So, how do we equip leaders to deliver on this challenge and opportunity? There are five major themes that pervade emerging best practice in developing leaders for more complex contexts.

1. Fully integrated

What does fully integrated mean? To put it another way, the best solution is not really a development program (although it of course develops people) – it should be something that is part of the business improvement machinery of the organisation.

This has many facets to it:

• The starting point is the strategic direction of the organisation. Increasingly, we are seeing the best organisations create not a leadership framework as such, but a framework for how leaders enable the achievement of the strategy.
• As a result, while the immediate objective of the intervention is to develop leaders, that is really only base camp – a point on the journey to changing culture, driving strategic priorities and achieving long-term goals. In many cases, the leadership programs are now almost indistinguishable from, or at least interwoven with, culture change programs.
• This of course also shows up in the design, in both the what and the how. In terms of the what, there is no generic content – everything is placed in context. And in terms of the how, all learning in some way occurs either in the flow of work or in the mental processing of work either just completed, in process or about to begin. And the use of learning reinforcers to ensure that no program experiences are isolated but are connected to both each other and to business application.

In also shows up in other ways, including:

• That the CEO is typically the sponsor.
• The greater likelihood that entire levels of the organisation participate.
• That it happens at multiple levels (albeit in different ways).
• The high likelihood that rollout is accelerated so that everyone has had the experience by the half-way point of the strategic timeframe.

2. Designed for impact

An obvious corollary of the fully integrated approach is that it must be designed for impact. If the organisation says it’s all about driving culture, strategy and results, then the design must accomplish that.

Historically, no matter how much that has been said, the emphasis has typically been on one thing: did participants love it. It’s a psychologically pleasing thing to achieve, but of limited value. And while it may be more uncomfortable, what is needed instead is that learners have better impact as a result of the experience, even if they didn’t enjoy it. Of course, the ideal is to have both go together, but the design must, when push comes to shove, prioritise impact over likeability.
So what delivers the impact?

3. Building capacity (not capability)

Increasingly, we find that the interventions that work best, particularly at senior level, have very little focus on adding capabilities. This may sound bizarre – after all, isn’t the point of development programs to develop capabilities?

The key to understanding the difference is well expressed by Peter Sage: “Behaviour follows mindset, not skillset”.

If you educate somebody without raising their level of consciousness, all you’re going to do is give them more tools with which to enact the same behaviour.

That’s precisely what many leadership programs have done. While it’s different at junior levels, at more senior levels, we find that the last thing leaders need is more tools. What they need, to drive strategy and culture, is mindset change. And that’s what the best clients are doing.

Organisations are littered with senior leadership ranks of high-achieving experts. But that’s only a fraction of what is needed, and frankly, is usually sufficiently supplied by other parts of the organisation. Think of the whirlpool metaphor: Achievement drive and subject matter expertise play little role in surviving and thriving in a context of polarities and overwhelm.

If not, then what is needed more? Qualities such as:

• The capacity to redefine, strategise and transform (oneself and one’s environment).
• The capacity to put the organisation ahead of self.
• The capacity to be less concerned about being right, or boosting ego, and caring more about what the collective can achieve together.

In summary, what’s needed is wisdom and very few organisations have as much of that as they now need. This begs the question: what are the leading organisations focusing on, if not adding capabilities?

Arguably the most important capacities are the mindsets that comprise the final two themes.

4. Thriving in complexity

While there has always been complexity in business, there is no doubt that organisational life is more complex in the modern age. More than ever, leaders need one eye on the telescope, and one eye on the microscope.

Cause and effect are often fuzzy and intermingled, problems have no clear solution or even definition, and there are often polarities at play. While leaders should still aim to communicate with simplicity, they can’t wish away the inherent complexity of their context and role. They need to wrestle with polarities and be prepared to lead people through long and uncomfortable processes to resolve stubborn problems and create new value.

This is often an under-developed mindset in leaders, as they have prospered and progressed through their technical ability to solve problems. As a result, they often underestimate the complexity of their work or, if they do perceive it, they rush too quickly to an easy (but ineffective) solution or feel overwhelmed. It’s therefore essential to help leaders to become what Carolyn Coughlin and Jennifer Garvey Berger call ‘complexity geniuses’.

5. Enterprise and systems mindsets

Linked to thriving in complexity is the other key mindset, which is about thinking at the level of one’s enterprise – or even better, at the level of the system in which one’s enterprise operates.

While we still need plenty of people who are experts and achievers, the big-ticket items for organisations today require strategic, transformative thought and action. Most leaders do not operate at this kind of level; they are focused more on their swim lane, or see the world through only one perspective. More and more, leaders have to be focused on a smorgasbord of performance domains simultaneously; financial results, customer outcomes, team cohesion, employee engagement and wellbeing, and impact on communities and society.

The best interventions help leaders to extend their repertoire so that they see the whole picture and engage effectively with the struggle to keep all of these domains in balance.