When leadership means something different

In the 2018 LCP Global Leadership Survey, we asked 134 Board Chairs, CEOs, executives and senior leaders to respond to a short survey exploring their thoughts on this topic. Apart from my own leadership experiences in seeing the importance of this relationship over the last 25 years, I have extensively researched this topic since 2010 and am still amazed that many do not believe there is a link between character and performance. There is often an interesting psychology behind this, hidden by the economic justification for expediency in delivering short-term results without regard for the damage this can do to the credibility and performance of a brand over time. For now, I merely want to highlight some of the preliminary insights from our analysis. From the eighty respondents, 95 percent agreed that there is a link between the integrity of the leadership team and the success of the business. 5 percent disagreed.  We next asked them how they would describe this link? The three most dominant themes describing this link were: Great values don’t guarantee immediate success. However, there was acknowledgement that the best people thrive in an environment where there is a commitment to strong values. In the short-term it affects the recruitment and retention of great talent; longer-term, the relationship between values and success becomes more pronounced. People want to do business with organizations and people they can trust — trust is the currency through which a business can succeed, and it is clearly much more than a mere transaction. Closely related to the above, there was a clear belief that business success should be measured beyond monetary value. What's the bottom-line? Building resilient character is an indispensable quality for any business, and without it, many corporate collapses and leadership failures provide evidence of how catastrophic the results can be. Here at LCP Global we are passionate about putting character high on the agenda for businesses that want to achieve great results without having to compromise their integrity. Building Resilient Character is one of the 5 Leadership Anchors™ LCP Global presents as part of a systematic and strategic approach to increasing leadership capacity.

Heavy fog found me sitting in a crowded lounge at Sydney Airport when Tony and Carlo asked if they could join me at my table. After we had introduced ourselves, our conversation surprisingly turned to the anxiety many young people experience in relation to career choices and the future of work. This quickly led to a discussion on the pace and pervasiveness of change. Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google, states: We’re entering an age of acceleration. The models underlying society at every level, which are largely based on a linear model of change, are going to have to be redefined. Because of the explosive power of exponential growth, the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress; organizations have to be able to redefine themselves at a faster and faster pace(Friedman, 2016, pp. 187)[i] . To help us understand the enormity of change and the urgency it creates for us to adapt, Thomas Friedman applies “Moore’s Law” when contrasting the processing power of Intel’s microchip and the Volkswagen Beetle. In 1965, Intel cofounder Gordon Moore believed that computational processing power would double roughly every two years. Intel’s latest chip offers 3,500 times more performance than the company’s first-generation microchip from 1971. It’s also 90,000 times more energy-efficient and about 60,000 times cheaper. If you apply this same principle of change from Moore’s Law to a VW Beetle, the Beetle would go about 300,000 miles per hour, get 2 million miles per gallon of petrol, and cost four cents. If fuel efficiency improved at the same rate, you could drive your car your entire life on one tank of fuel! When the rate of change exceeds our ability to adapt, we get “dislocation,” when people feel they can’t keep up with what’s going on (Duhigg, 2016, pp. 88) [i]. If change is doubling or tripling or quadrupling, how do we adapt to it and help others to adapt?   Identify What You Can Control And What You Can’t. Consider what you can influence and what, for the time being, you are unable to. Stephen Covey alludes to this in his “Circle of Concern, Circle of Influence” model. Change takes energy. Focus on the relationships and activities that energize you the most. They will keep you grounded about what is really important in life.   Reflect On The Possibilities Of What Change Will Bring. Tell yourself stories about what you can expect to see. Rather than focus on the problem or the actual change itself, anticipate what might happen and how you might respond. Psychologists call this type of scenario-planning, “mental models"[ii]. Rather than become overwhelmed by change, commit yourself to the potential of what it will bring and the personal opportunities for growth.   [i] Friedman, Thomas L. (2016). Thank you for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. New York, USA: Allen Lane. [ii] Duhigg, Charles. (2016). Smarter, Faster, Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity. New York, USA: Random House.