Challenges Of Breakthrough Leadership

Foreword

In December, 2001, Harvard Business Review devoted a special issue to the challenge of Breakthrough Leadership. It was this issue that inspired me to seek to better integrate my experience in psychology with my practice in Leadership Development. For me the challenge was to understand how leaders unlock the potential of the people that they lead by removing the barriers to their development.

Breakthrough leadership was described as “breaking through old habits of thinking to uncover fresh solutions to perennial problems. It also means breaking through interpersonal barriers that we all erect against genuine human contact. It’s leadership that breaks through the cynicism that many people feel about their job and helps them find

This is an apt metaphor for the difficulty involved in mindset change. Change is not a painless process. It involves letting go of old ways of thinking before new ways of thinking can be embraced. Sometimes the old ways of thinking are reinforced by a lack of confidence, or a lack of self belief in one’s ability to meet the challenge of change. Sometimes they are reinforced by fear of uncertainty or of the unknown and sometimes they are “rusted on” by complacency or habit or by what is referred to as being in a “comfort

It places this process in the context of the work of Edward De Bono into lateral thinking, Howard Gardner into frameworks for thinking and Martin Seligman into explanatory style and thinking. It outlines a model which explains the process, then relates the six leadership behaviours to the stages in the model.

Chapter Nine: The Nature of Inspiration

Inspiration is the fuel which powers the breakthrough process. It provides the energy required to breakthrough the impediments to change and also the energy to sustain change over time. Bringing energy and inspiration to the workplace is an important element in creating the context for change. This chapter looks at how leaders build inspiration through the relationships that they establish with the people they lead. The example of Bunnings Warehouse, a great Australian success story, is used to describe in a very practical way the development of breakthrough leaders or what they term high involvement leaders.

Chapter Ten: Redefining