Conscious Leadership

This post is the second in a series of ten that are currently being featured on LinkedIn in honor of the Crossland Group’s 25th Anniversary.

Many pundits say that “leadership is not just a title” and, at Crossland, we agree. Leadership is a journey—one of growth and service that’s rooted in values and action. For many years, we’d been coaching leaders and leadership teams on everything from building individual skills to managing sweeping change. But when we began seeing concerning patterns in leaders—no time for self-reflection, tension in being present, lack of energy, not providing meaningful feedback, and feeling isolated—we decided to rethink how we define some basic premises of leadership.

A few years back, I was redesigning a data services organization that had completely flipped its strategy. We noticed that the leadership team was resistant to making the trade-offs that the new strategy required, especially when these trade-offs directly impacted their functions. They were also relying on the CEO for all the answers because they didn’t know how other functions worked. Two interrelated ideas emerged from this experience: first was that leadership should be an intentionally designed function with its own unique “job description,” and second, that everyone on the leadership team has a dual role and responsibility to lead both their unique function and the organization as a whole.

Designing the leadership function and educating leadership teams about their dual role has led to remarkable results. The CEOs we’ve worked with feel less lonely, have more energy, and make time for self-reflection because they are buoyed by their team’s ability to co-own the work required to lead the organization. Leaders also have a better understanding of their peers’ priorities, which makes them more objective about what the organization needs to achieve impact. The bottom line is that raising awareness of the work leadership teams need to be good at has proven to be one of our most effective tools in cultivating healthier leadership teams and implementing strategy.