Welcome to the latest in a series of brief interviews with guest experts from KnowledgeBrief’s Innovation Programme, providing a window into the experts’ latest ideas and new advice for executives.
Following the Innovation Day in March, Professor Victor Newman (VN) from University of Greenwich gave us an interview to discuss how leaders should apply an adaptive form of leadership that recognises different individuals and situations, instead of sticking to one leadership style that has worked for them in the past.
KB: What’s the key business challenge that organisations need to address that your research tackles?
VN: We talk a lot about engagement and the power of employing diverse people, but the ability to operate “smart” to build engagement with a range of different people, who are at different levels and with different talents and capabilities, through leadership is rarely addressed in a useful way. At some point, we need to move beyond pious platitudes and apply a practical, adaptive form of leadership that recognises individuality, and is capable of helping individuals and leaders to become the best that they can be. This can only work when leaders and employees work from data based on a shared model that shows them where both are, and what is missing for both leaders and employees.
The problem with current leadership research is that it tends to tell you more about the researcher than provide anything useful for the consumer to apply to their own situation. In designing the “Unpack your Leadership Style”, I took an old, simple but practical model: the Hersey-Blanchard Leadership Style model that makes an obvious point – that leadership behaviour needs to be based on the relationship between the leader and the persons being led and both parties’ ability to deliver their role.
A key issue for leaders is the ability to deliver agile, adaptive leadership that recognises the employees’ needs, instead of delivering the leadership style that has worked in the past, in different situations and hoping that it will continue to be applicable in novel situations as the pace of change continues.
KB: How did you approach this challenge at the latest Innovation Day?
VN: The novel part of this session was to begin by inviting participants to analyse the people they were responsible for in terms of their current perceived development within a continuum: where D1 was for someone new to a role, through to D4: someone who is capable of operating without direct supervision.
The next thing we did, was to invite participants to use a simple diagnostic to identify their current strengths within a complementary leadership styles model ranging from S1 (directive leadership) through to S4 (delegating leadership - appropriate for empowerment). When we compared the results of the employee development levels (D1 to D4) with the actual, dominant (strongest) leadership styles of the leaders themselves, we tend to find a mis-match. Leaders’ preferred strength is to operate within a limited range: the middle of their leadership style continuum (S2 - coach, S3 - support) in the face of a significant population of employees who are actually at both extremes of the complementary range of D1 and D4 and who thus require S1 and S4 leadership (directive and delegating/empowering leadership) and are currently poorly-served by the limited leadership preference range.
KB: What advice would you give to executives, based on your findings?
VN: Powerful participant insights and principles that come out of this workshop process of identifying the gap between employee needs and current leadership delivery include:
- When you want to influence people, work out of their current needs, rather than delivering your favourite leadership behaviour which may not be appropriate.
- Understand how leaders get stuck in S1 (directive behaviour) due to an emergency and continue to keep their employees locked into D1 behaviours, believing this is the only option and to escape in order to release potential talent to flourish, but don’t know how.
- The cost to the organisation of removing employees who couldn’t deliver because leaders failed to identify the employee’s actual development needs and provide smart, adaptive leadership and just gave up on them.
- How manipulative employees can trick leaders into micro-management (also S1) by adopting helpless behaviour. Recognising where employees and leaders are unconsciously self-sabotaging themselves through getting trapped in a reinforcing cycle of behaviours that lead to failure.
- The power of objective, evidence-based feedback conversations involving employees to design appropriate behaviours in order to move forward; and the power of designing feedback that operates like a gift (in terms of meeting their actual needs rather than reinforcing your own position or prejudices).
- Recognising how to operate in the leadership gaps of S1 (directive behaviour) by building a foundation of defined knowledge, skills and behaviours that make it possible for the leader and the employee to adapt, to deliver the appropriate performance as confidence, commitment and capability on both sides matures to enable movement towards S4 (delegating leadership).
KB: What did you learn or take away from meeting with the executives in the KnowledgeBrief Innovation Programmes?
VN: The great advantage of KnowledgeBrief lies in the dynamic learning situation that makes it possible for people to learn by contextualising the ideas and research that KnowledgeBrief and speakers deliver, process it and potentially apply it to real situations. It is this recognition, processing and capture of key points within the participants’ real situation that is unique.
With thanks to Professor Victor Newman, Industrial Fellow at University of Greenwich.
Part of a series of brief interviews with expert guests from our Innovation Programmes, we cover insights from the latest research and key advice for executives to stay ahead in management and innovation.