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A Dangerous Lack of Courage in Leadership

March 24, 2016

Blog Topic

A prerequisite of effective leadership is the presence of courage.

In this VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) we are witnessing the presence of fear in many of our leaders across the board – fleeing, fighting or frozen.

The symptoms are:

  • Much talk, little action – ineffective meetings that lead nowhere.
  • Confused understanding and non-alignment of leaders who now more than ever need to communicate, cooperate and collaborate – personal protection of jobs, territorial conflict and with-holding of information prevails.
  • Denial or spinning the truth – inability to respond effectively to reality.
  • Indiscriminate cost cutting and downsizing that directly leads to loss of:

- talent;

- productivity;

- creativity and innovation; and

- resilience.

When in survival mode, we cannot think straight. The presence of prolonged fear causes stress and shuts down our prefrontal lobes.

We revert to default/automatic behaviour – much of it useless.

Lost in this fearful mode is the ability to distinguish between investment and expense; between strategy and tactics; and thinking about the next cycle.

During positive economic conditions, fat in costs and staffing can accumulate.

However once the economic tide turns, cost management, including down-sizing, must be strategically driven, with a longer term view, to preserve the organisation’s capability to rebound and move ahead in sync with the changing of the tide.

Too many organisations find they are left behind in a recovery, because they acted for the immediate time frame, usually for the current or next quarter bottom line.

All of this is caused primarily by fearful leadership reacting to pressures from a nervous, dumb and greedy market.

The VUCA world requires vision, understanding, clarity and agility, as well as courage, better practice and continuous learning.

Leadership must bring all these qualities to bear now.

What do you think?

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