Over the past couple of months, I’ve hosted five different discussion groups with charity chief executives where the topics they’ve raised have been incredibly similar.
To be fair, it’s saved me a lot of prep. But it’s also made me realise there’s a new challenge emerging, and it’s probably a big factor in why leaders are feeling more stressed than they used to.
It’s about the critical competencies we don’t even know we’re missing.
Different people have described it to me in different ways. Some have spoken about getting teams together for things like away days, creative sessions, working through difficult issues, those times you want everyone physically in a room.
They’ve talked about the pushback they get nowadays. The subtle suggestions of injustice, of how it’s unfair to those with clear boundaries or barriers, obligations or commitments, or perhaps those who simply prefer to be working from home.
But mostly they’ve talked about the stress and second-guessing – the “Am I really being unfair to demand they come in?”
Others have spoken about people who are often functionally good at their job, but their growing commitment to “authenticity” is clearly hacking off a whole bunch of their colleagues.
Phrases such as “principled”, “radical honesty” and “speaking truth to power” are often used to add colour.
We all appreciate the need for boundaries and welcome the fact more people feel able to be themselves at work – some of us remember darker days when both those things were rare – but what’s equally true is that personal boundaries can’t justify building barriers, nor can being authentic give license to act like an ass.
The thing is, they might sound like two completely different issues, but they’re actually part of the same problem.
What those CEO conversations all highlighted is that there’s a set of critical competences we require, from just about everyone in the modern workplace, that we’re not recruiting for, not developing, not even formally appraising.
And they’re a massive pain when they’re absent.
It’s ironic, then, that this organisational blind spot is largely about awareness. Specifically, awareness of yourself and the impact you have on the people around you.
It’s the awareness that your role in an organisation is not simply functional – having the technical skills to do your bit of the task. Because in a modern organisation, especially a non-profit, what’s required from your role is about far more than just you.
It’s about the relationships and trust you need to build with others, both within and outside the organisation, that go far beyond your own tasks if the organisation is going to function at its best.
And more than that, it’s about your contribution to the culture, about how you’re contributing to an environment of psychological safety where others can also be the best version of themselves.
This is not just a leadership thing, it’s true even for the most junior of roles.
The world where leaders could break all the work into neat little pieces and parcel them up like boxes in an organogram, so all you need worry about is what’s in your little box between the hours of nine and five, is long, long gone, no matter how much we pretend otherwise.
We’re not in the 1950s. We’re not tightening bolts on a Ford assembly line.
The nature of modern work is more complex, more conceptual, invariably more cross-functional than ever before. And it’s constantly evolving.
For our organisations to succeed, they require collaboration, adaptability, empowerment in decision-making, at all levels. And by their very nature, those things generate creative conflict between people and teams, whether of ideas or needs, resources or priorities.
This is the inescapable reality of the modern workplace. Creative tension is the one thing we can’t automate. It is an intrinsic feature of collaboration.
Resolving these tensions can’t fall solely on the shoulders of leaders.
It’s not your job as CEO to ‘parent away’ the interpersonal problems between your people. They have to take responsibility, to own the issue, to find a resolution.
Whether it’s written down or not, this is actually, now, a part of everyone’s job.
And to do that job, they need the basic competence and maturity to negotiate conflict, to understand and be accountable for their impact on other people and the wider cultural environment, and the willingness to flex and develop themselves as the context demands.
The question is, are you recruiting for these competencies? Are you appraising for them? Developing them?
Because if you’re not, it’s no wonder your leadership is stressed.
Martyn Drake is founder of the management consultancy firm Binley Drake Consulting