What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

Effective leadership, in both good times and bad, is most often like walking a tightrope.  To manage certainties and uncertainties of the business environment you must first be a leader. You don’t have to be a fan of Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to appreciate these wise words:  No management success can compensate for failure in leadership. In How Agile Leaders Help Organizations Thrive, Entrepreneur guest writer Karima Mariama-Arthur, founder and chief executive officer of WordSmithRapport, provides effective leadership strategies. Here are a few highlights:

“Agile leadership” is a buzzy term in the professional-services industry, urging leaders to navigate pace of change skillfully, with foresight and flexibility. Because the world is ever-changing and consistently serving up challenges that represent volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), leaders across industries must be able to successfully connect the dots between clients, suppliers, marketplace twists, technology, processes, economics and politics. And they have to navigate these myriad concerns amid the constant evolution taking place within global business ecosystems. … Here’s how agile leaders do it:

Creativity and Innovation

We often think of creativity and innovation as interchangeable. They are not. According to Samuel Bacharach, McKelvey Grant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University, creativity can be described as “non-directed and expressive thinking, where familiar things are imagined in a new light.” Innovation, on the other hand, “is deliberate and directed; it creates value and results in new or improved products, services or processes.”

Trust, Engagement and Collaboration

The adage “no man is an island” expresses what agile leaders know well: Human beings work better together. But in order to optimize interpersonal relationships and participation within the workplace, certain conditions must exist. We’re talking high trust, engagement and collaboration. No matter how smart and able a leader may be, without the full participation of the base, the vision will not move forward.

Leading at All Levels

Top-heavy leadership structures don’t fly in today’s dynamic business environments. Agile leaders address this challenge by developing more democractic, decentralized forms of governance that position organizations to be more collaborative and resilient. Such structures build greater capacity, capability and accountability.

Lifelong Learning

Continuous learning is critical to a growth mindset. Relying solely on formal degrees and one-time certifications to ascend the corporate ladder won’t cut it in today’s competitive global business environment. Sustainable success requires the ongoing pursuit of knowledge, skills and competencies to enhance personal and professional development.

Read the entire article at entrepreneur .com.