A recent survey by ACE, Scala and Salans of 550 senior HR professionals across 17 countries, suggests that the recession has given organisations the motivation to strengthen their existing leadership.  This means that, as the economy recovers, those organisations are going be well placed to succeed.

Scala Group’s founder, Janice Caplan, comments on leadership’s: “critical role in creating shared vision, values and understanding for the organisation. … providing strategic leadership through their … direct reports… will emphasise the issues of communication, coaching and training.”

After the unrestrained greed and gluttony of the boom years, when leadership hardly seemed to matter, recession has given us a wake-up call.  Old ideas of leadership no longer fit the bill. Organisations are made of people, along with their structures, systems and processes. Without effective leadership we have no means of engaging people in working together for their common good.

Leadership is not reserved to top management (where too often it is disconnected from action) but is present in every human interaction in the organisation.  Leadership promotes the flow of information and knowledge to where it is most effective, by setting higher energies over lower ones.  This evolutionary idea of leadership runs counter to the mechanistic model of organisation, that imagines that people need to be manipulated to make them work.  Invoke authentic leadership and you will not be able to stop people giving of their best. If you are not already working on devolving authentic leadership at every level from the boardroom to the shop floor then now is the time to act.

If this all sounds strange to you, and even if it does not, then we should talk.