As organisations face unprecedented uncertainty and turbulence, leaders may believe they need to take greater control, but the answer lies in humane leadership.
“We must recognise that there is no sustainable strategy without humane leadership, no performance without people and no organisational change without personal change. Leaders must be capable of anticipating change, not merely reacting to it,” says Dr Dots Ndletyana, faculty lead for the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) MPhil in change leadership.
“Furthermore, leaders must understand key organisational development principles to understand what is required to make organisations effective and sustainable. To meet the moment in times of complexity, uncertainty and turbulence, leadership needs to be inclusive, adaptive and ethical.”
She advises:
- Leaders need to lead transformation by working compassionately with others, and intelligently with systems and complexity;
- Organisations need to acknowledge that they are social systems first and performance cannot be separated from human experience;
- A culture of trust and psychological safety helps to strengthen organisational resilience and enables faster adaptation to change; and
- Learning how to lead through disruption without losing your humanity requires a recognition of how connected everyone is.
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