Leadership

Article Type: Editorial From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 9, Issue 4

Leadership is a hot topic as organizations look to find the best structure to move forward and recover from tough economic trading. Approaches to leadership range widely – from everyone in the organization taking a leadership role,to focusing leadership capability at the top, to creating an organizational leadership brand – and as a result there are many different views on best practice in development. In this issue we look at how different organizations are developing leadership skills in very different ways to support their preferred leadership style and structure. The range of approaches taken demonstrates clearly that there is no one way forward and each organization has to take the route forward that is best suited to their particular challenges.

“Strategic leadership development program at the University of York”,by Graham Johnson, looks at how the university tackled tough leadership challenges through an emergent leadership development program based on the collective rather than solely the individual. The higher education (HE) sector in which it works faces many challenges, some shared with the commercial sector,such as changing stakeholder expectations, financial constraints and globalization, and others specific to academia, such as the instability of the rolling leadership structure and academic/administrative tensions. The solution was to mobilize academic and non-academic leaders and create a leadership community, using networks to facilitate communication and collective focus on the organization’s strategic aspirations. External leaders were invited to share best practice and winning ideas, while internal networks were created to focus on actual leadership issues, resulting in an action learning approach that acts as a return on investment mechanism and feeds back in to shape the ongoing development program.

In “Leadership brand equity: HR leaders’ role in driving economic value”, Virginia McLaughlin and Christina Mott look at research that links leadership brand with performance. Specifically, it shows that organizations with recognized leadership brands outperform others in their industry in the areas of revenue, net income and share price, and this increases in tough economic times. The authors say that HR professionals are perfectly placed– at the intersection of strategy, communication and talent – to drive investment in leadership brand and therefore release its economic value. In this practical paper, they put forward suggestions for ways of assessing and building leadership brand equity and highlight some of the challenges that this may involve and how to overcome them.

“Turbulent times require a greater focus on board effectiveness”,by Richard Emerton and Regis Soublin, discusses the considerations in assessing and improving board effectiveness. The authors look at how Statoil worked with a leadership advisory firm to carry out a detailed evaluation of the board with the aim of using the results to highlight and fill any gaps in competence,process or culture that may pose a risk or lead to underperformance. The review was initiated by the board, as it wanted to reassess its ability to support management in addressing the challenges it was facing at a pivotal point in its development. The board wanted to be a genuinely differentiating asset for the company. The authors use the experience of the Statoil review, combined with ongoing research in this area, to put forward best practice actions for organizations looking to improve board effectiveness. While the governance and oversight role of the board remains important, it should be balanced with a supportive and partnering relationship with executive management, and board competence, similar to leadership competence, must be regularly reviewed and a process of continuous learning and development implemented.

In “Leading the way towards better business insights”, Jeanne Harris and Thomas Davenport discuss the importance of analytics, rather than gut instinct, as the basis for successful decision-making. They say that high performing businesses demonstrate a more developed analytical orientation, and that leaders who support analytical initiatives are more likely to succeed. It is not just senior executives who should be building an analytical culture in the organization; any employee can play the role of an analytical leader. The authors demonstrate this through four case studies where individuals have successfully driven their organization towards analytical decision-making, with positive results for the business. Analytics are as much a people management issue as an IT data project. The core behaviours demonstrated by analytical leaders are summarized and form a useful checklist for recognizing and developing analytical thinkers in the organization.

“Devolving decision making: implications for leadership development”,by Jonathan Chocqueel-Mangan, uses a case study to examine the impact that moving decision-making authority closer to the front line has on development. One of the consequences of taking a devolved approach that gives front line managers more accountability is that the distinctions between management and leadership become blurred and this has knock-on impacts on development requirements. The paper finds that a mix of interventions is required in order to develop skills at various levels once an organization becomes less centralized. Looking at a case study of a UK-based charity that made the move to devolve decision-making, one of the main challenges for HR was helping the organization “let go”. For senior leaders, this means focusing more on developing people within the organization to take on more authority, rather than managing activities themselves, This requires new skills and new leadership development, giving HR a key role to play in supporting the process.

Sara NolanE-mail: shr@emeraldinsight.com