
Think at London Business School
How swapping life stories can make you a better leader
By Nigel Nicholson
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London Business School’s Leadership Institute shares key advice for effective and authentic leadership in the year ahead
Herminia Ibarra, Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour; Professor of Organisational Behaviour; Chair, Organisational Behaviour Faculty
Your ability to connect authentically with the people you work with matters. When participants in a panel, which I moderated for the World Economic Forum’s Jobs Reset Summit, were asked one year ago what is the top quality needed in leaders today, over seventy percent said “empathy”. That’s because new ways of working are evolving rapidly, requiring constant learning. Relentless disruption, in the absence of a sense of connection and caring, as psychologists have argued, can threaten people’s confidence, effectiveness and wellbeing, shutting down learning just when it is needed most.
“Empathy will go a long way towards increasing your and your people’s satisfaction”
Empathy is the basis for human connection, it promotes growth and change by sparking the feelings of interpersonal support that are necessary for taking risks. As such, it plays an important role in much of what we aim to accomplish as leaders. But can empathy be learned? While some people are naturally more empathetic than others, the answer in short is, yes, with practice and feedback, and with the motivation to persevere. Use these three proven ways to cultivate empathy:
Many of us are out of practice when it comes to empathy, and our workplaces are fraying for it. As the pace of work in a new hybrid landscape continues to intensify, we are all tasked with doing more with less. Where will we find the time to engage with people more intensely, many managers ask me? Sadly, the cost of forfeiting high-quality human connections is only getting higher. Although the data is still coming in on the so-called “great resignation”, how quickly the notion captured our imagination speaks volumes about the current state of affairs. In this trying environment, cultivating your sense of empathy will go a long way towards increasing your, and your people’s, satisfaction with and engagement in the necessary work of reinventing our organisations.
Randall S Peterson, Professor of Organisational Behaviour; Academic Director, Leadership Institute
The pandemic is not over yet. We are living in the ‘new normal’ of variants and waves of covid. As managers this means we need to remain flexible and continue to be resilient, by looking after:
“Let's prioritise finding the time to refresh ourselves and give space to our people to do the same”
So, let's prioritise finding the time to refresh ourselves and give space to our people to do the same. To win the long-game we need to encourage others to take time away from work in order to reconnect and rest. We need to promote a sustainable pace and ways of working that do not burn people out, and we must commit to go beyond psychological safety to give our people a sense of belonging in our organisations. Believe in your people, give them a sense of value, and build a learning culture where the focus is on the team to continuously improve how it works.”
Laura Giurge, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of Organisational Behaviour; Dan Cable, Professor of Organisational Behaviour; Pier Vittorio Mannucci, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour
The pressure to respond to emails as soon as they land in your inbox, whilst also having to complete pressing tasks such as preparing high-quality, creative presentations, is a tension felt by every leader. Finding equilibrium between important and urgent work is vital, because knowledge is the primary source of competitive advantage, and creating high-quality work in a knowledge economy requires uninterrupted time and focused attention.
Far too often, it can feel easier and more efficient to tick off tasks that demand an immediate, specific response, such as responding to a colleague’s frantic email and immediately solving a problem, compared to working on something long-term or open-ended, but potentially more important, such as a new project that could improve future clients’ experiences. The result is many of us spend most of our time pursuing urgent tasks rather than doing our most valuable work, which can be both demotivating and counterproductive for performing to our strengths and expanding our skills.
In a recent study, we tested a time-crafting intervention that gives employees the freedom to personalise their work days by carving out time free of distractions that can be better used to focus on important tasks. The intervention was introduced by leaders at a global consumer goods company as a new way of working and conducted in a six-week field experiment during the initial months of Covid-19. The study found employees experienced a decrease in burnout and an increase in perceived work contributions.
If you want to feel better about your work contributions and protect your wellbeing, here are steps you can adopt for yourself and, as a leader, introduce to your employees:
Nader Tavassoli, Professor of Marketing; Academic Director of the Leadership Institute; Academic Director of the Hive
The 2021 CMO Survey UK saw Brexit and the pandemic contribute, on average, to a 10% sales drop, a 3% contraction in marketing jobs, and a 17% reduction in marketing spend. In parallel, 73% of marketing leaders reported an increase in the importance of promotion in their organisation, with around 50% transforming their go-to-market strategies and 80% investing in better digital customer interfaces. In other words, marketing leaders were charged to do more with less, while trying to help their organisations adapt to truly seismic shifts in customer preferences and behaviour.
“Functional leaders need to engage in cross-functional perspective taking and traverse language barriers”
Marketing leaders are optimally positioned to explore emerging market opportunities to unlock growth during these challenging times – and, 78% of CEOs expect them to do just that (McKinsey, 2021). They are uniquely trained to gain deep market insight into demand-generating growth, and they must scale up rather than down their investments into market sensing, in the face of cost cutting. They must also energise the organisation with a growth mindset by viscerally bringing to life new opportunities.
Marketing leaders tend to have the most holistic view of the customer journey, and are well positioned to help the organisation be agile and effectively exploit new opportunities. This requires marketing leaders to hone the three invaluable cross-functional integration skills (Pellathy, et al., 2019) to align the often-siloed activities within R&D, IT, operations, logistics, sales, customer service and the like. For some marketing leaders this can represent nascent territory.
UK marketing leaders can register here to participate in the 2022 CMO Survey
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A series exploring the latest thinking and key issues for leaders and those aspiring to lead
By Tom Gosling and London Business School
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