And therein lies the rub. Skills are attributes, not people. People are people. So whatever way we cut it, leadership must recognise the fundamental fact that an organisation is not simply a collection of disparate skills, drawn together for a variety of differing motivations. That is unlikely to be the way that we want our clients to feel about us. Changing our management style and approach to recognise that great and motivated people deliver great things, will result in great customer experiences. It comes down to culture, collaboration and drawing people together as a team.
We are seeing traditional functional leadership and managerial roles begin to wane in favour of a less hierarchical, flatter, structure. Teams are enabled to feel more connected to their colleagues, and to the enterprise. There is an emerging division of technical leadership and people leadership. Being fantastic at what we do does not automatically make us fantastic at leading a team. Promotions based on excelling at technical skills no longer equates to excelling at interpersonal skills. Leadership in today’s workplace requires excelling at both.