Traditional Leadership Is Maxed Out. Whats Next?

The Traditional Leader/follower approach has become a barrier to better results.  What worked in the past has now become the Achilles heel of impact-driven workplaces.  For over 25 years I’ve worked with leaders all over the world and continue to observe that leaders at every level are stuck because they are unaware of how their traditional leadership behaviors impact people and performance. Here are just a few observations:  

• People are tired of the Leader/Follower model--nobody dreams of being a follower.  

• Leaders everywhere feel pressured to have “the answers.” Yet the challenges are often so complex that no one person can know them all

• Traditional Leadership entrenches dependency into the system. Leaders remain largely unaware of its impact on engagement and execution: it is sapping the organization of its flexibility and creativity. 

 What’s Next?  

If we are serious about changing the outcomes in our organizations, we have to change the approach. Impact Focused Leadership offers a way forward, but it requires everyone to step a bit outside their comfort zone, change the mindset about what it means to lead, and requires people to interact new, less hierarchal way.  Here is a sample from our research findings over the years: 

• When leaders stop leading with “their solutions”, others have room to step up, engage and make a real impact. 

• When people are involved in creating impacts, they experience high levels of commitment and personal responsibility for the company’s problems, performance, and execution. 

• Results change when the most impact-driven ideas win--rather than just deferring to people with the most power or the loudest voice. 

British Telecom’s Collaborative Journey

Productivity at British Telecom’s Openreach division was flat and had been for over three years.  Senior leadership was frustrated after spending years and millions of pounds on training and development without seeing any real change. They decided it was time for something different.  After the executive team went through the program, they embraced the Impact approach, but not without real concerns.  They worried that: 

• Productivity and engagement would decrease if people were challenged to take personal responsibility for change and performance.  

• Conflict and grievances would increase when managers started having honest conversations about the real issues.   

• Leaders wouldn’t or couldn’t change. Letting go of control and bad habits would take too long or not take place at all. 

BT’s Results & Reflections  

Several thousand leaders and managers went through the program and learned the Impact approach. After the program was rolled out, an internal BT analysis was done.  Their findings were as follows: 

• Productivity went up 9 % in the first 6 months.  

• £60M in cost-savings was measured in the first year. 

• Employee engagement surveys measured a double-digit increase, and grievances rapidly declined. 

 

Upon reflecting after the first year, BT’s leadership and HR teams identified several key learnings that contributed to the program’s value: 

• Leadership behavior change was considered the key to its sustained success. 

• The program developed the leaders they needed throughout the organization for their next transformational journey.  

• Staying the course and resisting flavor of the month leadership training embedded the Impact approach and changed the culture.     

Impact-driven Leadership isn’t easy; It takes commitment and real work, but it’s worth the effort.