ROT453

Leading in the
Age of Disruption:
Five Critical Skills
Professional development expert Herminia Ibarra discusses
the five skills required for leaders to thrive in the post-pandemic world.
Interview by Sarah Green Carmichael

You have said today's organizations share some common The second skill is collaboration. In particular, I've become
goals and challenges. Please explain. fixated on the aspect of collaboration that depends upon fos­
Herminia Ibarra: Pre-pandemic, we were having lots of conver­ tering psychological safety. Many readers know about Harvard
sations about innovation and digital transformation, but existen­ Professor Amy Edmondson's research about the importance of
tial challenges over the past two years have forced that conversa­ feeling that you can speak up without any fear of consequences.
tion to become much broader. Responding to a global pandemic, This state is particularly important in times of crisis. The ques­
an environmental crisis and the quest for racial equity demands tion for leaders is, if your employees see something unexpected,
what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls shifting from being will they say something or not? The whole point of having teams
'know-it-alls' to being 'learn-it-alls'. is so that people can share different points of view. As teams are
At this point in time, most organizations are striving to be six becoming more diverse - and now, more virtual - it is more im­
things: agile, customer-centric, innovative, tech-sawy, inclusive portant than ever to pay attention to collaborating in an environ­
and disruption-proof. As we think about leadership skills for the ment of psychological safety.
post-pandemic era, I am most interested in what it takes to instill The third skill is coaching. The role of managers has shifted
these characteristics in teams and organizations. from monitoring, controlling and inspecting to a focus on bring­
ing out the best in people and facilitating their development. In­
What leadership skills will be most valuable going forward? terestingly, I am finding that the further along an organization is
Five skills come to mind, and I call them the 5Cs. The first is cross­ on its digital transformation journey, the more it is focused on
cutting, which entails developing networks that extend beyond instilling coaching as a leadership style.
your organization so you can connect new ideas and insights and The fourth skill is culture shaping, which is really about de­
take them back to your team. The problem is, we are notoriously stroying all of the outdated aspects of your culture. One thing
bad at building diverse networks. We are biased to like people I've learned from studying transformation efforts is that you can
who are similar to us; but invariably, innovation comes from the tick all the boxes in terms of doing things right, but invariably,
outside - and so do threats and dangers. progress will come to a halt at some point. And in most cases, it's

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 If participation and 'air time' is shared more or less equally on
a team, you are more likely to have psychological safety.

because you come up against practices that are part of the 'old In terms of what to do about this, the research shows that
order' - things people take for granted about 'how things are there are two main correlates of psychological safety. The first
done around here'. Being able to dramatically transform these is inclusivity. If participation and 'air time' are shared more or
elements is critical to successful change. less equally on a team, you're more likely to have psychological
The fifth element is connecting, and this has to do with an­ safety - as opposed to teams where two or three people always
swering the following question: Why should anyone be led by dominate. So, monitoring things to ensure equal participation is
you? Earning a positive answer entails continuous growth in important - and that's something we can do online, too.
terms of empathy and authentic leadership. These are hard The second element is a bit trickier because it has to do with
times, and people want their leaders to be real. social sensitivity and empathy. How are people on your team
feeling? Are they covering up their true emotions? Are they ea­
Many of us have become aware that our networks aren't suf­ ger to speak up, but choosing not to? Trying to get at this via the
ficiently diverse. How can we address this? equal participation concept is a great place to start.
A good place to start is recognizing that it's part of human nature:
We gravitate to people who are like us in terms of gender, race, One disturbing element of virtual work is that some manag­
political inclination and age. The first step for reversing this is to ers are monitoring their employees more closely than ever -
understand that it limits the way we think. Because of the pan­ even using software to track what they're typing or taking
demic, we're not doing most of the usual activities that allow us screen shots. How do you react to that?
to broaden our networks, so we have to be quite intentional about The jury is still out on the pros and cons of working from home,
it. My advice is to find people who are different from you but who but I do think people are converging on the idea that a hybrid
share your professional interests, and reach out to them. Make it model is probably best. The monitoring you mention is hap­
part of your job to grow a list of new contacts. Chances are that pening on two levels. One is in terms of outcomes - what an
you have fewer people in your network who are younger than employee is producing, and whether they are meeting targets.
you, so maybe start there. The second type of monitoring is in terms of process: How many
Google recently looked at what makes for effective manag­ hours is an employee glued to her computer? Personally, I would
ers and teams, and one thing they found is that those with the say that monitoring in terms of outcomes is the best route. And
most diverse networks were among their best performers. These of course, managers need to be very clear about the expected
people did simple things, like intentionally eating lunch with deliverables.
different people rather than the usual suspects. If you start pro­ Looking ahead, we're going to have to get a lot more sophis­
actively reaching out to the periphery of your network, that will ticated about how we define a 'job'. We're going to have to get
take you further out. better at defining what exactly we want people to deliver - and
that definitely isn't about the number of hours spent in front of
What is the best way to improve psychological safety at a a computer.
time that doesn't feel very psychologically safe? One organization I've worked with a lot is Microsoft, which
The problem is, when people are afraid of losing their jobs, they has had a very interesting transformation under Satya Nadella.
tend to 'manage their boss' by telling them what they want to They have experimented with their new digital tools on them­
hear. So, unless the leader proactively seeks honest input, there selves and used all kinds of analytics. For one thing, every em­
could be dramatic consequences. ployee now has a tool that shows them how they're spending
One of my colleagues studied Nokia during its decline after their time - how much time they are in meetings, how much
the introduction of the smartphone. He spent quite a bit of time time is 'focus time', which is the blank-slate state where you can
there, and he found that part of what was happening was that the just let your mind wander; and how much time are they spending
job market was extremely limited in Finland at the time. People on e-mails? The tool also tracks how much time the employee is
were scared of becoming unemployed, so they didn't say what spending working outside of working hours. The goal is to help
they really thought. And we all know what happened. people get better at managing their time. It also tracks them in

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 terms of how much time they spend with key people in their net­ You really have to examine where exactly your culture is
work, including customers. Already, they've been able to show playing out, and whether a given practice is helping to solidify
that the more time salespeople spend with customers, the more your intended message or working against it. Other ways to
Microsoft products and services those customers use. shape a culture include role-modelling it: Know what you aspire
to, and personify that. Select people who exhibit those qualities
In terms of coaching, what are some of the best practices? and reward them for it. And communicate about these values all
Coaching is a development process that is very much led by ques­ the time.
tions. Trying to figure out the right questions to ask is where the
magic lies. People who excel at this actually 'collect' questions, How can a leader ensure that diverse people are involved in
writing down and keeping the ones that have provoked insight. coaching?
Basic questions that are open-ended tend to enable learning. When you're underrepresented in an organization, your group
I find simple questions are usually best, like, What are you try­ tends to have less power, opportunity and legitimacy. What tends
ing to accomplish? What is helping you? What barriers have you to happen with people from the majority groups is, they coach
faced? What options have you tried? You know, very open-ended, people as if everybody wants to be just like them. Of course that is
with a problem-solving undertone. not true for people from under-represented groups, whether they
This is a whole new skill set for most leaders. The old coach­ be women or racial minorities. Guess what? They don't want to
ing paradigm was similar to a little-league coaching approach: ' I be just like you!
am going to teach you what I know s o you can do it exactly like One of the great values of this new approach to coaching is
me.' The new paradigm is about asking questions that allow the that you're pulling out of the person what they want to accom­
coachee to learn for themself, in their own way. And the coach plish, and gaining insight as to what they might be able to do in
also learns about what the employee has to offer, so both parties the future. You work with their situation as opposed to imposing
benefit. your point of view on them. All of the five Cs - cross-cutting,
collaboration, coaching, culture shaping and connecting - are
As you said earlier, culture shaping is largely about banishing things that will help you attract a bigger talent pool and a broader
outdated practices. What is the best approach? set of voices.
As I indicated, any culture-change effort will only get so far be­
cause old systems, processes and procedures are reinforcing the Let's talk a bit about empathy and authenticity. What is your
old culture. At Microsoft, they shifted to a very customer-centric current thinking on these qualities?
approach and embraced a leadership style that was focused on a The headline is, Authenticity is Great! I'm not going to argue
growth mindset - attempting to pull out what people could learn against it. However, I do worry that some people use the idea as
rather than what they could deliver perfectly at that moment. an excuse to not get out of their comfort zone. I call this the 'au­
But they still did their quarterly business reviews in the same old thenticity paradox': You feel a pull towards a definition of your­
way - the approach that Jack Welsh pioneered at GE, where self that is historical and that represents the more conservative
people spend months preparing decks of PowerPoints, leading and cautious you - as opposed to the more experimental, future­
up to what some have called 'success theatre', where a presenta­ facing you. I've done a lot of warning against confusing what it
tion can make or break your career. means to be authentic with what it means to be rigid, and how to
They realized two things. First, that putting on that kind of be both authentic and adaptable.
show was undermining their efforts to be learn-it-alls rather than It's important to think about authenticity in more nuanced
know-it-alls. There was no talk about whether mistakes were ways so you don't condemn yourself to being the same as you
made along the way that people could learn from. And people have always been. In the psychological literature, they look at
were spending months on these presentations - time that could authenticity almost as a notion of 'self-authoring' - of being
have been spent in front of customers, with real bottom-line the author of who you want to become. A foundation of that is
effects. So, they literally undid it. reflecting on your experiences in order to learn and grow from

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 I do worry that some people use the idea of authenticity
as an excuse to stay in their comfort zone.

them. If you do that, your ability to communicate those things no longer view it as 'sleazy' and are more likely to embrace it.
to other people as the underpinning of your leadership philoso­ We all have three different kinds of networks, in essence:
phy will be even stronger. our operational network, which we use to get things done (and
Authenticity is a huge element of our ability to connect with without which we can't do our job); our personal network, which
people and inspire them. There's an old saying that ' Everybody is completely discretionary (friends and people we have chosen
wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change them­ to stay in touch with over the years); and our strategic network,
selves'. This newer definition of authenticity paradoxically which is the network we use to bring ourself and our organization
means that you are willing to change. You're willing to examine into the future. Strategic networks are, by far, the most under-uti­
yourself and learn and grow towards becoming even more au­ lized and under-developed networks for most people. It's really
thentic. about leveraging the different parts of your network to do things
Companies that are further along on their digital journey to move you forward. Not just in your day-to-day routine, but to
have automated things like forecasts and they have a lot of smart figure out what's next, both for your career and your organiza­
analytics in place. This has eliminated some of the day-to-day tion. This is where you have to be the most intentional, because
things managers used to do, so what should managers do with it's not part of your day-to-day routine and it's not necessarily
this time? They should help people get better. In one company driven by social ties.
I worked with, they had completely automated forecasting, and Of course, COVID-19 has made all of this more complicat­
one senior executive was having the worst time because people ed. It's been a period of time when we have all had to upskill very
were still spending lots of time in forecasting meetings. So, he quickly, adjust to brand new habits and focus on our health and
started taking the coaching approach, asking question like, What that of our loved ones. When I talk to people, many tell me they
are you trying to accomplish? What he learned was that it was a are itching to get back to meeting people at group events. I can't
political thing: People felt like they had to be in those meetings to say exactly how that aspect of networking will change over the
please their boss. I was able to coach a particular executive to say long term, but I do believe it will be just as critical to professional
No to things that were not a good use of her time. A real shift hap­ success as it has always been. RM
pens when people are very clear about what they're expected to
accomplish and can maximize their time towards achieving that.

Another challenge is learning how to be coached in this man­

ner. Any advice on this front?
It's a lot harder than it seems, especially if the coachee has grown
up in a know-it-all culture, where there is always a right answer
and people want to be told what to do. When you tell them you
don't have the answer, they may think you're trying to manipu­
late them. This is about developing people in such a way that they
are open to finding answers on their own. But they may have be­
come complacent about expecting their boss to direct them, so
this approach often requires an adjustment on both sides.

What are some of your greatest lessons learned about

expanding one's professional network? Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organi­
My colleagues [Rotman Professor] Tiziana Casciaro and [Har­ zational Behaviour at London Business School and author
vard Professor] Francesca Gino did a wonderful study where of the best-selling book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
(HBR Press, 2015). A member of the World Economic Forum's
they showed how 'instrumental networking' makes many of us Expert Network, Thinkers50 ranks her among the top 20 most
feel dirty, so we avoid it. But they also found that when people influential management thinkers in the world. This interview originated as
believe they have as much to give as to get from networking, they a podcast for Thinkers50. For more, visit thinkers50.com.

56 / Rotman Management Winter 2022

This document is authorized for use only by Barbara Baill (BARBARA@BAILL.COM). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org
or 800-988-0886 for additional copies.