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A CORPORATE GOVERNANCE CASE STUDY QUESTION Read the article…
A CORPORATE GOVERNANCE CASE STUDY QUESTION
Read the article below and answer the questions that follow:
The Future of Leadership: Designed to Lead
Future leaders will need to be innovative, collaborative and adaptive.
They will also need to be both strategic and agile (“stragility”) to build tomorrow’s talent.
The future of leadership is diverse and anchored in what I like to refer to as Executive Leadership Presence that I believe embodies inclusive leadership.
Dennis Gabor, a noble prize-winning physicist, once said, “The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.” Can organizations and their leadership predict a future that is inclusive, equitable and diverse?
Perhaps as we celebrate Black History Month and International Women’s Month, we need to commit to finding leaders who actually advocate for issues like closing the gender and pay gap so that we can gain greater diversity and inclusion within organizations.
Why is this still an issue? According to a recent McKinsey study, the pay gap is 18% between men and women.
A recent commentary article published in the Dallas Morning News notes “a well-documented reason for the gender pay gap is that women are much less likely than men to negotiate their starting salary or ask for raises, citing that they feel uncomfortable and put on the spot. The solution? Women are advised to improve their negotiation skills and be more aggressive. But of course, not too aggressive, because women are also more likely than men to get penalized for negotiating.” How do we train these leaders? With globalization and the significant changes taking place in the workforce with the largest fraction being millennials, leaders need to move beyond goal-achievement and task functioning (competence, assertiveness, decisiveness) and give more attention to MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION – ACADEMIC AND ASSESSMENT CALENDAR – DISTANCE REGENT BUSINESS SCHOOL (RBS) – JANUARY 2023 41 their capacity in maintaining relationships and social functioning (benevolence, trustworthiness, morality). In order to develop the future leaders who will make our societies thrive and our world sustainable, leadership training is important but perhaps more important is how the training is conducted. Because people consume and process information differently, an integrative experiential training approach with focused coaching that delves into leadership gaps will help considerably. Training must be designed with the understanding that individuals are all different, and we all learn differently and at different paces. It also requires leadership training that intersects with an understanding of diversity and inclusion. We can better lead others when we understand their perspectives, their experiences, their motivations and their inspiration. What are the leadership qualities we need to build? According to a study published by the American Psychological Association, “a person with executive presence is someone who, by virtue of how he or she is perceived by audience members at any given point in time, exerts influence beyond that conferred through formal authority.” In other words, your behavior, when no one is watching, influences your presence and perception as a leader. Both communication and interpersonal skills are pivotal. When we look around the world and assess how leaders have dealt with the pandemic, the shining examples are leaders who emulate these skills – and often these have been women. Unfortunately, women in North America and around the world have been the hardest hit by the pandemic. Indeed, many reports cite it will take decades to rebound to preCOVID numbers as they relate to equity and inclusion. The Canadian context is not much different. A recent Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) report identified that, “despite notable rebounds in overall employment and GDP in recent months, the pandemic continues to cloud the future for many industries in which women had significant MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION – ACADEMIC AND ASSESSMENT CALENDAR – DISTANCE REGENT BUSINESS SCHOOL (RBS) – JANUARY 2023 42 representation. What’s more, the pandemic has made the family responsibilities that women typically shoulder that much heavier. That has set up a divergent, and troubling, trajectory where Canadian women continue to retreat from the workforce even as Canadian men more than make up for ground lost early in the pandemic.” Leadership development helps level the playing field. The Conference Board and DDI analysis links in a number of key metrics that are critical to the five Ps – People, Purpose, Planet, Profit and Pivot. Executive Leadership Presence training that ensures a thoughtful, humble approach to how organizations are led saw a 114% increase in sales, 223% increase in cross-selling, 300% increase in referrals and a 71% increase in customer satisfaction. The study also identified that absenteeism was reduced by 90%, supplemental labour costs went down by 237%, grievances decreased by 105% and turnover was reduced by 77%. Clearly, leadership matters and has significant implications for the bottom line of any organization while improving organizational culture, confidence and trajectory. This article also collates additional data on the benefits of leadership development. Levelling the playing field. Further to developing the necessary skill set, great leadership requires individuals to be poised and calm under chaos while demonstrating humble confidence. In other words, being in control – not just having control. Charting a path toward the future of leadership requires environments, workplaces and societies that value and celebrate our differences and skills. To get there we need to be rethinking our learned behaviours and socialization to move beyond our biases (we are all biased) and toward inclusion. Executive and leadership presence trains and raises awareness among individuals in relation to self-awareness, bias, humility, inclusion, communication, integrity to have the confidence to be authentic and intentional. Simply put, the ability to lead in a globalized, digitally-reliant, interconnected world requires an inclusive growth mindset that is anchored in the key pillars of leadership presence.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2021/03/22/the-future-ofleadership-designed-to-lead/?sh=5da84b2c67ba
Appraise the key characteristics of the future global leader, and based on the article and your own understanding, unpack how organisations shape individuals’ behaviour. (30 MARKS)
