It’s messy out there
Purpose and transformation. Big forces in play in organisations today (and for a while yet), and often in conflict. While purpose aims to define an organisation’s place in the world and give it meaning, transformations can have the completely opposite effect. Although well-intentioned and usually necessary, they can be disorientating, impersonal, disempowering, and at times, threatening.
Worst case, they can leave people feeling disenfranchised, seeing purpose as nothing more than ‘PR fluff’, while the ‘heartless’ organisation pushes on with yet more disruptive change. Which is a shame, because every transformation has the potential to be a positive and energising reimagining of the organisation that brings people together around a common cause.
We’re asking a lot of our leaders
For leaders, simply keeping things on track in a transformative environment is a big enough challenge, never mind the need to drive performance and engagement. Oh, and if you can keep your teams inspired, that’d be great too.
Against this backdrop, it’s understandable why a lot of leadership development is now focused on supporting leaders to ‘win from within’ or ‘bring their best-self’ to work. While these are unquestionably important start points, leaders still need to influence what others do, make meaning, build belief and inspire. All against a backdrop of uncertainty and misalignment.
To succeed, leaders need to know themselves, build trust like never before within their teams, and minimise friction and blockages. To do this, they must connect and engage brilliantly. Just communicating purpose isn’t enough – it’s the personal connection to it that matters most. And leaders have a massive role to play in making this connection real, both for themselves and their teams.
Learn to leverage Connection
This is why we’ve designed a leadership approach that focuses on the power of connections, creating the appetite to build them and the skills to live them.
Communicating purpose isn’t enough – it’s the personal connection
to it that matters most
From this leaders will:
Feel energized by connecting their personal and professional purpose to that of the organisation
Have a leader narrative for use in their day-to-day communication
Know how and when to have great, connecting conversations about the things that matter
Advance their communications skills, from setting an inspiring vision to questioning and listening
- Consciously build deeper and more trusting relationships in their interactions
- Drive engagement by harnessing the collective intelligence and experience of their diverse teams
Know how to put all of this to use in their day-job and consciously shape culture through their actions and behaviours
The Connection dividend
The leaders and teams who embrace this mindset are more resilient, aligned and innovative. By bringing their best to work, they will likely be more productive, fulfilled and higher performing. And by making these connections, they’ll probably be happier and more satisfied in their work.
How it works
Every organisation is different – leadership expectations, culture, approach to development, strategic priorities, existing programmes – all of these will impact on the right way to build connections. Our approach can take many different forms:
- A series of team workshops
- Multi-day retreats with leader cohorts
- Modules within existing programmes
- Train-the-Trainer to drive ‘connecting conversations’ through an entire organisation
We can build the solution that works for you by dialing up or down the connections that your leaders most need to make. All of this can be surrounded with virtual support, e-learning assets, and Purposeful Leaders – our uniquely powerful app that drives leadership behaviours and is tailored to your organisation’spurpose and values.
Colin Hatfield, Founder, Visible Leaders