Leadership Acts and Moments of Engagement

One of the key purposes of leadership development is to support the delivery of organisational strategy. And we know from the research of Andrew Kakabadse¹ that engagement is critical if an organisation’s strategy is to be executed in a way that delivers value. We know too that the traditional formula of creating a strategy, aligning structures and processes together with ‘fixing’ leaders’ deficits through competency development is far less likely to deliver value. Time and time again Kakabadse’s research revealed that without engagement and alignment of view about the context of the strategy (and the strategy itself) the chances of delivering value are much reduced.

“Engagement is critical if an organisation’s strategy is to be executed in a way that delivers value.”

So leadership development programmes which are explicitly aimed at supporting the implementation of strategy should place a special emphasis on engagement; and in order to do this effectively, they should focus on leadership acts.

Kim and Mauborgne² suggest such a focus on leadership acts and activities, observing that “over many years a great deal of research has generated insights into the values, qualities, and behavioural styles that make for good leadership, and these have formed the basis of development programs and executive coaching. The implicit assumption is that changing values, qualities, and behavioural styles ultimately translate into high performance. But when people look back on these programs, many struggle to find evidence of notable change.”

“The implicit assumption is that changing values, qualities, and behavioural styles ultimately translate into high performance.”

When using this approach, however, there is a risk that designers of leadership programmes do not define acts and activities. What can then happen is that acts and activities become entangled with skills, qualities and attributes of leaders. So it is worthwhile getting clarity by defining these terms.

One way to do this is proposed below. Acts and activities are extended by adding practices and cultural norms. In other words, an act repeated becomes an activity, which becomes a practice and then an embedded cultural norm.

The sponsor of such a leadership programme may request that the content is built around the organisation’s competency framework. This is the moment to transform these competencies into acts.

These acts would not be pre-conceived by the programme sponsor; this would defeat the object. In fact the idea is that they should emerge as an outcome from the leadership programme. Kim and Mauborgne suggest a process whereby the leader and their team co-create an as-is and to-be canvas which, through a constructive exchange, charts and ranks these acts. So the acts are agreed between the leader and their team; and through doing this they create moments of engagement.

“The acts are agreed between the leader and their team; and through doing this they create moments of engagement.”

We suggest that an element of the leadership programme is dedicated to preparing the leaders to engage with their teams in this way — for example, how the leader might facilitate such a discussion, the importance of a growth mind-set, and how they might manage adverse reactions from team members. So the skills enhancement is directly related to a leadership act which is implementing the strategy.