Leadership is changing — but the need to balance traditional management with new ways of leading is creating a handful of tensions.
In surveys and interviews with hundreds of leaders worldwide, IMD researchers uncovered seven core tensions between the traditional and emerging leadership approaches. Those tensions create significant stress for leaders, as they are often unsure of what competencies, skills, and behaviors to exercise in a particular context.
Leaders improve their effectiveness not by consistently emphasizing one approach over the other, but by developing the ambidexterity to move between the two as the context requires. The difficulty of achieving this level of cognitive and behavioral ambidexterity should not be underestimated — but it can be achieved, with focused efforts.
Read about the practical examples exemplified by leaders of Pandora, Red Hat, Novartis, Burberry, Gucci, IKEA, and International Red Cross in the HRB article, were the authors describe the tensions, outline the dangers in ignoring them, and suggest coping strategies for balancing the two approaches.
