March 27th, 2009
I recently came across the graph on the IQL Consulting blog, and I love it:
How do decisions get made in your office, on your team? In my experience, it seems that decisions tend to get made closer to the Magic 8-ball end of the spectrum than the well-designed experiment end of things. I think that this happens for a number of reasons, but let me touch on a few key causes
- We have a misinformed understanding and set of expectations regarding leadership…I hate to beat a dead horse, I have been talking about our flawed approach to leadership a lot lately, but I believe it is a tremendous danger for us. Far too many of us get into positions of “leadership” and think that means that we are supposed to make decisions about everything. When we do this we waste much of the human capital we have available to us, and instead of informing our decisions in an inclusive way we operate with a very narrow perspective.
- We do not really understand diversity and we do not really like it…even though we say we get it and even though we say we like, we really do not. If we really understood diversity, we would approach decision making in a very different way. And…we would have better outcomes.
- We do not prioritize, develop and support emotional and social competencies…these soft skills get little or no real attention in business schools, in most leadership development programs and so we have leadership that is to a great extent emotionally and socially incompetent.
With the challenges currently facing us we have a wonderful opportunity to re-define leadership and focus on the really important, foundational competenices that we are supporting in our leaders and emerging leaders.
The future belongs to those who can do this.
be good to each other
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