The Challenges of Reinventing Leadership
Reinvention is about taking that blank sheet of paper and filling it in. It concerns blue sky thinking in moving from what is known to what is unknown. Reinvention seeks to change the core operating leadership approach.
In reinventing leadership, there are five critical components. First, look at capabilities and capacity. What do the organisation and its teams need, and who can provide this? Second, clarify and codify the roles that are needed. Third, create a change climate across all levels of your organisation and its networks. Fourth, get your teams to drive the reinvention, not because you have told them to do it, but because they want to do it. Finally, encourage ownership and responsibility throughout all levels. If these five steps are successful, you will know exactly how to renew the values and practice of leadership across your organisation. Mutual accountability for change will emerge.
From Reimagining To Reinventing
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
The exercise of reimagining is about starting with a blank canvas. This does not mean to say that we take no account of what exists. As we said with the history of leadership thinking, we need to stand on the shoulders of giants but continue to build beyond our horizons. Reimagining is about hope and desire – what do we want as individuals and what does the organisation want to achieve. We move on to phase 2 which is to rethink what can be achieved and identifying the gaps. Phase three – Reinvention – is to find out what we need to do to get us to our desired goals.
Foresighting
Foresight is an action-oriented approach in looking to the future. As the World Economic Forum describe, it can achieve tangible results. This will be enhanced by open engagement through diverse membership which encourages all to think outside of the box in reshaping and reinventing previous challenges. Driven by participatory and multidisciplinary expertise across wide ranging topics, a more realistic and insightful future can be envisioned and acted upon.
From Individual to Collective Leadership
Leading across Systems
The ‘ship’ of leadership involves you as a leader, your team as a group of individuals, and members of your organisation or partnership and its networks. The practice of leadership will differ dependent upon the level of leadership and the context in which leadership takes place. How leaders practice will differ although some key mechanisms will be consistent in achieving the outcomes that the collective vision will require.
Influencing through Inter-relationships
The dynamics of leadership influence
Leadership requires innovation and creativity. Leadership involves both people (relationships) and systems (processes and structures). It necessarily follows that different ways of influencing change will be necessary. Some will be reactive (in which leaders often channel their energy into matters beyond their control), whereas proactive leaders pay attention to what they can do and what can be achieved through their efforts. From a collective sense, coactive leadership is where leaders create a leadership space in which collective and collaborative action can take place. Irrespective of which approach is undertaken, it is important to realise that more will happen if leaders concentrate on what can be influenced.
15 minute Interactive Discussion on New Public Leadership Framework
Three 5 Minute Nuggets
Click on each image below to open the E-Learning Nugget
Relationships First
Human Engagement
Dynamic Influences
Conversations will not always be easy. Indeed, most leadership conversations can be very difficult. Remember, you are dealing with human beings who exist within systems. Systems are easier to change than people’s opinions. You will need to develop your personal leadership skills to better understand others’ perspectives and interests. This short nugget leads you through the principles of dealing with difficult conversations.
Throughout the ethos and across the foundation of selfless leadership – as a form of collective leadership – is the notion of dynamic networks. This is primarily networks of people, but it is also about networks of ideas, information and intelligence. These networks will interact both within its own and across other networks. Patterns of communication will emerge.
Reinvention is about designing and implementing changes that will be supported by most of those involved in the change. This nugget provides an interactive learning nugget that shows how the internal contexts of the New Public Leadership framework interact dynamically in creating the conditions in which success is more likely to be achieved.
Are you ready to continue your journey in discovering more about reinventing leadership?
You will get access to a more detailed outline of the critical requirements for reinventing leadership. We focus on the meaning of “New Public Leadership’ (NPL). This is not directed at what we would describe as the traditional public services (not-for-profit) sector, but it is of equal relevance to the ‘for-profit’ private sector. At the core is the importance of the public interest, hence the emphasis on public leadership. We use a realist framework based on the triad of ‘context’ (both external and internal), ‘mechanisms’ (the means for delivery) and ‘outcomes’ (focused on understanding, creating and demonstrating public value). Click here.
