Honne

Burned Out and Ill-Equipped: Time to Redesign Leadership

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Burned Out and Ill-Equipped: Time to Redesign Leadership

Just 25% of HR professionals rate their leadership development as effective (Brandon Hall Group, 2022).
 
The reason for this is that leadership has fundamentally changed. Leaders today must be adept at putting people, purpose and the planet at the core of what they do, whilst helping their teams deal with ongoing ambiguity and change. Expectations of new demographics in the workforce, a mental health crisis, sociopolitical and economic challenges, tech transformation, changing regulation and conscious stakeholders means leaders need to be able to enable purposeful performance from diverse people, in a context that feels like it never stops changing. And crucially, with 1 in 2 employees saying their job negatively impacts their mental health with poor leadership identified as a top factor (Mind Share Partners, 2023) they need to be able to deliver this performance without eroding their teams’ mental wellbeing. Leaders need to create environments where others feel psychologically safe and included, comfortable with uncertainty and where everyone is equipped to push boundaries and be innovative in how they work. They need to understand how to lead a system that supports high performance and optimum mental wellbeing simultaneously.

Which leads us to ask, are leadership development initiatives preparing leaders for this challenge? Given 70% of leadership programme directors say they only measure reaction or knowledge, rather than lasting behavior change or outcomes (MIT) and for those who do measure impact, only 15% of organisations  report achieving measurable business impact (LEadX Benchmark Report, 2024) we think it is unlikely.

How can leadership development improve?

This challenge requires development offers to shift focus from assuming a change in leadership behaviour in isolation will create the intended outcomes, and instead to think about a leader’s impact on the system. Development interventions would benefit from a deeper understanding of the leaders’ context, the systemic influences that are most strong and how leaders’ roles and behaviours influence how the system operates. Development should have greater focus on the inner development (the mindset and psychological development required for behaviour change is often underestimated) and the outer impact (business outcomes and societal impact are often assumed or totally overlooked) as well as developing the behaviours and skills leaders need to be a catalyst for positive change, tangibly.

At honne, we tackle this by concentrating on fostering change across 3 levels of the leader’s ecosystem: the personal, the social, and the systemic. We structure around these levels – ‘leading for me, we & world’.

  • Leading for me builds the psychological skills individuals need
  • Leading for we develops the capabilities they need to lead their teams and collaborate 
with the people that they work
  • Leading for the world, is about understanding the wider system and seeing the part 
that their work plays in it

Leading for the world: a clearer outcomes focus

Without context, development is theoretical, lacks relevance and engagement. That’s why we always start by thinking about the ‘why?’:

What is happening, why is it happening, what is changing, what will be the outcomes of that change, and what does that mean for my leadership?

We help leaders link the unique context faced by the organisations with their own and the lives of their teams to create a living, breathing purpose that guides and shapes their decisions and actions.

Leading we: create the conditions for performance and wellbeing

Our research and experience show that the leaders who are effective in creating results whilst prioritising the wellbeing of their teams and stakeholders are the leaders who create the right conditions for everyone to thrive. We help leaders understand the small everyday acts and use high practical techniques to build an environment that helps everyone feel purposeful in what they do, that is psychological safe, fosters a sense of belonging, truly empowers and unlocks growth (see more on the 5 conditions here).

Leading Me: psychologically fit leadership

There is no point in changing the system, or encouraging behaviour change, if we don’t also concentrate on the inner world of the leader. Our experience and insight as psychologists enable us to work with the ‘inner blocks’ that hold leaders back, at the same time as developing the psychological skills they need as leaders to be effective in their roles:

  • Thinking – developing the systemic thinking skills they need to be able to ‘see the 
whole’ and to work with all the critical dimensions at work in the context
  • Feeling – developing the inner resources leaders need to look after their own 
wellbeing, whilst also being able to be empathetic, compassionate and adaptive 
toward others
  • Being – developing their ‘self-concept’ as a leader. A rapidly changing context asks 
something different of leaders, and we help leaders see themselves and their potential 
differently, raising their aspiration, unlocking new ways of being.

At honne, we approach the development of leadership for me, we and the world by focusing on the leaders’ whole context, including what’s happening in the market, their team and the invisible, yet palpable cultural dimensions of the organisation. We build bespoke interventions that enable a shift in perspectives such as expert led content that really challenges how we see things, change the conversation through new dialogues, group connection, diverse opinions and co-learning and enable practical, early actions surfaced through coaching that starts the wave of change.

Where to start?

If you are reviewing your leadership development offer, we encourage you to start with 3 questions:

  • What is the impact we want to have in our unique context and what is our theory of 
change about the shift needed from leadership to create these outcomes?
  • What are the key enablers and blockers of the 5 conditions for performance and 
mental wellbeing in our organisation, and to how can we enable leaders to create the 
systemic change required to enhance the conditions?
  • What shift in thinking, feeling and being does the context demand from our leaders 
and how can we support the inner development needed for this?

  • Brandon Hall Group (2022). Leadership Development Benchmarking Survey, Brandon Hall Group.
 https://www.brandonhall.com
  • Mind Share Partners (2023). 2023 Mental Health at Work Report, Mind Share Partners.
 https://www.mindsharepartners.org/mentalhealthatworkreport2023
  • Gartner (2023). Gartner Research – Future of Work Trends 2023.
 https://www.gartner.com/en (Access via subscription)
  • MIT Sloan Management Review (2022). Unlearning the Learning Function, MIT Sloan Management Review.
 https://sloanreview.mit.edu
  • LEADx Benchmark Report (2024). The 2024 LEADx Leadership Development Benchmark Report.
 https://www.leadx.org
  • Other titles:
    The Leadership Crisis: Developing Leaders for Me, We & the World
    Rethinking Leadership Development: From Competency Lists to Contextual Impact
    Mind the Gap: Why Leaders Aren’t Ready for What’s Coming