… in 7 Words
We live on a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous VUCA world. This world is a non-stop, 24/7, 
ever-changing place that feels like on some days is getting ever-so-close to the brink of complete chaos. Business leaders, both new and experienced, wake up every day and go to work with the primary goal of survival instead of a mindset that is challenging the ways things are and disrupting the status quo. Which in my opinion is extremely unfortunate and completely unnecessary.
Today’s business leaders have so many opportunities to be successful but aren’t being provided with the right skills and tools to achieve the best success. Each year, global corporations spend more than $100 billion on leadership training. Some of the leadership training is excellent and world class. And some of it is not so good. Regardless, I think there is a fundamental flaw in this current system; it’s too complicated and not practical. After delivering more than 1,000 hours of live and virtual leadership training to employees of large companies around the world during the last 3 years, I propose a re-examination of the current approach. Leaders are getting lost in crappy eLearnings, instructors who are yelling at them to remember over-engineered frameworks, and silly gamification ideas that have no relevance to what the real-world goals and objectives are. It’s time to understand that right now in leadership development less is more.
The 7 Key Words of Leadership
So, where so we start? Simple and elegant leadership starts with the 7 words below:
- Execution
- Personalities
- Change
- Goals
- Coaching
- Teams
- Innovation
Tens of thousands of books have been written about each topic yet the skills and tools to be effective are still elusive. I think that today’s leaders are thirsting for the chance to understand and then apply these concepts through a sophisticated, experiential learning process that utilizes digital business simulations to provide the opportunity to practice, learn, apply, get feedback, learn, and apply again.
A simple and direct overview of the 7 key words of leadership follows. But first it’s important to point out that these words aren’t linear; they are part of a system that when understood and used together are the fundamentals of business leadership.
Execution
I have a saying that Leadership is equal to the execution of your strategy through people. The biggest mistake leaders make is trying to lead people without a deep understanding of your company’s business strategy. Without that, it is impossible to create alignment, set the right goals, and provide the feedback needed to correct mistakes and lead to success.
Personalities
In our large, amazing, and diverse world, everyone is different, and everyone has different personality styles. The job of a great leader is to understand their styles and the styles of the people they work with and lead and adapt so that they can focus on execution of strategy.
Change
Everything is changing and it’s never going to stop. Great leaders understand the rollercoaster of change and can adapt, set expectation, get past dysfunctional behavior, and build resiliency.
Goals
Setting appropriate goals seems so simple yet is incredibly hard and most leaders don’t do it well. One of the primary reasons they don’t do it well is that they are unaligned to the strategy and not communicating well within the organization. Having collaborative conversations on objectives and key results that are aligned to the strategy is one of the most important parts of being a great leader.
Coaching
Most leaders don’t have a clue on how to coach. Even worse is that when they do coach their execution is poor, their skills are poor, and they are coaching to goals that aren’t part of the right strategy. There are dozens of simple coaching models (I like GROW) but it doesn’t matter unless the feedback is sincere, authentic, positive, tailored, and aligned to the goals.
Teams
Most large companies have established some sort of matrix where there are people leader, process leaders, and virtual leaders leading large and complex teams in a changing and chaotic environment that is executing and coaching poorly. The best leaders in the world understand the business and their teams just as well and can optimize the value of their teams through dialogues and smart leadership.
Innovation
Without innovation, company’s die. Innovation is not always a shiny new product. It’s innovation in the supply chain, sales process, customer services process, manufacturing process and much more. Great leaders are creating cultures of innovation and encouraging their teams to challenge the orthodoxies and come up with the next disruption.
In summary, it’s time to simplify the playbook and create elegant leadership development solutions that can focus on the most important 7 key elements of effective leadership.
