6th International JA-YE Alumni Europe Leadership Conference 2009

Esben Lindequist Kullberg is the founder of the consultant company LindequistKullberg, which is based on creating value through people's passion and creativity, specialising in coaching, creativity development, teamanalysis and -development. Before starting LindequistKullberg Esben worked 12 years as a visual artist and 8 years serving as a minister. If you would like to get in contact with Esben, feel free to write him on esben@lindequistkullberg.dk.

The Danish professor of psychology Hans Henrik Knoop recently wrote that we live on the edge of chaos. It may sound a bit pessimistic as if we all are heading towards times of disaster. But through this expression he tried to make a statement about the circumstances a world in constant and more and more accelerated changes implies on human life and on the leadership challenges we may face.

For the last twenty years we have seen an increased interest in leadership skills in connection to Change Management. It is probably still very important to focus on changes in organizations, but when global changes speed up, leadership challenges change. The American management professor John P. Kotter has for the last two decades talked about Change Management as an eight stepped process. In his thoughts the most important point in this process is the first step: the leaders ability to formulate the importance and the necessity to initiate change. To Kotter change management skills is crucial to organizational sustainability. He states that most businesses failed to develop because they failed to initiate organizational change, therefore, he says, the most important current leadership skill is the skill to perceive and initiate change processes. It would be arrogant of me to say that Kotters thoughts are outdated, but in the terms of sustainable leadership, it does seem as if a new picture emerges.Â

Today changes are inevitable in terms of macro scale perspectives worldwide, and on organisational level as well. We don’t have to focus on create or implement them. As Hans Henrik Knoop states we live in times characterized by chaotic or at least very complex evolutionary patterns so changes come on us, whether we want or not. What really seem to be important in organizational life is how to integrate and root changes in the organization. We are moving from focus on Change Management to a focus on Anchor Management. Anchor Management is about how we cope with inevitable changes. It is about how we grasp these changes that constantly come on us from new emerging processes, new knowledge, new market structures, extremely differentiated client needs, and how we are able to root these changes in the organizational structures and in the corporate culture and identity.  Several Danish research results indicate that organizations that manage to work with corporate culture and corporate identity also manage to improve business results and increase turnover under these current circumstances. At the same time it seems that those business leaders who manage exceptionally in anchoring corporate changes are the leaders that focus on the informal structures i.e. on the human issues and on developing relations, communication and the social capital in the organization.

 If business leaders will be able to currently integrate the rapid changes in the world, my point is, that the main focus for time ahead is best practice on how business leaders facilitate knowledge flow, networking and their ability to facilitate and support decentralized decision-making. The work with these relational aspects of organizational life demands exceptional social intelligence and interpersonal skills. The most important interpersonal intelligence in this regard is the ability to understand and imagine how others feel. We see the impact already, but my guess is that it will be more and more significant important in the future:  Interpersonal relationship and empathy is crucial in terms of leadership skills. Because when it comes to organizational sustainability, working with the informal structures of organizations will be of top priority. Staying in a market characterized by constant change is very much about working with corporate culture, values and communication, and that is all about human interaction and relations.