We often talk about leaders and executives as if the two terms are synonymous, but leaders don’t just exist inside the C-suite. They are everywhere in an organisation. They are the people who get stuff done. They include supervisors on the factory floor, project managers inside offices and even newly-qualified apprentices struggling to manage an older, more experienced, team.
Businesses struggling to achieve operational excellence need to upend the way they think about leadership. To turn strategy into execution, leaders must be coached at all levels to create a golden thread of leadership throughout the organisation.
The present reality is very different. A survey of 4,500 workers and managers by the Chartered Institute of Management revealed that 82% of individuals promoted into management positions in the UK receive no formal training on how to manage and lead.
These are often referred to as ‘accidental managers’ whose lack of leadership skills can create a culture of high attrition and retention costs. The result is that even the most well-thought-out strategies get stuck in bottlenecks and aren’t converted into action and results.
It’s a business problem that drove the creation of Defy Expectations. The leadership development company was founded by Vicky Hampson and Helen Honisett. They saw the opportunity to use their real-world experience running businesses large and small all over the world to transform the way businesses successfully executed on strategy.
“Experience has taught us to defy conventional wisdom and develop leaders at every level using methods that work best for hard-working adults,” says Honisett. Defy Expectations focuses on developing six essential leadership capabilities vital to developing successful leaders and successful businesses. These are: transformational leadership, a culture of openness, maintaining a customer focus, risk management, optimising productivity and managing wellbeing.
Defy Expectations’ approach to leadership development is rooted in a fundamental principle: leadership is a lifelong journey that begins with a first job.
“C-suite leaders need support to focus on strategy, risk and big-picture thinking, but you have to develop leaders at all levels of the business. Those are the leaders who keep the day-to-day business running,” says Hampson.
Defy Expectations uses a three-step learning suite to develop leaders. The first step is to assess the leadership capabilities of the individuals. For this, Defy Expectations has created its own assessment that focuses on competencies rather than personalities. The second step is to use a mix of custom-built, on-demand learning and coaching to fill the skill gaps. Finally, it is important to coach leaders to use their new capabilities on day-to-day problems.
Optimising productivity is a key area of development, but it doesn’t involve leaders setting 5am alarms or using Pomodoro clocks so they can do more in less time. “It’s not about more hours in the day or more output, it’s about real productivity and doing the right things at the right time,” says Hampson.
“First, get the right people in the right roles, then get those people to develop the practical capabilities they need to deliver impact. Then help them to do it. That’s real-world productivity.”
Working with customers from global blue chips to fast-growing scale-ups, Defy Expectations has three core principles of leadership behaviour: engagement, enablement and empowerment. Engagement ensures people at every level are motivated and understand what they need to do to deliver. Enablement guarantees that leaders at all levels have a clear mandate and the capability to act decisively when required. Empowerment involves pushing considered decision-making as far as possible down into the execution layer with clear boundaries, expectations and autonomy.
If businesses invest in the continuous development of current and future leaders, they’ll create a high-performance culture that identifies and positions talented leaders in the right roles. Following this approach will help build an agile, decisive business that defies customer and stakeholder expectations.
To find out more, please visit Defy Expectations
