Behaviours change organisations

Not words

Ideas are democratic. Or magical. Or both. Just as I set out to focus on some of the insights from my Speech Bubbles interview with Amy Wilson last week, I saw a great post on LinkedIn about the topic of leadership behaviour by Friedrich Blomerus, leadership development consultant and coach. And, a book I ordered called Change Questions by the brilliant D. Lynn Kelley arrived in the post. So much synchronicity!

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

Being a role model is not passive

In Speech Bubbles, executive Amy Wilson spoke about role modelling good leadership behaviour and rewarding those leaders who role model it too. She described the white male leaders early in her career who were: ‘confident but humble. They mixed joy and hard work. They asked for a lot, but they cared about their people and they encouraged me to speak up, to lead teams early on.’

As Amy progressed to more and more senior roles, becoming a leader of leaders, she sought to reward good role models. She says, ‘We need to celebrate and and bring people along. And then back to the role modeling. So always remember that you're a role model and you yourself and and that you are creating role models. So how do we how do we create as many role models as possible and celebrate them and share them?’

Being a role model is active, not passive. And creating more role models, as Amy describes, even more so.

How you organise your time shows what you care about

Every action a leader takes is a message, even inadvertently. Friedrich says strategy only becomes real through consistent, intentional actions that show up in how leaders run meetings, spend their time, what they celebrate and which conversations they prioritise.

Quote:

Culture only transforms through consistent leadership behaviour.

💡 𝐑𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫:

Your calendar is your strategy in action.
Your meetings are your culture in motion.
Your responses are your values made visible.

When you plan your calendar, run meetings and respond to queries or have conversations as a leader, your actions show your employees and teams what you care about. You are communicating what does and doesn’t matter to you. Even if you don’t realise it, as a leader you are being watched and your behaviours calibrated (what David Pullan calls boss-watching).

Behaviours that equal leadership effectiveness

If you’re an effective leader and your teams are watching you, they will learn how to become effective too.

From We Need New Leaders:

According to McKinsey, in an analysis of academic literature and a global survey of nearly 200,000 people in 81 organizations, there are four types of behaviours that account for 89% of leadership effectiveness: being supportive, operating with a strong orientation towards results, seeking different perspectives and solving problems effectively. This starts with self-knowledge, which McKinsey calls inside-out leadership.

People might act based on your words (if you’re lucky), but they will prioritise according to your behaviours. As Friedrich says, if you really care about change - or if transformation is on your agenda - make sure these are as close as possible.

Leadership behaviours that actually fuel change

One of the change bromides is ‘get leadership buy-in.’ Easier said than done, but no organisational change can really happen without leadership support. In a consulting project I was on a couple of years ago, I literally heard the words ‘the CEO wants you to progress the <massive change transformation> but he’s not going to talk about it. Not to employees, not to the media, not to anyone.’ I’d love to know how that one is going.

The lack or the existence of leadership support is the reason why change initiatives fail or succeed. But what are the leadership behaviours needed to support change?

In their excellent 2023 book Change Questions: A Playbook for Effective and Lasting Organizational Change, Dr Lynn Kelley and John Shook say that ‘visible, supportive behaviours by leadership are critical to the sustainment of any Change Initiative.’ Leaders need to show active, outward support for change. The authors say that supportive leadership behaviours include walking the floor where the initiative is happening and ask what is working and what isn’t, actively participating, seeking solutions when difficulties arise, training employees in the change, and reinforcing both the vision and the expected benefits of the change.

Since she is an operational excellence expert and statistician, Dr Lynn Kelley does not leave leadership behaviour change up to chance. In chapter 5, she provides a management system by which leaders can log their concerns, strategies and results during the change process. By following Dr Lynn’s process, leaders can demonstrate to employees their intentionality about change. Their behaviours, not their words, create the change.

(Note to self: For another post, is this why the communications function is so often challenged at leadership level? They can influence the words but they really have to be trusted advisors to influence leadership behaviours. Tough call.)

Small changes - big effects

Leaders can mouth the words all they like, but they show us what they truly believe through their behaviours. This is why I was disillusioned with corporate DEI years ago - because while I heard the words praising diversity and inclusion, the behaviours didn’t match up (all white, all male leadership teams, so many manels and the ever-present head-scratching about ‘the funnel’ of women in tech).

Small changes in behaviour are the vectors that create cultural transformation in our organisations. Remember, boss-watching is real.

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