A Sneak Peak at Leadership Research Findings
[Missed Part 1? Click here]
[Missed Part 2? Click here]
This three part series examines the personal, interpersonal and strategic skills required for effective leadership in the age of uncertainly and unrelenting change.
Part 1 examined the process of self-discovery that leads to integrity, self-assurance and maturity of action, that some call executive presence.
Part 2 examined the primary components of developing your leadership constituency—an ever growing circle of people that know who you are, what you are capable of and care enough about you to provide you an ongoing source of information and opportunity.
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Part 3 describes the capstone skills of the NLC leader—the skills necessary to transform great ideas into tangible results.
Advancing the cause of the NLC leader (Steps 8-12):
- Strategic Coherence: To ensure that your big idea isn’t viewed as distracting noise, NLC leaders frame their ideas in terms of the organization’s established initiatives – how your idea helps move the organization toward the goals that have already been vetted and approved.
- Narratology: Shape your ideas in terms of a narrative. Present your ideas with a clear focus on the “who, what, where, when and why” your idea is critical to achieving the organization’s stated objectives.
- Context Curation: Having wrapped your idea into a cogent story, link it to the heritage and culture of the organization by demonstrating why executing your idea is simply one more step in advancing what the organization has always stood for.
- Community Building: Leveraging the deep relationships you built in Steps 5-7 (see PART 2), co-develop and test your idea, your story and the historical context you’ve developed with the people you trust and enlist their support. This step is how great NLC leaders transform ideas into action.
- Sustainment: Today’s best idea may lose relevance overnight and that’s okay. NLC leaders are constantly prepared to start over again – WITHOUT starting from scratch. Sustainment in the future isn’t the ability to repeat what worked yesterday, but alter course with agility and speed.
In a world where the noise of activity can be deafening and people are asked to be everywhere and do everything at once, NLC leaders rise to the occasion with purpose and discipline by applying the 12 steps to NLC leadership.
As always, I welcome your comments directly at Jeff@jeffkaplan.com
-J
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