Identify and Adopt the New Skills Needed to be an Effective 21st Century Leader
“The chess master is obsolete, but the gardener is in great demand today. Good leadership creates a framework in which people and their ideas can unfold in the pursuit of a common purpose.” – Marcus Raitner
We are at an important crossroads. Faced with exponential technological advancements, increased competition, economic challenges, increasing personal debt, perpetual uncertainty, and burnout, we need to consider new ways to preserve our practices and our people.
The future is becoming increasingly difficult to predict and renewal is needed for businesses of all kinds to remain relevant and effective in our rapidly changing and connected world. However, most veterinary practices still rely on a way of working designed over 100 years ago for the challenges and opportunities of the industrial age. It’s time to call into question some of the long accepted workplace best practices that no longer serve us.
As a veterinary practice leader, what if you could learn to …
- Adopt an authentic leadership approach that doesn’t rely on chain of command or micromanagement, but a framework for dialogue & collaboration?
- Effectively engage people so they choose accountability and responsibility over an attitude of entitlement?
- Equip team members with abundant real-time information that increases the speed and accuracy of decision-making?
- Cultivate an inspired workplace environment, where you can dream and take risks to accomplish extraordinary things?
- Build an organization that achieves bottom-line results while rallying people around shared values and unity of purpose?
- Create a team that’s adaptable and responsive to change?
All this is possible when you adopt a different view of your role as a positional leader and cultivate a new set of 21st century leadership skills.
Session Topics
- Shift from Parenting to Partnering
- The “New Paradigm” Leader’s Role:
- Positional leaders are stewards of the team’s “Why” (the co-created vision, mission, values, and strategy)
- Positional leaders give up control and create other leaders
- The leader’s primary role is to facilitate a flourishing team culture
- Facilitation – Be a Host, not a Hero
- Become a facilitative leader and convene (not control) important conversations.
- Facilitate learning and innovation by regularly hosting conversations with your team about what shared leadership and shared accountability look like in your practice.
- Radical Transparency
- Be radically transparent with key information
- Be “open by default”
Pre-Work
- Read Facilitating Emergence and Sensemaking in Organizations: Exploring Facilitation and Facilitative Leadership as a core organizational capability to thrive in the VUCA world by Sahana Chattopadhyay
- Read Be a Facilitative Leader by Steve Davis
- Read Give Everybody Their Brain Back by Chuck Blakeman
- Read Leadership and the Small Group by Peter Block
- Watch David Marquet’s “Greatness” Video
- Optional: Read pages 19-36 in Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership by Marcus Raitner
Post-Work
- Facilitative Leader Self-Assessment
Use the “Be a Facilitative Leader” document to perform a self-assessment on yourself, noting both strengths and opportunities for personal and professional growth. - Watch Charlene Li’s TED Video, “Leadership in the Digital Era” OR…
- Watch Chuck Blakeman’s TED Video, “The Emerging Work World in the Participation Age”
Related References/Resources
- 21st Century Leadership – 10 Truths You Must Face by Jesse Lyn Stoner
- Does Your Leadership Reduce Learning? by Roger Schwarz
- Liberating Structures: Change Methods for Everybody Every Day by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless
- New Ways of Working for 2021 and Beyond Playbook by August
- Ready, Set, Go: Reinventing the organization for speed in the post-COVID-19 era by Aaron De Smet, Daniel Practhod, Charlotte Relyea, and Bob Sternfels
- Round-Robin Retros by Dave Bailey
- Six Enablers of Emergent Learning: Creating the conditions to foster emergent learning in organizations
by Sahana Chattopadhyay - To Foster Innovation, Cultivate a Culture of Intellectual Bravery by Timothy R. Clark
- Vertical Leadership Development by Nick Petrie
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