The New Leadership Paradigm: Dare To Execute

One month ago we introduced our ABC’s of Leadership for all times to reflect leadership challenges in response to today’s turbulent climate. Thus far, we have discussed three non-negotiable leadership skills: Agility, Breakthrough Thinking, and Collaboration that is bold and intentional. This week, we move into our fourth skill: Dare to Execute higher aspirations. We define this skill as the ability to overcome barriers to boldness, bring clarity to chaos to focus on the critical few with intensity, and build commitment and accountability to drive higher success.

In this podcast, I speak with Dr. Loretta Cate, a member of the WLH team and co-leader of our WIL initiative. We discuss how the leader of a pharma company set high goals and executed new operating models to reset how work is done throughout their organization, leading them to surpass 2^nd quarter expectations despite the challenges posed by the pandemic. This leader’s success is echoed across other organizations by leaders who follow similar paths of questioning their assumptions, thinking bigger and letting go of historical norms in order to find ways of making the impossible possible.

In addition to setting higher aspirations, leaders must ensure everyone on the team has clarity around their role, responsibilities, and expectations. When this happens, trust and respect always follow and organizational synergy is cultivated. Setting high aspirations is key, however, leaders must cultivate other skills in order to ensure their organizations meet these goals. In this way, each of our non-negotiable leadership skills builds and reinforces upon each other, creating a complete toolkit with which leaders can address new challenges and succeed.