary leaders are those who can get people motivated to try to make things better and different.

Inventing: Designing new ways of working together- structures and processes that move the organisation toward the vision. It is putting into practice new ways of interacting and organising.

Leaders build reliable strategic frameworks that enable employees to differentiate between important and unimportant issues, prioritise the highest-value work, owning the process, not just the tasks of executing strategy.

Vision, purpose, reflection, and systems thinking are essential if organisations are to realise their full potential.

Seeking different perspectives in solving problems effectively. Sensing changes in the environment, and encourage employees to contribute ideas that could improve performance.

Operating with a strong results orientation. Leadership is about not only communicating a vision and setting objectives but also executing to achieve results through efficiency and productivity.

Supporting others. Leaders who are supportive sense how other people feel, build trust and inspire to deliver winning results.

Professor Thomas W. Malone
MIT Sloan School of Management

Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.

Professor Malone teaches classes on organisational design, information technology, and leadership, and his research focuses on how work can be organised in new ways to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology.

Professor Deborah Ancona
MIT Sloan School of Management

Deborah Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management, a Professor of Organisation Studies, and the Director of the MIT Leadership Center at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Her pioneering research focuses on how successful teams operate, on the concept of distributed leadership and on the development of research-based tools, practices, and teaching/coaching models that enable organisations to foster creative leadership at every level.

Professor Wanda Orlikowski
MIT Sloan School of Management

Wanda Orlikowski is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Management and a Professor of Information Technologies and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

She investigates technologies in the workplace, (technologies in distributed collaboration, as well as the social and technological aspects of working virtually) with particular emphasis on structures, cultures, work practices, and organisational change. She led a National Science Foundation project on the social and economic implications of digital work.

Professor Wanda Orlikowski holds a BComm and an MComm in business information systems from the University of the Witwatersrand, and an MPhil and a PhD in information systems from New York University.

Dr. Peter M. Senge; PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Peter M. Senge is a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning North America. He received a B.S. in engineering from Stanford University, an M.S. in social systems modeling and Ph.D. in management from MIT. Dr. Senge has lectured extensively throughout the world, translating systems theory into tools to aid better understanding of economic and organisational change, by decentralising the role of leadership in organisations. He has worked with leaders across all industries, education, health care and the public sector.