Today’s complicated and demanding environment needs leaders with the skills and resilience to cope, says Terry Sexton, Training Journal May 2010

Up to two thirds of today’s leaders are predicted to fail. Is this a terrible indictment of leadership today or the result of the unprecedented business environment in which we find ourselves?

The answer is both and neither. In his books In over Our Heads (1994) and Immunity to Change (2009), eminent psychologist Robert Kegan presents his research findings indicating that the demands of modern life are exceeding the psychological development of the majority of adults today. For leaders facing the increasingly complex and challenging business environment day after day, it is crucial that they have a high level of psychological development (a high level of leadership capacity).

For decades neuroscientist believed that, after adolescence, the brain did not change. Consequently, it was believed that there was no further psychological development. Modern investigations, however, have identified that our brain continues to change throughout our lives through ‘neural plasticity’.

Along with Kegan, other psychologists such as Jane Loevinger, Susanne Cook-Greuter and David Rooke and William Torbert have also identified that periods of growth are followed by plateaux at new levels. Each of these levels represents a very different way of seeing the world and ourselves.

These levels tend to correlate with may other areas of research into people development, including personal values and levels of complexity.

In terms of their application to leader development, the levels can be described as:

Level 1 Power - These leaders see the world in terms of survival of the fittest and are driven by a need to win at almost any cost.

Level 2 Inclusion - Feeling included and being part of the team enables these leaders to work at their best. They provide the social glue within organisations.

Level 3 Competence - These leaders are highly driven to assert themselves through their expertise. They tend to rely on data and logic to influence and gain support for themselves and their ideas.

Level 4 Delivery - Achieving their own, team and business objectives by using their strengths and fulfilling their potential is a huge driver for these leaders.

Level 5 Clarity - At this level, leaders are driven by their desire to gain clarity through adopting a variety of perspectives. Inner conflict is caused when there is no clear answer and they seek resolution by working to change the rules, processes and people around them.

Level 6 Service – these leaders are able to view issues as relative to a wider system and see constraints and people’s perceptions as transformable. They focus on how their leadership can be of service to their followers, business and society.

Level 7 Chairmanship – The rare ability to view themselves, the situation, the business and society simultaneously – from an external perspective – is a characteristic of leaders at this level. They are able to hold a mirror up to situations and reflect back an unbiased view of reality.

As business becomes more complex, ambiguous and uncertain, we see companies removing layers from their structure and driving decision-making down the hierarchy. This means that leaders throughout the business have to deal with more complexity.

In the past, employees operated mainly at level two, being loyal and team-orientated; managers led from a level four perspective by focusing on delivering against objectives. Now, employees are expected to operated from level four and are appraised against the delivery of their own individual objectives; managers are finding that the demands of their role requires level six leadership, characterised by their ability to transform constraints, think in terms of systems, reframe conflicts and be of service to others.

The biggest risk of failure occurs at level four, when strengths in leadership skills become habits: when leaders are ‘in over their heads’ for a prolonged period of time, they tend to turn to ‘survival brain mode’. This is when the frontal lobes approach capacity and the primitive part of the brain takes over. We are run by negative emotions: fear, anxiety, impatience, irritability, anger or panic. Our body goes into red alert, our frontal lobes lose their sophistication and we lose our ability to thin clearly. We become gripped by ‘black and white thinking’.

In a futile attempt to protect themselves, and to do more than is possible, level four leaders in survival mode are apt to inappropriately apply habitual solutions to new situations, with sometimes catastrophic effects.

Cognitive training will help a leader make the transition from level four to level five. This training heightens a leader’s perception, strengthens concentration and enables agility of thought under pressure. Leaders are then able to view and identify new situations with greater clarity and create new solutions, rather than relying on habitual views and beliefs and recycling past behaviours. We have all heard the cliché ‘generals always fight the last war’.

Cognitive training is not a one-off hit. It is about training the mind to see things as they really are. It is also about quietening the chatter going on in our heads, which uses up a lot of energy and is often just a defence mechanism that adds no value.

Training the mind involves practising a number of exercises. One simple example is to observe a familiar object with the eyes of an artist. Notice the details, the colours and the form. Practise concentrating on the object and become aware of what distracts you, e.g. the constant chatter of your thoughts. Over time, the practise, of this exercise will enable a leader to heighten his perception, strengthen his concentration and become the master, rather than the servant, of his thoughts.

Another way of quietening the mid is to imagine you see a mouse hole. You are told than at some time in the future a mouse will appear from it and you must concentrate on it. Now imagine that the mouse is a thought. Concentrate hard and wait for the thought. With practise, the time before the next thought arrives lengthens and the distracting chattering in you mind gradually quietens.

At the highest levels of capacity, leaders show increased mental agility, emotional intelligence and mindfulness growing towards authenticity and the ability to successfully operate in the most challenging and complex situations.

Resilience must be developed at the same time; otherwise the new leadership levels will not be maintained. Without resilience, the ‘survival brain’ may kick in under pressure and allow for instance, decision-making based on emotions, gut reactions or what has worked in the past.

The best way to learn is to do. That applies equally to leaders if development is to be sustained. Whatever programme is used to develop a leader’s capacity,, it must prepare leaders for development by raising their self-awareness and ability to think reflectively, providing challenging assignments and supporting them through the transition to new levels of leadership capacity.

I look forward to Robert Kegan’s next book with interest. I hope it will be entitled Head and Shoulders Above: Today’s Leaders Have the Right Capacity. We’ll see!