John set his sights on being the CEO of a multinational company (MNC) someday. By the end of his career, he had planned for a successful retirement, one that would have him sitting loftily on financial stability. He was now in Senior Leadership, the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of an MNC, pretty close to his goals and pretty much on track. Like many others globally, he had not anticipated a pandemic and the chaos that came with it. His entire Operations team had to be re-hashed in so many ways. He could see some would have difficulty with the new style of working as their mindset and level of behavioural flexibility left much to be desired.
He too knew that he would have to change in many ways especially as a leader. The mindset to cope with current and future issues. Most importantly, his leadership would have to withstand the future and be prepared for any eventuality such as this was. Thankful for the NLP courses he had done that set him apart from the rest! He had climbed the career ladder fast, knowing self management tools and operating from a high performer’s mindset. His ability to master NLP was a big factor in having him reach the success he had. His playground was the many companies he had worked for that gave him the opportunity to use influential language with his teams and practice NLP tools. John began to jot down things that were fundamentally crucial to creating a Leadership mindset for the future. What else would he need and what would he look for when recruiting a leader into his team? 1. Visionary While this term had been bandied about for decades the true ability to see beyond and prepare for the worst was something that had not been fleshed out to the extent that was needed. A leader needed to be visionary and think critically, perhaps even imagine living in a simulated world of extremes, to be prepared for the worst case scenario. 2. Empathy The old days of authoritarianism were over and the ability to empathise by stepping into the other’s shoes, escalated in importance. Coaching for self management was one such skill that many lacked. A leader needed influential language to coach and communicate with their teams and show compassion for situations where appropriate. 3. Flexibility The person with the greatest behavioural flexibility ended up being the winner. To up-skill and re-skill where needed gave leadership the confidence to rotate and assign tasks as required. A leader needed to give employees job rotation roles as frequently as possible to acquaint themselves with working from different perspectives of the company. 4. Digitally Savvy A new world for the older generations but a given world for Millenials and beyond. Operating in a digital world was the way of the future which lent credence to an inter-connected global world. A leader had to be comfortable operating in this environment promoting multi-culturalism and changed business processes. John also realised that for all this to be steadfastly grounded in company culture, companies needed to be in businesses that were sustainable. The overall big picture of what Mother Earth needed would have to be the driving force. Inside of this if the needs of employees were taken into account and met, for instance the flexible leader who promoted employees as self management advocates where work-life balance came naturally. John recalled a CEO he had worked for in his career changes. He was focused on making his people happy first. “When people are inherently happy” he said “they will also come to work happy and perform.” It was so many years ago that this insightful CEO had communicated his philosophy. He retained his people, they loved working at the company as they worked together as a team with transparency and a non-existent hierarchy. They played hard and worked hard! A big part was that they had installed a culture change using NLP tools as their main methodology. Employees became adept at self management as many found it easy to master NLP. It was after all a process-driven model which was highly applicable to Leadership and the workplace. Looking back on the last year and what he had been through, he was thankful for his mindset and desire for continuous learning. They had prepared him for the future when it was his turn to be in that hot seat!
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SYLVIA FERNANDES
Sylvia is a qualified Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Trainer. She started her business in Sydney and is now based in Singapore. Archives
December 2024
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