How do you make leaders ready for the future of work?

Increased competition, globalization, a focus on optimization, tacking high customer expectations, and digitization are making “continuous change” the new normal for businesses. This means leadersneed to adapt and evolve. There is a need for a new leadership paradigm which will be critical for building and sustaining present and future leadership.

According to one definition by CCL, “Future readiness is about getting ahead of the curve. Future readiness brings together the right mindset and skill set to constantly get ahead, supported by having context relevant business and operating models which they review and revise constantly.”

One study shows that no more than 41% of organizations believe L&D programs at any leader level – from emerging and front- line all the way to the executive level – are effective.

Leadership readiness for the future starts with HR and business leaders proactively identifying much-needed leadership skills. Strategic thinking, influence, change-adaptability, creative thinking, empathy, cognitive abilities- these are only some of the critical future leadership skills. But HR’s role does not end with merely identifying these competencies and building competencies. HR leaders must frame a comprehensive leadership blueprint to sustain future leaders.

The leadership blueprint

HR leaders must focus on overcoming faultlines. ‘Faultlines’ are transition points in leadership careers where leaders cannot be successful if they rely only on skills and behaviors they used successfully in the past. Some examples of fault lines include moving from an individual contributor to a people-manager role, moving from an operational/tactical role to a strategic role, moving from strategy-execution to formulation.

The leadership blueprint for future success must not only help identify future leaders but also help them achieve greater proficiency in existing skills while building new skills. As a part of this, people must be trained to be aware of and better manage derailers. The leadership blueprint must take into account business as well as cultural challenges, both internal and external. According to DDI, Some factors to consider while building the leadership blueprint are: 

Experience

Knowledge

Personal attributes

Competencies

Tips to be future ready

A leadership blueprint should serve as the “guiding light,” but the execution is what will define leadership success.

Upskill and Reskill 

Make learning an organizational way of life. And create avenues for top-rung leaders to re-skill and re-learn especially in new-age areas such as technology, social, and media. 

According to one report, only 10% of board members surveyed report having professional technology experience. Make lifelong learning a habit at every level. Leverage digital learning channels such as mobile-based learning, micro-learning, massive open online courses (MOOCs).Cultivate a learning culture to bring about a mindset change. 

Redesign work and align talent 

The nature of work is changing, and future leaders must keep pace with these changes including‘anytime, anywhere’ work. HR must study how the impact of flexibility, autonomy, and continuous learning effect work processes and practices. This, in turn, can help the HR leaders to strategize about the future of work in the context of the company and the job role.

Strengthen the talent pipeline and encourage innovation

Future leadership readiness is about thinking long-term and planning ahead. Succession planning must incorporate elements of coaching and mentoring, employee development, productivity enhancement, career pathing, new ways of working etc.,

Exposure to new markets, and equipping your team will cross skilling opportunities will play a key role. According to one survey, 72% of respondents expressed that the need for globally mobile employees will increase during the next two to three years.

Innovation is critical if you want to outwit change. The leadership development program must encourage people to experiment and explore by building a culture of trust and collaboration.

Align talent processes 

The above elements can be achieved only when talent processes are in sync with the new leadership outlook. Whether it is the learning agenda or performance management, HR must work towards integrating the new leadership-focus into all the HR processes and workflows. 

While processes and implementations are one half of the equation, bringing about a mindset change is tough. Preparing your leaders for the future calls for a mindset change not only at the top but at the organization-wide level. 

HR must enable employees to think about the future by helping them unlock his or her potential – first individually and then collectively. This will require a high degree of collaboration and joint efforts from all the stakeholders. It will also require significant resources and sponsorship from current leaders. Sustaining future leadership success is amongst the most important leadership-mandates, it is also the most challenging. 

Source: People Matters

Be a Professional : Dress for Success

Corporate dressing helps you develop a magnetic personality which attracts other individuals. You need to have that charisma and dressing formally helps you in the same. Corporate dressing helps you create that first impression. Remember, first impressions are important and they help you throughout your life. If you fail to impress someone in the first meeting, you will never get a second chance.

The importance of a dressing for professionalism varies somewhat by industry. However, the correlation between the two is generally strong. Appearance ranked second only to communication skills when respondents named qualities most often associated with professionalism, according to a 2010 national poll conducted by the Center for Professional Excellence at York College of Pennsylvania.

The professional sense of dressing as a step by step learning and it takes time to develop a business sense so it makes sense to start it when you are perusing your professional courses. so that once you start the professional journey you are already ready to excel.

Matthew Randall, executive director of the CPE, said, "How an individual dresses for work can be a powerful extension of his personal brand. Clothes, accessories and even the footwear an employee chooses to wear help to reinforce or diminish his skills and qualities in the eyes of his employer, co-workers and clients."

The "Dress Code" Debate

Business attire has changed significantly over the years, especially in the last 20 years. Too many people have forgotten why proper business attire is important.

Some Institutions/companies prefer to allow and even encourage students or employees to dress freely or casually for comfort. This tends to work well in more creative work environments.

However, others will typically encourage and/or require a more defined and professional dress code to maintain a professional image of themselves and the business, where employees routinely interact on a daily basis with prospects, clients and business partners or students who are going to be a future business leaders and interact with them.

Conflicts arise when people prefer to dress comfortably or in the most recent styles rather than realize the importance for them to present themselves in a more professional or conservative manner. The major reason why dressing in proper business attire is important for every business professional is because it presents a visual image and sends a message that the people are professional.

How to choose a suitable business Attire

Although a one-size-fits-all or universal dress code may not be achievable or realistic, some universal guidelines are possible and could include the following:

Modest:

It is most important to get attention for great work rather than gaining attention for wearing the latest fashion fad or in appropriate leisure wear or sportswear found outside the office at a sports event, party or beach.

Comfortable: 

Wearing ill-fitting clothes – whether too tight or too loose or unsuitable for your body type – should always be avoided. If you are uncomfortable, it will make your work day truly awful. Find something that fits the outer and inner you. This applies to the fit of your attire and the comfort of the shoes you wear. Comfort needs to trump fashion in the choices made.

Outline Appropriateness:

You may have one Student or employee showing up in short gym shorts and another girl showing up in a dress that looks more appropriate for a Friday night out on the town, so in this case an appropriate dress should be chosen, which can serve to outline appropriateness.

Be mindful that basic etiquette must accompany appropriate attire. Appropriate attire must be combined with basic business and professional etiquette. The two are intertwined and integrated when presenting a professional image of yourself and your company. First impressions and overall judgments about people are formed by the way they dress. Since the way someone dresses affects the perception of a company's customers or business partners, it is important to maintain a standard of dress that creates a positive impression.

Why We Procrastinate When We Have Long Deadlines

“Can you get that to me by the end of the day?” isn’t a request many employees like to hear. But for many people, having shorter deadlines instead of longer ones — “Do you think you can do that by the end of the week?” — might actually help them complete a task and see their work as being less difficult.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, my colleagues Rajesh Bagchi and Stefan Hock and I demonstrate that longer deadlines can lead workers to think an assignment is harder than it actually is, which causes them to commit more resources to the work. This, in turn, increases how much they procrastinate and their likelihood of quitting. This is true even when the deadline length is incidental, such as when a venue or guest isn’t available for an extended period of time.In our research we asked volunteers at a local community center to answer a short survey about retirement planning. We set two incidental deadlines. In one group, the online survey could be accessed throughout the next seven days, but the other group had 14 days. Results showed that participants who faced the longer deadline wrote longer responses to the survey and spent more time on it. But there was a catch: Those same participants were more likely to procrastinate and were less likely to complete the assignment than their time-constrained counterparts.

Source: HBR 29 Aug, 2018

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When Is Teamwork Really Necessary?

Most leaders assume that they need to foster teamwork among the people whom directly and indirectly report to them. Teaming is now seen as the workplace equivalent of motherhood and apple pie — invariably good. The problem is when leaders try to drive the wrong kind of collaboration on their particular teams. The result: wasted time and unnecessary frustration.Consider the example of Nicolas, a regional sales vice president at a medical devices company. When promoted to his new role, he inherited a group of district sales managers responsible for selling to hospital systems in their respective geographies. Although his one-on-one meetings with these reports, which involved progress reviews, motivation, and coaching, were highly productive, his monthly team meetings weren’t. While the group liked getting together and engaging in some joint activities — such as goal setting, best-practice sharing, and talent development — people often wondered why they were in the room.Catherine, a senior marketing director leading a cross-functional product development team at the same company, provides a contrasting case study. Although she sometimes needed to work with team members individually, most productive work happened in weekly meetings, to which she brought focused agendas and effectively facilitated discussions about key issues. The participants rarely felt they were wasting their time.

Source: HBR 16 August, 2018

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