Uncertainty, complexity test for leaders

We live in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). This world a different kind of leadership – a versatile, adaptive leadership that embraces the challenges and opportunities that come with relentless change.

Practising versatile leadership calls for a constant balance between strategic and operational leadership on the one axis and forceful but enabling leadership on the other.

To achieve that balance, we must first cast off some myths about leadership.

We do not, for example, lead alone, nor are we leaders because of a title or a position.

Leadership, in other words, isn’t about authority. It’s also not about delegating all the work to a few hard-working souls while everyone else warily watches, hoping that The Boss doesn’t catch their eye.

Leadership is about influence. And in this VUCA world, that influence comes through robust stakeholder management, collaboration, and the destruction of silos. That is the only way to guide our organisations through adaptive challenges.

All of these skills require constant, clear, honest, wise communication. In years past, leaders considered communication a necessarily evil, an ancillary skill.

That is no longer true. Today, effective communication and effective leadership go hand in hand. Those who are leading must explain both the “what” and the “why” to their teams and to external stakeholders.

Non-stop information, effective leadership means being proactive about key developments, about both good news and bad news.

Moving our teams toward change also entails sacrifice and forces people out of comfort zones.

Leadership must consider: What are we asking people to give up or adopt? How are we asking them to do this? Are we sending clear and effective signals to your teams, your stakeholders?

As a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review noted, “Leaders too often express what they want in terms not of outcomes, but of tasks, and they rarely, if ever, make clear the full extent of the change they are asking for […] It’s also much easier to jump from.

“We need to change” to “Here’s what to do” than it is to thrash out the difficult trade-offs involved.

Left to their own devices, many leadership teams shortchange the questions of what they want the change to achieve, and why.”

Additionally, how are we cultivating emerging leaders within our organisations? Is this grounded in strong values of adaptive leadership, and are links clearly drawn to the sustainability of the organisation?

In this VUCA world, is our leadership focused on building organisations that understand and create effective customer journeys as a means of constant reinvention, and staying ahead of the competition?

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Leadership author Travis Bradberry says, “Adaptive leadership is a unique combination of skills, perspective, and guided effort that enables true excellence.

The adaptive leadership skills can take a leader at any level to places others cannot go.”

In fact, adaptive, agile leadership and powerful communication are the anchors of a new, world-class programme called Transforming Leadership for 21st Century Africa.

The programme is designed expressly to help East African leaders sharpen their skills in this era of unprecedented change. (Visit www.akumedia.aku.edu to learn more.)

As I coach and train executives (I’ll be one of the teachers in the Transforming Leadership for 21st Century Africa programme with courses designed giving the skills, mindset and communication expertise for better leadership in an organisation and in Africa), I know how hard it is for those who are leading to grapple with the complicated changes their organisations face today.

But the urgent truth is that in today’s VUCA world, those who practice leadership must not only steer their organisations through adaptive change; they must themselves evolve.

Otherwise, their organisations will go the way of the dinosaur.

Martin Oduor-Otieno is former CEO, KCB Group.