Menu
Add Collaborative Brilliance to Your Specialist Toolkit
The world of work is changing, and traditional methods of influence are making way for more cooperative practices. Lateral leadership is one such skill and the key to collaborative brilliance. Add it to your specialist toolkit and you could positively impact your organisation and the course of your career.
Answer the Leadership Call
Digital advancements have allowed us to work with talent from anywhere in the world. As a result, businesses have evolved into flatter, more project-oriented workspaces with less reliance on hierarchical leadership. There’s also a greater emphasis on collaboration.
Organisations with collaborative cultures are outperforming their hierarchical counterparts in this modern landscape. They report a 36% productivity advantage and an increase in innovation. They also boast greater employee engagement, retention and communication.
What’s most inspiring is that many leaders at the heart of these spaces are not your designated title holders. They’re employees with unique and valuable perspectives who have stepped up to lead without authority.
They’re also in great demand. More organisations looking to evolve and remain competitive in a daunting digital future want employees like these. They need people who can work and inspire across boundaries where traditional influence is less effective.
As a specialist, you have an opportunity to answer this call. With the power of lateral leadership, you can make a difference and express another dimension of your greatness.
Lead from Where You Are
So, what exactly is lateral leadership?
It’s an approach to leadership that uses collaborative skills without an official authoritative title to influence peers and leaders.
It’s about supporting people, building trust, eliminating the restrictions that prevent work and skillfully inspiring them to perform. It allows you to lead from the side, downwards, and upwards for the success of a common objective.
Lateral leadership can help you dismantle silos because it requires you to engage with employees outside of your regular workstream and can encourage others to do the same.
This may take you out of your comfort zone at first, but connecting with people is the essence of this collaborative craft.
It can also give you access to new networks, perspectives and skills where you can share ideas and creatively take on complex problems. This supports agility and can foster a culture where people co-elevate.
So, how can you begin your lateral leadership journey?
Learn to lead yourself. The first step is to develop a keen sense of self-awareness to help discover your strengths and opportunities. It’s the key to self-mastery and influencing others.
Understand your organisation. Identify gaps and potential collaborators and develop opportunities to contribute positively.
Build key relationships and networks. Take an interest in others. Understand what they do and how they do it. This will help you engage the right people when it matters.
Develop communication skills. You must learn how to listen attentively and deliver your message effectively.
Earn trust. Work transparently, keep your word, and be authentic.
Encourage buy-in. Remember, lateral leadership is not about command and control, but inspiring others to work with you.
Get the Support of Professionals
As a specialist seeking to cooperate with like-minded networks, the support of experienced coaching professionals can empower you to add value in exciting ways. It can help you discover and nurture your authentic leadership voice.
Change Partners provides executive coaching and group coaching initiatives to give you the essential strategic, communication, and relationship-building skills to lead laterally and make a meaningful impact across your business.
Our Leadership Development programs can help you contribute to a company culture where modern, collaborative-centric practices, accountability, and co-elevation thrive.
Now is the time to step up confidently and share your magic with the world!
With a diverse team of professionals experienced in unlocking leadership excellence, and tuned to the future of leadership development, Change Partners is perfectly positioned to help you advance.
Helene Muller is an International Executive Coach at Change Partners. She’s committed to empowering individuals and teams to reinvent themselves in leadership. She’s passionate about helping them develop a vision for their future and a strategy to achieve their goals. Contact her at helenemuller@change.co.za or on 083 225 8984 and take your performance forward.
