Disruptive Leadership



One of my internships during the COVID-19 pandemic has been with the Josh Bersin Academy (JBA). This organization aims to be a leader for global HR professional development, offering programs, practical resources and an engaged community. Josh Bersin and the Academy have also been actively doing research in the field during the entirety of the pandemic thus far. For my internship, I have assisted the group with their "Sprint #3" segment, specifically working on a breakout focused on Human-Centered Leadership. This sprint just wrapped up right before Christmas and I'll be sure to share the final report when it is published sometime in January. For those that are interested, the reports for Sprints 1&2 can be found here.

Recently, Josh Bersin himself shared a report with our team from The Steering Group that spoke about the idea of Disruptive Leadership. I have been soaking up so much research about how leadership will need to change moving forward after this pandemic, both from the sprints with JBA and from my own digging. I don't want to share too many insights from the sprint I helped with just yet (I can't spoil it!), but I wanted to write about this Disruptive Leadership report as some aspects deeply resonated with me.

One of the main findings of this report was that companies that are able to thrive in disruptive times are those whose people are good at connection. Connection needs to happen in many different areas. Leaders must be connected first and foremost to themselves. If they aren't taking care of themselves, how will they take care of their own employees and ultimately their company's customer. They must also be connected with others working within the company, the customers that they are working for and even the systems within which the company functions.

The Steering Group divided organizations into two groups: the disrupted and the disruptors. The disrupted, they said, were those that were doubling down and protecting the processes and culture that exists. In their words, these orgs were 'fighting the wrong fight with one arm behind [their] back'. The disruptors, however, were those that were seizing the opportunity and taking risks to try something new. These organization tended to be 'driven by purpose' and 'unleashing human potential to create something new'.

Four big shifts were identified by this report - shifts that will need to occur within companies and within leaders if they want to survive and thrive during this variable time. They are as follows:
  1. Blind to the problem → open, humble, eager to learn
    • If leaders don't think that there is a problem, then there is a lack of urgency from the rest of the organization to make any changes.  Leaders need to have humility and question their own assumptions in order to solve problems in creative ways.  They must look to their ecosystem and take note of what is working for others.  When things are hard, the perspective of 'what can we learn from this challenge?' should be adopted.
  2. No 'North Star' → clear, purpose-driven ambition
    • Long-term commitment is needed from leaders if they want to be able to innovate.  They must be driven by a desire to solve a problem and willing to stop and analyze how they are progressing.  Companies should also incentivize leaders to innovate - often, leaders lose little if innovations fail, but a lot if they fail to deliver short-term profit and this makes it less appealing for leaders to think outside the box at the expense of short-term profit.
  3. Not safe to fail → unleashing extraordinary
    • Vulnerability and a growth mindset are key tools needed for leaders to have success.  Leaders and their direct reports need to feel that it is safe to take risks in their work environment - if leaders are risk-averse themselves, it is likely that they will not cultivate an open space for innovation for those employees below them.  It is also important that innovation can come from anywhere and should have a diverse set of opinions and ideas should be included in those innovations.
  4. Can't balance execution and innovation → iterative learning loops
    • There should be a focus on learning and agility over fixed processes as companies aim to build their experimentation muscles.  This will fail if companies don't first make the investment in a genuine shift in culture and the wider systems that are still reinforcing the old ways of thinking.  Keeping a few stable anchors, such as a company's values and mission will help to center employees during the tumultuous time that can be associated with culture change.  
One of my favorite quotes from this report comes from the section about the 4th shift and says:

 “Disruptive leaders are catalysts, coaches and connectors – not experts who give others directions to follow. They unlock and unleash leadership in others, removing obstacles to progress.”

This quote made me think back to one particular concept from our JBA Sprint 3 that personally resonated with me - the idea of leaders needing to be both coach and player.  I have always been an athlete.  Ever since I can remember, I've been the person who would want to go run around outside, kick a soccer ball, shoot some hoops or just engage in some sport-like activity with friends and family.  As I grew older, my focus landed on basketball as my main sport, but I also developed a passion for fitness and health in general.  I was playing on three basketball teams in high school and was being recruited by division 3 schools to play in college when I was a junior.

Along my basketball journey, I had many coaches.  Just like leaders, these coaches had an incredible impact on me as a player.  Some of them were an inspiration, while others were dreadful.  (I actually wrote a core value speech for a grad school class on the topic of the influence of coaches.  You can find that here on my personal website.)  My first coach ever was my Dad.  This wasn't for basketball - I actually played soccer as my first organized sport.  My Dad taught me the importance of integrity and following through on your word.  My first basketball coach was Coach Scott.  Coach Scott gave me confidence and helped me channel my stubbornness into determination to be a better player.  He always used to say 'If you believe, you will achieve' and put the power in our hands as the players.  He offered the tools to success - drills, practice, collaboration, personal evaluation - but allowed us the opportunity to decide how hard we wanted to work on our game.  This is one aspect of leadership that I aspire to embody everyday.  I want to be there for my team, offering tools and help where it is needed, but also acknowledging that I can learn from them and how they do things.

In our JBA Sprint #3, many participants brought up the idea that a leader needs to be both a player and a coach.  We all have opportunities for improvement, even at the C-suite level of leadership.  The leaders that tend to find the most success are those that are always looking for opportunities to learn and improve, even if this comes from employees below them.  When many people think about leadership, they often think about how employees are meant to listen to their leader and follow orders.  Instead, I believe that this relationship should be more collaborative.  Leaders should acknowledge that it is, in fact, quite possible that their direct reports have had different experiences from them and therefore might be able to attack a problem in a new and creative way that their leader would not have thought of themselves.  In this manner, a leader should be humble enough to step back and let their employee 'coach' them.  A leader who takes the opportunity to step into the shoes of a 'player' again tends to be more open-minded and approachable.

I've had teammates that sometimes needed me to 'coach' them on the court.  And I've sometimes needed the same from my teammates.  As a matter of fact, I can think of one teammate who I played on an AAU team with, who I kept steady and focused and who did the same for me.  When she would get worked up on the court, whether it be about a missed shot or a foul that wasn't called or whatever was going on at that moment, I would be there to tell her to forget it and look forward.  She would help me get out of my own head too.  And this is why we worked so well together as teammates.  We shared the responsibility of looking out for one another, while focusing on the greater goal of winning as a team.  I've included a photo of some of that team below.  The coach of that team was another one of the greats.  He had a way of seeing a player's potential and helping them get out of their own way when it came to harnessing it.  On my high school team, I was the center or a power forward 100% of the time.  With this team, my coach pulled me to the outside of the key.  He encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone and focus on my skills as a shooting guard.  He took extra time outside of practice to take me to the shooting academy and make sure I was getting in hundreds of shots, building my confidence and honing my new skills.  He is another huge part of the reason why I love the game so much.  I cannot WAIT to get to a point in my recovery where I can play again....


The photo below is from my college years.  I mentioned that I was being recruited for Division 3 schools while I was playing in high school.  This photo is not from the first college that I attended.  I played a year of D3 hoops at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.  The coach there almost broke me.  I won't go into many details, but I only played one year there and then decided to transfer schools.  The photo you see below is from my second college, College of Charleston.  They are a Division 1 school and I did not want to play at that level for college.  So, instead, I played intramural and fell back in love with the game.  For this type of play, we didn't have a coach.  We were both coach and player and needed to lean on each other for support and criticism where necessary.  


I didn't expect to be able to relate so much of my own personal experience outside of work to this disruptive leadership report, yet here we are.  I hope that I've been able to make the analogy clear for my readers and, as always, I'm happy to discuss any of  the concepts I post about further with anyone who is interested.

Until next time,
-Vicky

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