Leadership Innovators

Author: Paul Corke

  • Leadership Success Factors: Building Tomorrow’s Leaders

    Leadership Success Factors: Building Tomorrow’s Leaders

    “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” 

    — Ralph Nader

    Are Leaders Born or Made?

    When we think about leadership, an age-old question arises: are leaders born, or are they made? Is leadership a product of nature or nurture? It’s easy to argue for both sides and then conclude that it is a combination of the two. Some individuals may indeed be more naturally inclined towards leadership due to their inherent traits.

    However, history and experience show that leaders can be made. Many who appear to be ‘born leaders’ are, in fact, shaped by their experiences rather than innate talent alone. While some people may have a more dominant behavioural style that inclines them towards leadership roles, this alone does not make a great leader. In today’s sophisticated and digitally connected world, true leadership is far more than just taking control—it’s about fostering an environment where people thrive. Leadership is now so finely balanced especially when we are living in the AI age where we are questioning what it means to be human.

    Leadership in a Human World

    Leadership should not be defined solely by a title but rather by actions, decisions, and role-modelling behaviours. Everyone has the potential to lead, and the way we conduct ourselves can set a positive or negative example. One of the most insightful quotes on leadership comes from Tom Peters: ‘True leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders.’

    In the modern world, people no longer expect to be treated as subordinates or mere followers. Instead, they seek autonomy, creativity, and the opportunity to make a meaningful impact. They want to understand their purpose as leaders in their own right. As leaders, it is our role to facilitate this understanding, helping individuals grow both personally and professionally. It’s actually about taking a genuine interest.

    A common pitfall in leadership is treating people as mere tasks to be managed rather than as human beings with aspirations and emotions. Just as we project manage our work, we can mistakenly start ‘managing’ people in the same way. This is why defining what successful leadership looks like is so crucial. When leaders have a shared understanding of excellence, they can align their behaviours accordingly, it is about understanding ‘what good looks like‘.

    The fundamental point is that leadership can be defined and, therefore, designed. By establishing clear success factors that align with an organisation’s strategy, businesses can create a structured approach to leadership development, ensuring that leadership evolves in a purposeful way. This is about assessing the organisations past conditioning, current strategy and vision for the future.

    Competencies vs. Success Factors

    Many organisations already have competency frameworks in place, outlining the skills required for various roles. These frameworks typically include core competencies, functional competencies, and technical competencies, all of which help assess candidates and manage performance. According to the CIPD, 60% of employers implement competency frameworks within their organisations.

    However, as businesses move away from rigid performance ratings towards a more holistic approach focused on value, career conversations, and personal growth, the relevance of traditional competencies is shifting. With the rise of gig leadership and rapid changes in job roles, competencies alone may not be sufficient to guide future leadership development and can become quickly outdated.

    Traditional 360-degree feedback tools have also historically focused on competency assessment, often with a ‘fixing weaknesses’ mindset. This can be demotivating for leaders, especially when the focus is solely on areas for improvement rather than strengths. A strengths-based approach, on the other hand, not only enhances engagement but also encourages employees to leverage their natural abilities.

    While competencies help define job requirements and organisational structures, they may not always inspire people to reach their full potential. This is where leadership success factors become invaluable. Unlike competencies, success factors are rooted in real-world leadership experiences and behaviours that drive success. They provide a more relatable and aspirational benchmark for leadership excellence.

    The Power of Success Factors

    When people identify with success stories, they are more likely to adopt the behaviours that drive achievement. Consider examples from the world of sports: Tiger Woods’ resilience in overcoming injury to win another Masters title, Novak Djokovic’s unwavering self-belief to achieve 24 Majors surpassing the brilliance of Federer and Nadal, or the extraordinary comeback of Liverpool in the Champions League Final in 2005 when not giving up. These sports people exemplify the key attributes of success—belief, resilience, and determination that we can all relate to and understand.

    By analysing success, we can extract common leadership success factors such as aspiration, drive, and emotional intelligence. Unlike capability-based models, success factors create a universal language of leadership that resonates across industries and is easily understood by leaders.

    Case Study: Leadership in Action

    A multinational technology firm recently implemented a leadership success factor model to align leadership behaviours with strategic objectives. Over a five-year period, employee engagement rose by 45%, productivity increased by 30%, and leadership retention improved significantly. By clearly defining success factors such as adaptability, collaboration, and strategic vision, the company ensured that leaders across all levels understood what was expected of them.

    Additionally, a survey conducted by Deloitte found that organisations with a well-defined leadership framework were 60% more likely to outperform their competitors in terms of financial growth and innovation. These statistics highlight the direct impact of structured leadership development on business success.

    Building Future Leaders Today

    One organisation that implemented leadership success factors saw employee engagement increase by 40% over four years. This was achieved by aligning executive and leadership development with business strategy and ensuring that leaders clearly understood expectations. Leadership development was then structured around these success factors, creating a shared framework for growth.

    Importantly, leadership success factors are future-focused. In a world of constant change, organisations must define what great leadership will look like in the years to come—and start developing those qualities now.

    Establishing a strong leadership framework is essential for future-proofing an organisation. Leadership by design ensures that businesses do not simply react to challenges but proactively cultivate the leaders they need for tomorrow. While creating a leadership culture involves multiple dimensions, having a clear blueprint for leadership is the foundation of long-term success. With the right awareness and accountability, today’s leaders can shape the future of their businesses and drive sustainable growth.

    How are you building the leaders of tomorrow, today?

  • Evolving Leadership in the Age of AI

    Evolving Leadership in the Age of AI

    In describing leadership…

    Leadership is a set of mindsets and behaviours that aligns people in a collective direction, enables them to work together and accomplish shared goals, and helps them adjust to changing environments.

    How then has leadership evolved in this new age of being human?

    When we think about all the change in the world we have experienced in the last 20 years, and the advances in the fields of technology, AI and automation we are on the cusp of living in a new era: the AI Age, along with meeting the demands of future generations expectations in the workplace. But from a leadership perspective this will be the time for human centred leadership.

    And when we think of all the change that has happened and is happening round us has leadership evolved at the same pace? What is leadership now? Has it kept up with the advances in the world, the recent pandemic, the onset of AI and developed across global organisations? Are the same leadership qualities required?

    Eddie Obeng describes in the ‘World after Midnight’ at some point around 15-20 years ago there has been a reset point (Midnight) where the rate of human learning is no longer keeping up with technological change. So is leadership part of this or has leadership evolved in the last 20 years?

    When we go back in time to the industrial era we would have seen in general coercive command and control leadership which developed slowly over time to develop a boss worker relationship. This became more progressive with the advent of office working and the discovery of emotional intelligence. EQ brought a new wave of thinking about leadership. The situational leadership model described the way a leader should use different styles dependent upon the situation in simple terms along a spectrum from directive to coaching. Then the advent of the coaching revolution to empower people along with the use of psychometrics was the spark to develop a leaders self-awareness aligned to EQ. More recently in an excellent article by Korn Ferry called the Third Wave the shift has been moving to one of Agency, Authenticity and Agility. And there has been some amazing strategic and innovative leadership especially in the big tech companies like Apple, Amazon and Facebook to name a few but when we look at political leadership have we gone backwards in time? 

    Recently I read an article on Leadership in the Future where the writer was challenged on where they currently see leadership. The challenger’s point was “I’m not sure what industries you have been working in but I’m still seeing hierarchical, political, command and control leadership across the organisations I partner with.”  

    The Spectrum of Leadership

    I guess in some respects we could create a spectrum of leadership and then place organisations across the spectrum as to where their leadership is right now. But then in any business there will be pockets of leaders who inspire, empower and motivate when others use coercive control and power. In a recent Gallup study it is claimed that 50% of employees are not engaged and 25% are disengaged so this in itself provides possible evidence that Leadership is not keeping up with new generational demands of our current workforce. Although I do appreciate there are many factors that can lead to employee dissatisfaction but what we do know is that most people will become disengaged and leave their job due to their manager. I’m pretty sure that if you have an employee survey that each year there will be leadership actions and development that comes from the survey if your workforce feel they can freely speak their mind. Do they have psychological safety?

    In any medium to large organisation there will be an inertia and level of organisational conditioning which means there will be certain expectations of how to lead in the organisation. These expectations at times become so deeply embedded in the leaders subconscious so much so that no-one has actually made the rule people but believe there to be a rule they need to follow. No one challenges the rule and everyone continues to conform. Action or lack of action is then in direct proportion to conditioning. The senior leadership team role model either exemplary or dysfunctional behaviours which shape the company culture and the by product is the need to lead and manage in the same way to conform to acceptable standards. We are creatures of habit and comfort so rather than choosing to swim upstream most will conform and not challenge dysfunctional behaviours or the culture. 

    Leaders can at times treat their people like children instead of adults and although they know they should not do this if the rules of work state something different they can execute this against what would be their own personal beliefs. Power and conformity overcomes common sense. Organisational conditioning takes a hold when leaders are not willing to challenge the norm. At a higher level in some board rooms the Exec’s play out a power struggle and some may display more dysfunctional behaviour than the people they have working for them. Sometimes the badge of hierarchy dictates when it should listen. So has leadership progressed now we live in a digital world?

    Assessing your Organisations on the Leadership Spectrum

    If you were to rate your organisation on the spectrum of leadership where would it be…

    1.0 Leaders are in control and dictate (Hierarchical command and control Leadership).

    2.0 Leaders transact with their people (Transactional leadership – I give you something i.e. incentive and you give me something in return).

    3.0 Leaders inspire and create followers (Transformational leadership – people follow you because they are inspired and want to follow you).

    4.0 Leaders create leaders (Creational Leadership – Leaders give their people the confidence and autonomy to be the leader they are).

    5.0 Leaders empower their people to be the leader they choose to be (Autonomous Leadership – the starting point is people are leaders and have the freedom to lead with autonomy and ideas – it is better to seek forgiveness rather than permission is the set point).

    For the day and age that we live in the expectation would be we should be playing at the Transformational, Creational and Autonomous Leadership levels where employees are empowered and treated like leaders in their own right. If that is the case then your organisation is possibly keeping up with the rate of change in the world and will be ready to meet the expectations of the generations to come. Because generations in the future will be doing more sophisticated work as AI and automation takes over the manual processes their expectation set point will be to be treated as a leader and given freedom to express themselves. Work in the future is more likely to be episodic so one may move from one organisation to the next more frequently but one’s expectation will be to be treated as a leader not as an employee. Josh Bersin from Deloitte talked recently about how the employee and organisation relationship will completely change due to expectations of the generations to come and with impact like the recent pandemic completely changing the landscape. And HR faces an inflection point around becoming career and people focused as oppose to performance and company focused. But then I don’t want to move too far in to the future because this is about leadership now and understanding if it has evolved to keep up with the rate of change in the present.

    So what keeps leaders up at night? Lack of talent, the digital tech space, lack of critical skills, employees lack of digital experience, automation at work, the onset of AI and an aging workforce according to Mercer’s Global Talent Trends so we have to accept that leadership is far more complex than 20 years ago. Especially when leadership was probably face to face line management whereas in this day an age you are a leader as an individual contributor and when responsible for people remote leadership across the globe is now the expectation along with agile working practices. In Mercers trends 96% of executives are planning structural changes and unique human skills are most in demand i.e. innovation, digital competence, global mindset, data analysis, complex problem solving, change and inclusive leadership. We also now see a greater talent vacuum where desirable skills in specific niche areas are not readily available and organisations therefore embracing exponential learning to upskill, upgrade and provide development experiences to their employees.

    The requirements and expectations of a leader have definitely changed considerably in recent years, the landscape changed when we faced the burning platform that the pandemic created and now a new burning platform approaches with the onset of AI, but the question has to be ‘Are your leaders equipped and ready for the future? Are they capable? Do you have the right leadership support mechanisms in place to be able to support your leaders for now and in the future?’ 

    The future is changing everyday.

    So what are your thoughts on leadership now and has it evolved in the last 20 years?