Nearly two years ago I was running a workshop in Germany for country CEO’s from across EMEA in a large engineering group. The theme was “Leading when Business is Tough”. This business had thrived in a relatively stable environment. It was clear that there had been an empowering approach, very comfortable with delegation and consensus as predominant styles. As they scanned their more difficult business environment, they recognised that there would be some tough decisions to take which would require strong, clear direction from the leadership team. However, they also understood that the continuing engagement of all the people was critical to the future success of the business. The leaders would have to recognise the nature of each challenge and then exercise their judgement about how to approach it; adapting their style to achieve the best possible decisions and prompt, efficient implementation.
The ability to exercise this judgement is the critical leadership skill and should be the primary focus both of selection and development of leaders. As Warren Bennis and Noel Tichy put it “A judgement that is not successfully executed is a failed judgement no matter how smart the strategy”.
Looking forward to discussing this at our workshop 'Leadership Judgement: Nothing Matters More' on day 1 of HRD.
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