Spare a Thought

The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in leadership – a trend that is likely to continue throughout the 21st century. This is not simply a fad without foundation. The foundation is very solid. Put simply, global prosperity and wellbeing are increasingly determined by good leadership as the world rapidly becomes more dynamic, complex, competitive and interconnected. In fact, studies have shown that up to 40 percent of business performance is determined by the capability of the leader.

So just how capable are our leaders? Work at the Center for High Performance Development (CHPD) has researched and assessed the key characteristics of successful leadership in this complex environment for the last 20 years. One of the results of this research has been to establish four behavioral clusters that represent successful leadership. These are:

• Thinking: an ability to search information, form concepts and have conceptual flexibility.
• Developmental: empathy, teamwork, and the ability to develop people around you.
• Inspirational: having influence, building confidence and being able to present yourself and ideas successfully.
• Achieving: being proactive and striving for continuous improvement.

Studies have shown that the first cluster above – thinking behaviors – make the highest contribution to an organization’s performance. Whilst much emphasis has traditionally been placed on the leadership behaviors related to effective action, far less attention has been devoted to these thinking behaviors. As a result these behaviors are often the least developed and least valued in most organizations. When these are not well developed, organizations are constantly firefighting, the workforce is often confronted with many uncoordinated initiatives and a lack of information leaves the organization’s strategy vulnerable.

The reason for this lack of attention on thinking behaviors has largely been practical – how do you assess and measure how someone actually thinks? We are familiar with understanding what someone thinks, but not how they think.

If you can assess how someone thinks then you can get a much better understanding of the capability of the leaders, both existing and potential, in your organization. Partly because of the lack of attention on this area to date, if we now focus on thinking skills we have the opportunity to make a significant impact on the performance of our organizations’ leaders. Since we know that 40 percent of business performance can be attributed to the leaders, this is not an insignificant area for attention.

There are some immediate steps you can take if you want to develop your thinking skills now.

Step 1: When gathering information to develop a strategy, task someone in your team who is most different from you in style and experience – particularly in how they gather information - to help. This will ensure a richness and breadth of information.
Step 2: Keep updated regularly on the Political, Economic, Social and Technological (PEST) worlds. Subscribe to a different monthly publication to inform each of these elements.
Step 3: Give yourself an immovable, 90-minute slot in your diary every other week for uninterrupted thinking time. During this time, re-read your one-year and three year business objectives. Take a step back and think about what is and isn’t moving you towards these and really analyze the root cause. Commit to one action before next time that will start to deal with the root cause and move you towards your strategic objective. Too often we can get bogged down in the detail of the day; the great leaders maintain a focus on long term objectives.
Step 4: Next time you develop a strategy or plan, try this discipline. Describe the key elements of the strategy on a single powerpoint slide with no more than six bullet points. Do that before you even think about implementation or make a final decision on the way to go. Now think of a second strategy that is radically different but of equal weight and describe it similarly. Then evaluate both looking at the pros and cons of each. See if there is a solution that combines the upsides of both. Only then make a decision and move to implementation.
Step 5: Play games that cause you to be creative rather than solve puzzles (Pictionary rather than crosswords or sudoko).

The Centre for High Performance Development (CHPD) is a leadership development consultancy. It is founded on international research into the distinguishing characteristics of leaders, teams and organizations that consistently perform at high levels in a dynamic and competitive world. It offers research, expertise, products, processes and skill sets to enhance performance and gain sustainable competitive advantage. CHPD clients include Honda, American Express, GlaxoSmithKline, BT, Bayer, National Express, Xerox and Sony.

A new simulation-based assessment tool has been designed specifically to look at this ‘how’ of thinking – it’s called ThoughtLeader. It has taken 40 years to develop and its core technology has been the subject of more than 350 peer-reviewed articles.

For further press information please contact Louise Raisbeck in the CHPD press office. Tel: +44 1295 678582. E-mail: louise@raisbeckpr.co.uk