Your Leadership Fitness Journey Starts Here

***Leadership Platform takes organizational leaders on a leadership journey that incorporates the universal principles of fitness – regular consistent (daily, weekly, monthly), knowledge (intellectual) fitness and even practical fitness.***

200 years ago life was simpler. The socio-political, economic and technological dynamics of society did not really integrate or affect each other. Since then our environment has been advancing. As the pace picked up, many leaders fell behind with their leadership capacity to deal with this change. To make matters worse, fairly recently society took another leap forward, but this time it didn’t come to a standstill – it simply kept on moving.

As you know, today everything affects everything. The socio-political, economic and technological environment is so integrated that one thing changes and affects another, which affects yet something else – the well-known domino effect. Many leaders struggle to have sufficient insight into their constantly moving environment, to see how dynamic changes around them impact their business and specific situation. Decisions must be made faster than ever before, with more information and options to work through; and followers are more informed than ever and want to be part of the decision making, yet they want decisiveness from their leaders. To top it all leaders are more visible and there is less patience for mistakes.

In some industries or businesses the constant change is at a crawl pace, in some it is at a walking pace, while in others it is at a jogging or even sprint pace. The common denominator is that the environment does not stand still, and leaders have to be faster than their environment in order to lead their people and organisation towards success.

Bad news is the environment is not slowing down to give leaders a chance to breathe. In fact it just continues to pick up pace.

We compare the environment with a roundabout

When it moves slowly and you are holding on to the outside you are okay and can even keep your eyes open – look at the world around you as it circles. But as it picks up speed you have to close your eyes and if it goes even faster you will be thrown off. To stay on you have to move to the centre. It is the only way!

Moving to the centre we equate to a leaders ability to zoom in on the essence, core of any given situation; that no matter how complex and fast the environment becomes the leader is able to drill down to the simplicity of things; the ability to think universal, to attach ones thinking to those elements in society that will never change; the ability to see the big picture – in short, becoming a brilliant complexity manger.

Therefore, to more than cope with the above picture:

Leaders must become environmentally fit! See the big picture all the time.
There is a need for leadership fitness like never before – the ability to think universal, simple, essence, big picture; to be faster than ones consistently moving environment.
That period where technical/functional fitness is superior to leadership fitness may be over – though the need for technical fitness has never been greater.
Society is geared for the universal principle of fitness as far as physical and even technical, functional fitness is concerned. In other words we know that before someone can become running fit they have to gain some knowledge about running (knowledge fitness) before actually going out and running (practical fitness). Then regular consistency kicks in. It won’t help to go running every six weeks, or even once a week. It needs to be done daily, consistently.
The same with technical/functional fitness: We understand how to make someone Engineering fit, for example – send them to Varsity or College for four or so years (knowledge fitness) with fanatic regular consistency, and then they go out into the world where practical opportunities are thrust upon them (practical fitness). There after they have to stay knowledge and practically fit in order to remain relevant.
But with leadership fitness the world does it the other way around. When someone is good at what they do (technical/functional knowledge and practical fitness), we thrust a leadership opportunity at them (expect them to function practically as a leader), after which we send them on a leadership programme.
And then we don’t even get it right – we jump the process. We don’t implement the universal principles of fitness, in that leadership programmes happen ad hoc, not consistently, regularly. A new manager therefore never really becomes leadership fit.
After all the leadership training a leader is still more of a product of the “consistencies” in his upbringing, whether positive or negative habits, beliefs and values. Leaders go on ad hoc leadership programmes and when they return to the workplace they fall back on their technical/functional habits, as well as default back to their upbringing. Why? Because these were drilled into them over years of consistency. There is no way of countering this with ad hoc leadership programmes.
Leadership must become our 1st Profession – has always been! Ask most people what their first profession is and they will answer – Engineer, Lawyer, Teacher, Banker, and so on. Of course they will, because these were ingrained into them over years of consistency and society gives them recognition for it. But it is not their first profession. On the playground during primary school days, while playing sport, in one’s family, leadership was already manifested, present, part of one’s life. Leadership is that part of every human being that gives life to their technical/functional job; that creates successful movement of it; that influences people; that makes things happen; that changes people attitudes; that adds real value. Without the leader in any person their actual job becomes meaningless, mediocre at best or even fails miserably.

Deductions:

Find a leadership programme that incorporates the universal principles of fitness: knowledge and practical fitness – daily, weekly, monthly regular consistency, like technical, functional studies. The leadership fitness journey must increase your ability to think universal, simple, essence, big picture; the consistency must start impacting on your behaviour and beliefs regarding leadership in a positive manner.
Find a way to ensure you are environmentally fit – big picture thinking – understanding how different elements of society impact the environment.
Make sure you remain functionally/technically fit.

Our involvement will ensure diverse exposure and enhance the intensity of your journey without necessarily impacting negatively on current time constraints.

Our approach also ensures the strengthening of internal relationships amongst leaders and instils a culture of – “in this company we have conversations about leadership and then we practice what we discuss.” All of this leads to the fast tracking of your leadership journey towards great leadership!

Email us now for your personalized Leadership Fitness Journey proposal at info@leadershipplatform.com or call +27 12 653 3022

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