Agility and Resilience: The Urgent Need to Grow Better Leaders

Further to the previous post Leaders Growing Up in a Complex World, the combination of disruptive technology and the rapidly expanding nature of global business is driving a new sense of urgency to grow better leaders who are agile and resilient. To develop truly effective leaders, executive coaching needs to address leadership stages.

Currently, few leadership-development initiatives are addressing the inner game: how leaders perceive, find meaning, make decisions, and handle complexities. However, accredited executive coaches have been preparing for this shift toward coaching the essence of leaders and appreciating developmental-stages theory.

Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams, authors of Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results (Wiley, 2015), applied developmental-stage theory to create the Leadership Circle Profile, a 360°assessment tool that measures leaders’ developmental stages. 

Similarly, William B. Joiner and Stephen A. Josephs use developmental-stage theory as the foundation for Leadership Agility 360°, their 360° assessment tool, as explained in Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change (Jossey-Bass 2007).

We use the EQi 2.0 Leadership Report to explore leadership impact of emotional intelligence and provide development strategies and best practices for leadership challenges. The EQ360 is used in context of four key leadership dimensions (Authenticity, Coaching, Insight, and Innovation) with a new "Rater-based Leadership Potential" section. Clients are able to compare their scores with top leaders based on Global Norms and Professional Norms. Clients become aware of gaps in their awareness and alignment within their own organizations. These gaps may consist of areas in which the leaders excel but do not use their full potential because of lack of awareness. In addition to using EQ assessments in leadership development, these assessments are invaluable in succession planning. Three leadership topics are explored: managing conflict; aligning personal and professional priorities (aka work-life balance); and leading multigenerational teams.

These scientifically validated assessment tools are based on decades of psychological studies and are designed to accurately measure leadership effectiveness and identify a leader’s developmental stage. More than descriptive, the stages point to leadership behaviours that help target how to coax a leader to the next level.

By identifying stages of progressive development, we can create behavioural action plans and elevate the values of coaching by expanding a leader’s form of mind and by modifying behaviour. Progressive organizations have adopted this strategy and have invested in assessments to promote leadership agility and resilience to respond to a dynamic, complex, and changing business and workplace environment. 

How are leaders being developed in your organization? I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Contact me at  [email protected], at 905-858-7566, on LinkedIn, Maestro’s Facebook, Twitter.