Leadership & Culture

Intentional Leadership: Chancellor Rose Patten's new book helps leaders navigate today's challenges

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 21:14:32 +0000

Intentional Leadership: Chancellor Rose Patten's new book helps leaders navigate today's challenges

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 03/01/2023 - 16:14

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(photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

Adina Bresge

Topic

Our Community

Leadership & Culture

Rose Patten

Mentorship

Rotman School of Management

University of Toronto Chancellor Rose Patten says there’s one leadership skill that’s served her throughout a career spanning more than three decades, four financial sectors and several continents: the ability to adapt to change.

It’s a quality that Patten says is paramount for today’s leaders as they confront the tumult of global crises, changing demographics and technological revolution – and it’s a central theme in her latest book, Intentional Leadership: The Big 8 Capabilities Setting Leaders Apart.

To better prepare leaders, Patten writes about “game-changer” trends from which no leader is exempt, identifies which abilities are more highly valued now and in turbulent times, and asks what would compel and enable leaders to be more self-aware and pursue renewal.

In doing so, she draws from her decades of success in Canada’s financial services industry – including senior executive roles at BMO and Manulife – academia and the public sector, as well as her experiences shepherding the next generation of leaders at U of T as co-director of the Executive Leadership Program at the Rotman School of Management and through the creation of the university’s Rose Patten Mentorship Program.

“I believe that everyone has the ability to be a leader, but you have to have willingness,” says Patten, who is an adjunct professor at Rotman. “You have to understand what is most relevant to be effective today, because it’s not the same as yesterday.”

As the pendulum swings away from old-school, top-down power structures in favour of more collaborative leadership models, Patten says there needs to be a greater emphasis on the human side of leading, which she boils down to the “Big 8” capabilities: personal adaptability, strategic agility, self-renewal, certainty of character, contextual communication, spirited collaboration and developing other leaders.

Patten recently spoke to U of T News about how intentional leadership can help leaders learn to adapt to an ever-shifting landscape.

Why did you write this book?

This book was not on my bucket list. My growing passion in leadership came from all the wonderful roles that I've had the opportunity to perform throughout my career – what kind of leadership was effective and what was not.

There’s an idea that once a great leader, always a great leader. That’s a common but flawed opinion. Leadership is not timeless. What got us here won't keep us here because change matters. And change defines leadership. I quickly learned that effective leadership is about what's needed now, not what worked yesterday.

This work started in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 and my efforts intensified following the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I began to explore three questions. The first was: What are the game changers happening in our world that no one is exempt from?

The second question became: If these are the game changers, what is it that leaders will have to do differently?

The third question was: How do you compel leaders to change? Some leaders might not think they need to change and others might not know how. Changing habits is hard – leadership is hard – so you need to be very intentional in order to keep up.

What are the three “unmistakable game changers”?

What has really changed is that we were focused more singularly for a long time on the shareholder. But now it’s grown so it’s not just about shareholders, it’s about stakeholders –whether it’s customers, employees, students or some other group. Those stakeholders are looking for what I call “the three Ts” – trust, truth and transparency. There is a big difference now in how leaders have to incorporate this into who they are, what they do and how they lead.

The second one is so apparent it hardly needs explanation: The workforce is changing and that’s changing what’s expected from leaders and how employees want to interact with the organization. The workforce has become more multicultural and more multi-generational. And then the pandemic upended what we knew about the workplace and how we work.

The third one gets a bit more into strategy. Coming from a strategy background, I look back and think about how a strategy would be considered “done” and maybe you’d be safe for five years. Now, your strategy is constantly changing. And what is really underpinning that change is digitalization. Digitalization isn’t going away, so short-lived strategies are here to stay – and this will only become more complex.

How has the leadership pendulum shifted?

We have in our mind a certain model of leadership – often called “command and control” – that was considered most effective in decades past. In this model, being a great leader meant being tough, being unflinching, being quite hierarchical. I would call it a very vertical approach.

Now, what we see with all the change coming from the expectations in the workplace is people are looking to leaders for more accessibility. They’re looking to engage with you.

It goes two ways: You're the leader and so you're connecting more with employees a bit down the line – and you’re also utilizing that for your own decision-making. Leaders don’t have all the answers, no matter how smart you are. You want to utilize all the knowledge that’s available to you and that means getting the best talent and engaging them.

I think we’re shifting from “command and control” to “connect and collaborate,” from instinctive leadership to reflection and intention.

What are the “Big 8” leadership capabilities?

The real driver of the “Big 8” is that they’re all very entwined with how you deal with people. The human side of leading is on the rise, whereas in the past it’s been given less attention in how leaders are assessed or even chosen.

The first three are centred around mindset: personal adaptability, strategic agility and self-renewal. It’s about having an open mind, being willing to change it and being self-aware about how you could do better.

Then we move on to personal values. One is empathy, which is about how you relate to others. The next one I call certainty of character: It’s about who you are, what you stand for and how you act on that.

The next three relate to connecting with others. First, there’s contextual communication - today’s workforces want to understand “the why” of decisions and changes and we need to respect and utilize the value they can add. Then, there’s spirited collaboration: People think of collaboration as creating harmony, but sometimes to get the best outcome you need to allow for a bit of spirited dissent. The very last one is about developing others because, at the end of the day, the mark of a good leader is not what they’ve personally achieved, but how they’ve led people who can achieve and be their best.

I see leaders as being obligated to develop very capable people to become heroes. Then the team becomes the hero and the leader is the navigator.

How do you think this book could empower new kinds of leaders?

They call it “Rose’s mantra” – I didn’t name it myself – but I have a statement that leadership happens when, by intention or not, someone has a positive impact on someone else through inspiration, through wisdom or through empathy. That, to me, describes leadership in its broadest sense. And I believe that that's what this book can do. It's not targeted. I'm multi-sectoral and I'm across every phase of what leadership is. It's universal in this sense. Anybody can be a leader if they have the will and the fortitude.

New Centre for Learning, Leadership & Culture to empower U of T employees

sungjimi — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 14:37:56 +0000

New Centre for Learning, Leadership & Culture to empower U of T employees sungjimi Tue, 01/21/2020 - 09:37

The University of Toronto, recognized as a top Canadian employer for more than a decade, supports its employees through various stages of their careers and boasts a two per cent staff turnover rate – around five per cent less than other higher education institutions.

In an interview with Forbes magazine earlier this year, Kelly Hannah-Moffat, U of T’s vice-president, human resources and equity, described the university’s approach as one that makes a “lifetime investment in people.”

Now, with the launch of the new Centre for Learning, Leadership & Culture (LLC), U of T is further strengthening its commitment to workplace culture by offering enhanced learning and development programs across its three campuses.

Linda Hills, director of learning and leadership development, says she’s planning to “shoot for the moon” with a refreshed strategy for the office, which was previously known as the Organizational Development & Learning Centre.

Hills recently sat down with the Bulletin Brief to talk about the LLC’s new identity, offerings and approach to learning.

Can you speak to the big-picture vision of what the LLC hopes to achieve?

One of the key things we’re trying to implement across all three U of T campuses is a development- and talent-focused culture. The LLC ‘s approach will focus on building the skills, behaviours and mindsets to ensure we foster employee progress at all levels so they are prepared to meet the challenges of the future. When considering the demographics of the workforce, many Gen Y and Z-ers have different career expectations than their predecessors and learning is their number one priority when they’re looking for a job. They want to know how their employer is going to deliver continuous learning to support their career success. So we need to provide them with easy to understand information, tools, options and opportunities to grow their careers. This is a very positive shift in perspective, but it also means we have to up our game. Because what we were doing before is not going to satisfy the next groups of employees that are joining the university community.

The whole talent cycle needs to be looked at. We need to be responsive to the needs of a changing workforce. There are a lot of folks who have served this university brilliantly for 30, 40 and sometimes even 50 years. They’re going to start to retire and we need to have people who are ready to move into those positions. We recently hired a director of talent management who will oversee talent acquisition, onboarding, succession planning and off-boarding. The middle part, which is development – getting employees to meet their career aspirations – will be a partnership between employees and their managers, with the tools provided by the LLC both in and outside of the classroom. We’ll be offering multiple delivery methods to ensure that staff have the opportunity to learn in the way that best suits them on all three campuses.

What kind of learning will the LLC be offering to employees?

We’ve created a set of organizational competencies – the “how” of our jobs. The organizational competencies are designed to set the benchmark behaviours for working here – they are about how we show up and connect with our colleagues every day. It’s really about making sure that everyone is contributing to U of T’s excellence.

The competencies are leadership, equity, diversity and inclusion, collaboration, innovation and excellence, and stewardship, meaning we’re all responsible to the university by protecting the brand and using our resources effectively.

We will continue to offer courses to match these competencies so that our talent can find the right development opportunities that they need and want.

How is the LLC helping to develop leaders?

There are four different components of leadership that we’ll be focusing on at the LLC: self, people, management, and strategic. Leadership starts with the self – being accountable and self-aware.

It’s important to note that leading people is not the same as managing them. It’s about setting up your employees so they can find solutions and come up with new approaches rather than telling them what to do. It’s more about inspiring and engaging them so that they can get to the end result themselves. Management leadership is about the business side of leading a team, such as the processes managers have to follow (e.g. how to recruit, how conduct performance appraisals). Finally, strategic leadership is about thinking big picture, creating multi-year plans for the university.

Let’s talk about the culture component of the LLC. What will that entail?

When we talk about culture, we’re talking about day-to-day workplace culture. We want to create an inclusive culture that prepares individuals for the next step in their careers. I often think back to a book called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink, which outlines three things that an employee needs to feel motivated – autonomy, purpose and mastery. We want to foster a culture that will make employees feel like they’re trusted to do their work, are working toward a clear purpose that matters to them and the university, and that expands their skillset. Our job is to provide leaders with tools and techniques to develop our employees’ strengths and prepare them for a diverse range of opportunities.

To that end, a major focus for the LLC in the next two years will be creating leadership development programs to provide leaders with the skills they need to do this. Traditionally, promotions in the workplace – any workplace – have been based on technical expertise. Consequently technical excellence led to management and leadership opportunities but often without the professional development required to learn how to support and lead other people. The former ODLC introduced the Manager’s Academy, which was focused on the tasks and processes of leading a team. We need to build on that to create programs that focus on people leadership, which is based on the human skills leaders need to get things done through people. One key shift will be to a “manager as coach” approach. Coaching is often confused with feedback. True coaching is about asking the right questions so that employees discover solutions and development opportunities themselves. Building coaching skills will also enable our People Leaders to have rich development conversations with their employees and contribute in meaningful ways to their career growth.

At the heart of this cultural change is recognizing that we need to provide our leaders with the skills, behaviours and mindsets they need so they can set their employees up for both in-role success and career growth. Leaders are key to creating a learning and development culture, so they are a priority for us in 2020 and 2021.

What is SuccessFactors and how will it enhance the employee experience?

SuccessFactors is a suite of talent management tools, one of which is a learning management system. It will allow each employee to look at their learning history in one place. It’s designed so that managers can easily identify what professional development options are available to support their employees in getting to the next stage of their career. Our goal is to have a development plan for every employee that is drafted in collaboration with their manager.

Now that the LLC has launched, what’s next?

We have a lot more development to do. The next three to five years will be a lot of building up of our programs to reach the first level of what we want to achieve. Then, we’ll re-test and recalibrate. We are really excited to introduce this new learning platform to our community and to introduce them to best practices in people leadership, building inclusive cultures and new learning opportunities, while continuing to expand our programs.

New Centre for Learning, Leadership & Culture to empower U of T employees

Linda Hills is the director of the Centre for Learning, Leadership & Culture. (supplied photo)

Jenny Rodrigues

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