Creating Human-Centred Leaders

There is a lot of talk these days about the power of human-centred leadership. But what does that mean, exactly? Human-centred leadership is about putting people first, which then guides how we ‘show up’ in any given circumstance.

In today’s fast-paced, constantly-changing world, it is more important than ever to put people first. That means creating a workplace where employees feel valued and appreciated, and are able to do their best work. It means understanding that each individual has unique talents and needs, and catering to those accordingly. When businesses focus on the people behind the products or services they offer, the results can be astounding.

Human-centred leadership is about more than just recognizing the value of each person. It’s also about creating a culture where everyone is respected and supported. This means avoiding micromanagement, fostering open communication between employees and managers, and providing opportunities for development. When employees feel like they are part of something bigger and their contributions are appreciated, their work is likely to be of higher quality and productivity will increase.

Ultimately, human-centred leadership is about creating an environment that encourages creativity, collaboration, and innovation. When everyone feels valued and respected, they can come together to produce incredible things — making human-centred leadership an important element of success in today’s business world.

Competitive Advantage Through Human-Centred Leadership

Organisations that focus on human-centred leadership create a competitive edge. Employees who feel supported and respected are more likely to produce higher-quality work and be more engaged with their jobs. Additionally, human-centred leadership can help businesses attract and retain skilled and motivated people who will ultimately contribute strongly. The management guru, Gary Hamel, has previously said that every employee gets to decide whether to bring their unique skills and ideas to work – or not.

Each of these four areas builds on the one before it, starting with understanding ourselves, then developing skills to lead teams, then more broadly leading people, and finally leading the organisation (or leading change in general).

Many models of human-centred leadership focus only on how to lead ourselves and miss out on the other three critical areas.

Leading Self (the ‘Contributor’)

Mindset: Personal accountability

Behaviour: Authentic and vulnerable

Result: Personal mastery

The foundation of leadership is about ourselves, in that leadership is an ‘inside-out’ proposition. If we don’t have a grasp on who we are as a human being, then it is pretty much impossible to lead other human beings authentically and congruently because we are too busy managing our own fears, concerns and reactivity (fight, flight or freeze response). Leading self is about self-awareness, emotional intelligence and your leadership brand. It’s also about having a deeper understanding and connection to values that are important to you while being able to show up with vulnerability and humility. Most of all, it is about fostering a mindset of personal accountability for our actions and their impact. Regardless of seniority, most leaders still have part of their role which is about their individual contribution. 

The link between Leading Self and Leading Teams is clarity. Doing work on ourselves creates increased clarity about what fuels us, our strengths, as well as areas for development.

Leading Teams (the ‘Leader’)

Mindset: Excellence

Behaviour: Act with purpose and clarity

Result: Create value

Leading teams takes a mindset of excellence where teams should always be striving to be and do better. Moving from Leading Self to to Leading Teams requires a composite skillset that most people need to develop over a long period of time. Even the most experienced leaders can struggle to create and maintain a high-performing team because it involves so many elements, from strategy, creating a useful operating rhythm, growing and developing people, and managing the inevitable conflict and challenges. Leaders must understand the fundamental differences between being a ‘smart’ team and a ‘healthy’ team. They need to be able to be open and vulnerable, build trust, know how to give and receive feedback and have hard conversations.  Most of all, they need to ensure that they create a sense of purpose and clarity that drives value for the team, the business and the customer.

The link between Leading Teams and Leading People is the ability to create leaders. Whether it is members of our team or people more broadly in the organisation, human-centred leaders should be always looking for opportunities to enable and empower others to lead, regardless of their authority.

Leading People (the ‘Enabler’)

Mindset: Human-Centred

Behaviour: Empower

Result: Realise potential

At the heart of leading people, whether they are part of your formal team or not, is about putting people first. Tom Peters, the writer on all things related to management, writes in his latest (and last book according to him), that all through his career he has been asked why he has focused on the people side of business over his whole career. To paraphrase Peters, he says, ‘what else is there?’ When you think about it, people are the business, way beyond being ‘human resources’. People create the structures, systems, processes and dynamics – and it is people who are actors within that system. It’s people first, second, third and…..last. There is decades of research to support the power of understanding people and empowering and enabling them, yet our humanity often gets in the way creating less than ideal outcomes. Leaders need to be sufficiently self-aware (conscious and awake) to the constraints and limitations in how we think, feel and show up in complex systems. Leaders need to empower and enable through a coaching leadership style, not a managing style. Leaders also need to be able to focus on strengths and limitations. By doing this, leaders can realise potential and create enormous value. 

The link between Leading People and Leading the Organisation is to create change. When leaders lead people effectively it creates real change in those people as they continue their development journey. Similarly, Leading the Organisation is about creating meaningful change in your team, functional area or perhaps even more broadly.

Leading the Organisation (the ‘Architect’)

Mindset: Complexity conscious

Behaviour: Mobilise people and systems

Result: Evoluationay organisation

For three-decades now we have been writing and talking about complexity as it relates to leadership in organisations. Why? Because if we’re not aware, and skilled, in being able to firstly ‘see’ complexity and then navigate it, then we are unlikely to be very effective leaders. In fact, many people in organisations who have formal authority vested in them through their role (or those with informal authority because of the trust or the voice they have), fail to lead. Aron Dignan, who wrote Brave New Work, talks about leaders needing to be ‘complexity conscious’. Leaders need to be able to understand the differences between something being complex and complicated. They also need to understand the differences and impact of authority versus leadership. Although they’re not the same thing, they are often used interchangeably. Many people who have authority simply fail to lead. We need to better understand systems, role theory, faction management and how real world change always has technical and adaptive elements that need to be navigated and managed. In true adaptive change, our measure of success should be making progress, rather than finite resolution.

Resilient and Ready

Sitting in the middle of our Human-Centred Leadership Excellence Model is Resilient and Ready. Leadership is hard. It is often over-sold to those who choose to lead, with many finding that real leadership is not all it’s cracked up to be. We discover (hopefully) that change is not a linear proposition in the real world, people don’t always react or do what you expect, and systems are a whole other level of complexity. We need to build practices and habits that will support surviving and thriving. It is important to be able to manage and pace ourselves and those around us, otherwise burnout may become an issue, or at the very least a lack of passion, purpose or commitment.

Where to From Here?

Becoming a human-centred leader takes time, commitment and courage. And while it’s not an easy journey by any means, it can be an incredibly fulfilling one. We need to be able to have the courage to be open, vulnerable and receptive to the data points (gifts) along the journey that make us a more effective, human-centred leader. 

The ultimate measure of success should be about how you cared for people, how you lived your values, how you showed up no matter how tough it was, and the value you created for those around you, including in and outside of the organisation.

The Human-Centred Leadership Excellence Model guides our work and in fact is the foundation of our Leadership Excellence (LX) signature leadership development program. If you’re interested in knowing more, please get in touch.