The high cost of leadership

As an organisational psychologist and executive coach I'm often called in to help individuals manage workplace politics. Often it's about friction from within the team, sometimes involving outright bullying. At other times it's about "stakeholder management" and how to use influence to get people to do what you need them to do.

Occasionally I get to see a repeating pattern in coaching assignments from the same organisation. Which gets me thinking about the culture - what behaviours get rewarded and what behaviours are disapproved of, yet tolerated?

"My life would be better", my coaching client tells me, "if only They would do more/less of..." Turns out I can help clients paddle their own canoe a bit better. But it's harder to paddle against the stream. That's organisational culture.

And research findings over the last five decades show there is only one thing that can change the flow of the stream and get everyone paddling in the same direction.

Leadership.

To change organisational culture you must first change the leadership. Every metric of success starts and ends with the quality of the leadership in the organisation. Leadership has an outsized influence on the performance of any organisation.

And yet, too many enterprises or government agencies baulk at spending money on leadership training, when it is the best investment they could make. All too often they realize the apalling cost of not training for leadership. And they end up getting the leaders they deserve.