In part 2 of this fascinating series around ‘Future Leadership’ in partnership with PeopleSmart SAS, Shwetal Randive (Global Sr. Director, L&D & employer Branding at Radisson Hotel Group) looks at ‘Bold Leadership’ and whether she has seen the correlation between bold leadership and employee engagement.
As the workforce is evolving with hybrid work and flexibility increasing, there is a much larger correlation between leadership and employee engagement. Bold leadership held builds and fosters more trust within teams in order to ensure that the right decisions are being made as well as the overall business strategy.
A trusting environment boosts the morale and productivity of people and at the same time cultivates a sense of belonging which is crucial in employee engagement.
Shwetal then goes on to discuss whether she believes bold leadership instils a culture of innovation or whether the culture of innovation can create a bold leader. Shwetal believes that companies and work environments play an important role in a person shaping their leadership style in general. This is because the environment helps with certain behaviours and ways of the culture of the organisation, which influences people in the early stages of their careers in their own leadership styles.
At a macro level, a culture of innovation creates bold leadership, this is because if you have that culture of innovation In there, then you will create many more bold leaders that can then go around and create their own micro-culture of innovation. However, with a team on a micro level, if you have a bold leader in that case the team culture will have an impact and move more towards the innovation piece. Despite this, in order to have a larger impact, it is more about the culture of innovation that will generate and create more leads. It simply comes down to the impact that it has from both aspects. For example, if the culture of the organisation is more into innovation then you will have many leaders who embed that style as they move around within the organisation and will therefore bring that leadership style with them. However, on a smaller scale, you can become more specific, so it simply comes down to how leaders measure the impact.
