When a politician says one thing, then does another they are rightly called out on it.
It is time we did the same with senior leaders in business too.
Over the last few months, I’ve had multiple conversations with future leaders at global businesses and multi-national professional services firms. They are mid-career leaders of functional teams with twenty-plus years in complex environments.
They are the senior leaders in waiting. And they are struggling to lead.
The reason is a disconnect between the values communicated both internally and externally at a corporate level, and the day-to-day expectations of being part of a commercial business that exists to make a profit.
Both the values and the expectations are communicated from the same senior leaders even if they don’t necessarily match up. It seems that the values are sung from the rooftops, but the expectations are communicated sotto voce.
To go back to the politicians, it would be like a political party promising one thing in one constituency and something different in another.
A quick review of company value, purpose and mission statements highlights a focus on subjects and values that are often totally unrelated to the focus of their business. Others have value statements that set unrealist expectations for what it is like to work in a commercial organisation. For example, one thing that was almost universally missing was an open acknowledgement that sometimes things are hard and that it is consistent work that gets results.
The future leaders I have spoken to have to motivate their teams to work smarter but also harder to be more productive and to meet targets. Good performance in anything happens when there is a focus on what matters. If this is not one of the values that is celebrated at a corporate level, getting teams to embrace this at a functional level will be tough.
It seems that the corporate level rush to be purpose-driven organisations is creating tensions that are putting ever-increasing burdens on the mid-level leaders but also leading to unhappiness with tensions between the four generations in the workplace growing.
As ever, better consistent communication can help. Starting with greater honesty.