Sunwing Travel Group

Deon Blyan

What is Leadership?

Is leadership a process, or is it a title? Or is it just the term used to define the senior executive group in a company? Do we truly understand the complex concept of leadership? What is required to have a positive impact as a leader and what is in scope for leaders in the current age?

I have had the privilege of engaging in conversation with leaders over the past twenty-four years, both in one-to-one settings and during leadership development programs such as the Lead EPIC program I currently facilitate at Sunwing. Most often, I find myself describing the concept of leadership by re-tracing the history of it in companies over the past hundred years or so.

Social Contracts and the Scope of Leadership

The forces and circumstances of the times have shaped the scope of leadership within certain eras. The social contract between the employee and employer is a great example of one of these forces. Even when I started my career in the late 90s, this social contract was commonly defined the same as it had been since the turn of the century; an employee will work for an employer for wages. This definition of the social contract supported a world where a leader’s purview represented a narrow scope. These were the days of ‘leave your personal lives at the door,' where leaders’ self-awareness stretched as far as defining their leadership style with the expectation that their employees would learn to adjust to them. This was still a relatively successful approach to leadership within that era of business.

"Leaders need to learn how to define the behaviors that drive values, connect people to their place in delivering on purpose, get hands-on with the employee experience programs, and personally bring these to life with their teams."

Throughout the 2000s, studies and writings about the concept of leadership became much more available due to the development of the internet, and the social and behavioral sciences gained increased traction as they related to business. Leaders began to learn to be more situational and flex their style to the different people that reported to them, expanding the scope of leadership ever so slightly. Through this time, HR departments changed as well. The old administrative record and policy-keeping team evolved into centers of excellence providing programs and processes for talent, performance management, succession planning, learning, and development, etc. Leaders began to use the HR department to positively impact their teams, increase the employee experience, and make their journey within the organization fulfilling.

The Age of the Employee Widens the Scope of Leadership

In the last twenty years, organizations have evolved to define their culture through values and purpose statements, how they act, and why they do what they do. Many employees have become much more focused on the fulfillment they can gain from what they do in their careers; they want to be part of something aspirational and contribute to a purpose. They want to bring their authentic selves and feel like they belong to a team or community, life and work is more of an integration than a balancing act of two separate things.

The scope of leadership has evolved exponentially and will continue to at a rapid pace. We now live in what is referred to as the age of the employee, where employment comes with requirements in social contracts re-written by each employee. Employees don’t believe they are simply the worker bees anymore; they are collaborators and specialists contributing to the organization's big picture. The requirements for leaders to have an impact have widened. Optimizing the leadership process within the multiple employee social contracts will require acute self-awareness and emotional intelligence as a start.

Leadership is now the full scope. A short list of big things that we have referenced consistently at Sunwing has helped to make this full scope more tangible, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, mental health and wellbeing practices, and harassment prevention and response. These are a few of the things that have become clearly in scope for leaders in addition to performance management, development, team building, career growth, and communication.

In the past, leaders deferred to the HR team and handed their team members off to experience the service of HR programs. In the age of the employee, a leader can no longer afford to hand their people off for employee experience support. Leaders need to learn how to define the behaviors that drive values, connect people to their place in delivering on purpose, get hands-on with the employee experience programs, and personally bring these to life with their teams. We should also assume that the scope of leadership will expand as the world of work and people continues to evolve and innovate. Elements like leading hybrid and remote teams, a heightened focus on safety, and a major focus on talent retention will be some of the things that will push the scope for leaders wider and wider.

So, what does this all mean for organizations and HR teams? First, employee experience programs, values, purpose statements, and other HR programs must be user-friendly, easily understood, and made tangible for leaders to act on and within. Second, we can’t forget that leaders are employees too. The ever-expanding scope of leadership has established major expectations for leaders. If we are to charge leaders with organizational responsibilities aligned with this, we must provide them with support and development to ensure they can meet these expectations and responsibilities.