Leader Need Wings

Leaders Need Wings, Not Wheels: The Profound Difference Between Elevating and Shifting Behavior

Which would you rather attach to your company: A new set of wheels to help shift gears with incremental improvements, or a set of wings that elevates performance by addressing the threats and opportunities of an interconnected and morally interdependent world? The answer is obvious. Wings enable leaders and organizations to launch the journeys that our new world requires – not to merely survive, but to thrive. New wheels (tactical, iterative improvements) only help companies move a bit faster on the same old, bumpy path. Wings elevate behavior as well as organizational performance and resiliency. I’ve long argued that we’ve entered the Era of Behavior. I need to clarify that: We’ve entered the Era of Elevated Behavior. Not only are companies competing on the basis of behavior, but the companies that succeed in this era will be those that generate – or, more accurately, inspire – employee behaviors that forge more meaningful connections with all business stakeholders. In the past, leaders hoped employees would promote the company at dinner parties. Today, leaders need people who, on their own initiative, will hop onto Facebook and defend their company publicly. Elevated behavior is about collaborating with colleagues from different cultures, it’s about building true supply-chain partnerships that move beyond a check-the-box vendor-supplier agreement. In the healthcare industry, doctors display elevated behavior when they genuinely apologize for their errors rather than ducking behind legal defenses. On the business playing field, elevated behavior translates to building healthy, sustainable partnerships by eschewing zero-sum competition in favor of competere (or ―striving together‖), which is the true ideal of competition. It’s about being principled, however inconvenient or unpopular the ramifications. Getting these elevated behaviors from employees requires a new...