Lead Change, Transform People & Grow Business

As corporate competition continues to change, it is more important than ever to develop leaders who are capable of innovation. The old leadership skills set no longer apply, and neither do the old ways of growing leaders. Today, you must teach adaptability and out-of-this-world thinking, find ways to encourage and reward risk, and somehow make it all stick.

When we talk about leading change it means that leaders need to evolve new skills that include intuitive adaptability to situations and people, creative and evolutionary solutions and intense self-development to meet the ongoing demands of relentless change.  An evolutionary leader commits to intense self-inquiry as to their approach and is open to group think feedback to help move the business forward.

In order to lead change an evolutionary leader has the following qualities:

• Keen desire to go beyond ego and to develop skills that lead the team to next level growth
• A deep calling to purpose and to leading others to contribute to their highest potential
• A sincere desire to grow others and to guide them to their next level of success
• An equal commitment to transforming people as to business growth

Evolutionary business also includes the commitment to transforming people, this means expanding beyond the lens of ‘people as jobs’ and looking at how to maximize peoples gifts and to help them contribute work that has meaning for them. An evolutionary leader looks at ways to engage and grow the people they have regardless for how long that employee has been on the job or how long they stay on the job. They shift away from the old school leadership mentality of ‘people must be loyal’ and towards the evolutionary mindset that ‘people will stick around when they are treated with high value’. A leader who commits to transforming people as part of their leadership legacy sees people as:

• Valuable assets to the future success of the business
• Individuals with unique values, attitudes, skills and contributions
• Team members who need to be valued, recognized, groomed, taught, coached and rewarded
• Opportunities to grow the business by helping to grow the people in the business

Regardless of the department you lead your contributions help the bottom line. Departments that are most obvious to growing the business are sales and marketing but its important to remember that every organization is the sum of its parts. Accounting, IT, Customer Service and other departments all help to drive business forward. The most successful organizations realize this and rather than have the departments operate as silos they bring together all departments on a regular basis to share information, to provide input on strategy and to network with each other.

Research has shown that organizations that have leaders who are ‘evolutionary’ meaning committed to self development, willing to do the work of self inquiry and continued skills development increase business. Further research shows that it is the leadership who drives change and if change is led from an evolutionary approach the teams flourish, people transform and business multiplies.

The competitive advantage of the future is for those companies that can work together cohesively in order to bring new product to the market quickly and efficiently. Companies that have fractured teams, inconsistent leadership ability within different departments, lack of commitment to growing and developing talent will not have the competitive agility to weather the onslaught of change that is now our constant.