4 Ways Leaning Into Change Can Unleash Your Leadership Potential

Today we're launching Stepping Up at Unruly HQ and I couldn't be more excited! Co-authored with leadership coach, Niamh O'Keeffe, the book asserts the need for more diverse leaders at all levels and from all backgrounds in today’s rapidly changing business world. It's about empowering people at all ages and stages of their career to understand and respond to today’s fast-changing work environment and develop the ability to lead themselves and others through it.

The following is an excerpt from chapter one of the Stepping Up journey, offering 4 practical steps for how to get to grips with change and turn it to your advantage:

We’re living at a moment of profound and rapid change, where new tools and technologies are transforming how people live, work and communicate. In response to this change, every industry is being reinvented every single year; and in incremental ways, businesses are reinventing themselves over months and even weeks.

It’s much more than any one person or management team can keep track of, and yet, people still look to leaders for a vision of the future. This presents your first challenge and your first opportunity as an aspiring leader, so here’s how to step up and make change work for you:

1. GET CURIOUS

About your team, your business and your industry. What are the big hairy problems your company is trying to solve? Find out which white papers are being produced by trade bodies in your sector, carefully read the latest press releases from competitive businesses and see whether you can spot any patterns. Follow a relevant trend from inception to the current day. How has it evolved in the last three months and the last three years? Now think about how this trend might develop in the next three months, 12 months, and the next three years. Repeat the exercise for other trends, always looking for patterns.

2. TEACH YOURSELF

Identify an area where you can develop specialist knowledge and expertise that allows you to stand out. Choose an area that genuinely excites you! It could be about how you work together as a team, or communicate with customers. Whatever you choose, invest time and energy in becoming the in-house expert on your chosen topic. Be generous with your expertise and work to spread it within your company. Turn your learnings and ideas into a shared initiative which people can buy into and take forward.

3. BACK YOUR IDEAS

Another byproduct of rapid change is that good companies know they need good ideas. In a good company, it doesn’t matter if you’re new to the business, what matters is having an idea, a solution or a suggestion and having the courage to step forward and share it. You should take advantage of this new licence to think and contribute to the important decisions. Familiarise yourself with the key decision-making moments in your company and find out the best way to input your ideas.

4. TRY THINGS OUT

Today, you can start a business for £12 in less than 24 hours. You can create broadcast content on your smartphone. You can communicate with almost any public figure via social media, or at least try to. The barriers to pursuing your big idea and making something happen have never been lower. You have the capacity to experiment, and you need to use it. Try something that’s quick and cheap and see what you learn from it. If you can share your learnings and questions on Twitter or LinkedIn, better still, as you might get some helpful answers, find some like-minded people and at the same time position yourself as an experimenter in the field.

Stepping Up: How To Accelerate Your Leadership Potential launches on 19 October 2017 and is available on Amazon here.