4 Tips to Succeed When Leading at the Pace of Change

Would you say the pace of change has increased, decreased or remained the same? Your perception matters and it impacts every facet of your leadership.

When the consistency of life is unexpectedly interrupted, it can test even the most imperturbable leader. How do you regain your stability and succeed through the challenges of change?

1. Get Clear on Your Purpose and Values. When you feel an unrelenting uncertainty of everything around you, you need to be clear on your “true north.” A well-defined purpose serves as a foundation to build your future on. We believe in defining a personal purpose AND a leadership purpose. Purpose and values give guide rails as you navigate change, lead well and build a successful career. (See this template we created for you in the Rebel Leader Resources)
   
2. Build Resilience. We have supported organizations through change and transformation with excellent change management. That’s a defensive move. The offensive approach to change is building resilience. It’s one of the most important gifts you can give to yourself and your team. Here are Six Strategies for Resilience.
   
3. Learn how to Learn. Once of the most essential skills in leadership is the ability to quickly gather and process new information. When the pace of change increases, the time to gather data, analyze and make a decision shrinks. One of the widely accepted management norms is that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Unfortunately there have been many situations where what’s measured creates a short-term focus that is detrimental to the organization (Wells Fargo comes to mind). Develop skills of observation and question-asking that lead to understanding, learning and better decision making.
   
4. Shift from Traditional Leadership (Command and Control) to Rebel Leadership (Engage, Empower and Involve). Throughout our careers, we’ve observed a lot of ineffective leadership. That means leaders are getting a lesser degree of performance, productivity and profitability than they otherwise could. While traditional leadership was how things have been done in the past, it diminishes performance over the long term. It may produce short term results, but at what cost? Here is a comparative list of the two approaches to leadership.

The demands of the external environment can be exhilarating or exhausting. Apply these four tips to your leadership practice and succeed through a dizzying acceleration of the speed of change