THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE

You may be wondering whether PQ is relevant for you and your organisation, or you may want to engage others in thinking about how you work with existing partners and stakeholders.

The following questions might help you figure out whether you need to make changes. You should interpret the term partners as meaning any other organisation whether in business, government or non-profit that you work with to deliver your services or product. Stakeholders are others who have an interest in or are affected by what you do.

The challenge is a set of high level questions that covers context, attitudes, values and infrastructure.

Challenge One: consider the changes in your environment and reflect on whether the traditional suite of leadership skills that worked in the latter part of the 20th century fit the second decade of the 21st century. What is the difference in the challenges you and your organisation face? Are you having a positive effect in the communities in which you operate? How are you perceived by the community, by your stakeholders, by wider society? Do you need to change the way you do things? What changes do you need to makein the short term and the long term?

Challenge Two: do you believe that you can achieve your objectives alone? If no; what changes are needed to help you work together more effectively with others? How do you build strategies that deliver mutual benefits for yourself, your stakeholders and existing or future partners? Who are the right partners?

Challenge Three: are you missing out on opportunities that you might be able to use to further your goals if you had new partners or a different relationship with existing partners? Have you got effective relationships with the partners that might be able to mitigate risks for you? How will you build the types of relationships you need?

Challenge Four: consider you and your organisation’s attitudes and behaviours to partners and potential partners. Opening questions you might ask are:

  • Do we speak the same language (ie understand and respect each other)?
  • Do we understand what each other wants?
  • Do we know how to build effective relationships?
  • Do we know what we want from them?
  • Do we know truly what they want from us?

Challenge Five: this goes deeper. What are the cultural and values issues that need to be addressed in your organisation and with your partners and stakeholders?

Opening questions include:

  • How much alignment is there between our values?
  • Do we have trust?
  • Do we understand the differences in our values and how that plays out?
  • Do we have enough humility to work towards shared aims?
  • Do we have enough curiosity to get the best from others?
  • Are we contributing to wider society?
  • Could we do more?
  • How would that be?

Challenge Six:is about your infrastructure. Opening questions include:

  • Do we have enough people with the skills required to lead in this way?
  • Do we have the processes that we need?
  • Do we have the right mix of expertise and advice available to us?
  • How do we expand capability?