The Power of Transformative Leadership

Continue reading the original French article on the website of HR Today.

Transformation is a business imperative

According to PwC’s 2024 Global CEO Survey, nearly 40% of CEOs believe that their companies will not be viable in a decade if they continue on their current path. However, the multitude of crises has left even less time for upskilling.

Swiss leaders aren’t immune from this situation. Faced with historically low levels of unemployment – 2.1% at the time of writing – 26% of surveyed Swiss employees plan to change employer in the next year. Often, the lack of leadership skills is part of the problem and a key reason for employees to look elsewhere. With nearly 1 million experienced (baby boomer) workers set to leave the workforce in the next ten years, the situation will only become more challenging, with greater emphasis needed on succession planning to grow the next generation of leaders.

Focus on five key success factors

Our research shows that there are five key elements which enable leadership teams to harness the power of truly transformative leadership:

1. Make sense of the world and support others in doing the same. Transformative leadership teams engage a diverse set of people in understanding the world and identify the challenges, opportunities, and associated risks for the organisation. They provide clarity through simple and compelling communication and know when it's time to transition from decision-making to implementation. Without this focus, organisations risk making the wrong bets, exacerbating long-term issues while exclusively dealing with short-term problems.
2. Set a radical ambition: Transformative leadership teams identify a major problem that their organisation is uniquely positioned to address. They connect that ambition to the tangible impact they can achieve and, while challenging their team members to surpass previous achievements, systematically provide them with the skills and confidence needed to realise these ambitions. This is especially important as only about half of the workforce find their jobs fulfilling. Such leadership boldly pushes the organisation to explore new horizons while simultaneously fostering the capacity, engagement, and growth of their team.
3. Achieve the promised outcomes: Leadership teams translate the ambition into outcomes, communicating the right results to the right stakeholders. They assume responsibility for the execution, and they strike a balance between empowering people while ensuring that the organisation focuses on the factors critical to achieving the promised outcomes.
4. Act as a catalyst: No individual or organisation can succeed alone in delivering what's needed to survive and thrive. Transformative leadership teams, therefore, act as catalysts for bringing together people with diverse skills and capabilities, forming coalitions to overcome resistance to change and achieve common goals. By creating a compelling narrative for identification and aligned action, and by removing organisational roadblocks, they establish an environment in which diverse talent can thrive.
5. Power the engines: As outlined in the Swiss Constitution, “the strength of the community is measured by the well-being of the weakest of its members”. Given the scale and intensity of transformations, people run a high risk of burning out. Transformative leaders understand these risks and carefully manage their well-being and that of their team members to enable sustainable performance. This requires self-awareness, effective self-management, and the cultivation of trusted relationships. Seeking coaching to maintain balance often enhances self-awareness and enables leaders to more effectively attract, motivate, develop, and retain high-performing teams.

Focusing on any one of these five factors will help to maximise leadership impact on collective performance but neglecting one of them can significantly reduce the likelihood of success. Transformation is hard and it’s the people who make it happen. In this reality, the role that leadership teams take, or don’t take, can determine whether the transformation will be a success, or not.

Tangible ways to overcome barriers to transformative leadership

• Treat leadership development as a business topic and not a standalone HR topic. While HR partners play a crucial role in implementing successful leadership development programmes, it's imperative for leaders at all levels to take ownership of transforming the business model. This responsibility extends from the board and executive management to every employee across the organisation. Based on our experience, the most impactful leadership development initiatives are those endorsed and acknowledged by the executive team as a business imperative, with HR providing comprehensive support for their streamlined and targeted execution.
• Invest in leadership development programmes: As more and more companies in Switzerland, especially family businesses, face succession planning challenges with numerous C-suite baby boomers set to retire in the coming years, leadership teams cannot navigate this transition alone. Leadership coaching programmes can assist them through the transition and prepare the next generation to take over the reins of the company.
• Measure your business transformation success: It’s important to have a range of qualitative and quantitative measures to track transformation progress, preferably linked to objectives and key results (OKRs). These measures may include employee surveys covering organisational culture, retention statistics, trend information from exit interviews, sales data, and customer feedback.

So the question is not “Why should we undertake a transformation?” but rather “What are the risks and costs of not having the right leadership to make it succeed?”

Average leadership teams raise questions and find the roadblocks – high performing leadership teams seize on what they don’t know and find the answers, or as John Maxwell put it “The pessimists complain about the wind. The optimists expect it to change. The leaders adjust the sails”.