siliconindia | | July 20199we know today may be obsolete tomorrow, but that's a topic for another article).A world that just changed requires a fundamental shift in the way we lead if we want to leverage the techno-logical disruption for the many advantages it offers. For simplicity sake, let's label the original or current leader-ship paradigm as a transactional leadership contract. This transactional leadership contract is made between lead-er and employee. This contract is governed by a central question: What can you (as employee) provide for me in return for what I (as a leader with the power) can provide to you? The premise of this old leadership paradigm is all about extracting as much performance from people as humanly possible. It's characterized by these three words: stability, predictability and control. Let me ask you, do the words stable and predictable come anywhere near describing the world in which we find ourselves today? Ok, obvious answer. However, this transactional leadership contract continues to dominate the culture in many of our companies and it absolutely needs to change.A New Leadership ContractAgain, for simplicity sake, let's describe the paradigm change that must occur as a `relational leadership con-tract'. This relational leadership contract is once again made between leader and employee. This contract how-ever, is governed by a new central question: How can I (as a leader) show up in such a way as to inspire your (the employees') humanity? The premise of this new para-digm suggests that how we show up as leaders can inspire others to offer the best of being human. It's characterized by these three words: clarity, resilience and trust. Making the ShiftAllow me to suggest three ways in which leaders can shift from the antiquated `transactional' leadership paradigm to the essential `relational' leadership paradigm: 1) Let go of the power. 2) Lead like a Coach and 3) Lead from the Heart. 1) Let go of the power. The phrase, `knowledge is pow-er' rings true with the `laggard' crowd of leaders. Howev-er, knowledge is free, prolific and incredibly accessible. The idea then is to leverage the prolific knowledge to cre-ate and inspire leaders at all levels in your organization. We must come to trust people to make decisions that are aligned with our vision, mission and values. This is where we can provide clarity. It's our responsibility to connect what people are doing daily to `our mission' and make the vision so clear that it can be used to guide decision mak-ing very deep in the organization. Then, let people use their access to the available knowledge to make decisions for themselves.2) Lead like a coach. Sounds cliché I know, and think about it. Transactional paradigm leaders run in during the middle of the play and take over the role of quarterback. Leading like a coach requires that we observe the `play' and then guide, encourage, course-correct and inspire our teams, not execute for them. The best way to do this is to learn to be inspired by them. In other words, as you ob-serve their performance, be inspired by it. 3) Lead from the Heart. In Mark Crowley's book by the same name, he says the missing link in employee en-gagement is the heart... the heart of the leader. The trans-actional leadership paradigm suggests the heart has no place in business execution. The relational leadership par-adigm would imply it's all about the heart. Inspiring the humanity in others originates from a heart place. Leading from the heart requires leaders to spend time daily, dis-connecting from electronic devices and looking deep into their own hearts. Leaders who lead from the heart make developing emotional intelligence a high priority. They see every human interaction as an opportunity to connect, be inspired and lift others, no matter what's going on in our crazy change world.My call to action to you is: model the behaviors of let-ting go of the power, lead like a coach and lead from the heart and watch how fast you can create an environment where you are inspiring greatness in those who choose to follow you. A world that just changed requires a fundamental shift in the way we lead if we want to leverage the technological disruption for the many advantages it offers
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