BUSINESS RESEARCH

Changing Leadership

A change of senior leadership is a critical time for any organisation: it can signify a decisive turning point in a company’s history, but it can also be a time of unprecedented turbulence and uncertainty for peers and subordinates. New leaders must figure out how to build credibility and momentum quickly, or else risk their reputations being cast into doubt.

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July 2013

While most organisations typically put considerable time and energy into selecting the right leader for the job, few actually consider what message the appointment will send out to the organisation and how it will impact those who will work with the new individual. When companies don’t communicate new appointments in the right way, they risk undermining all the hard work that went into the selection and putting the new leader up against considerable resistance and dissonance.

Leadership appointment teams should base their decisions and actions on answers to four important questions:

1. What message is the appointment supposed to convey?
2. Why is this person right for the job?
3. Which members of the organisation need to be informed?
4. What should they be told and when?

Referenced techniques

Technique

Change Leadership

Improvement hinges on leaders who set vision, mobilise stakeholders, manage resistance effectively. Boundary-spanning approaches outperform leader-centric approaches (Higgs, Kuipers and Steijn, 2023), while targeted development of implementation leadership and climate improves adoption and sustainment (Aarons et al., 2024).

Technique

Leadership

Good leaders are continually working on, and studying to improve, their leadership skills. This technique explores what makes a good leader and covers the characteristics of good organisational leadership.

Technique

Transformational Leadership

The concept outlines core ‘constants’ that can be used to develop effective leadership within the organisation and describes the principles that underpin transformational leadership. The concept will give you an understanding of how to adopt this approach in any organisational setting.

Technique

Employee-centred Leadership Style

The concept describes a key leadership style that underpins contemporary thinking on participatory and consultative management. Using research evidence and case studies, it explains the advantages and disadvantages of employee-centred leadership styles, and provides step-by-step guidance on implementation and success factors.

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