Lindred (Lindy) Greer is a Professor for Management & Organisations at Ross School of Business and the Faculty Director of the Sanger Leadership Center. Her research focuses on how to lead high-performing teams, with specific interests in leadership skills in conflict management, diversity and inclusion, power-flexing, and the communication of emotions. Lindy has published in management and psychology research outlets and has received awards for her research from the Academy of Management  and American Psychological Association.

How can organisations effectively prepare their leaders and teams to navigate dynamic and unpredictable markets?

Helping leaders gain a growth mindset, access evidence-based tools to lead their teams and organisations, and environments, to experiment with these tools (like leadership development programmes!) is key to preparing them to lead in a dynamic and unpredictable world.

Dynamic organisational design is also key. This might mean finding ways to disentangle decision rights from the formal hierarchy through tools like RACI chart, which push decision rights as low in the hierarchy as possible to the people actually doing the work. This can speed up the organisation and allow it to be more adaptive.

In your experience, what are some common challenges organisations face in their efforts to cultivate adaptiveness and agility in their organisations, and how can HIPPO leadership address these challenges?

Overly bureaucratic structures and reliance on formal authority for decisions can lead to negative power dynamics, where all decisions have to go up several layers of the hierarchy to be taken, greatly slowing down things. 

Better leaders – hippos, or the highest-positioned person in the organisation (or the room) (the HIPPO) – push decision rights lower in the organisation and then make sure informal behaviours align with this, including knowing as a hippo when it is appropriate to be out of water deciding and when – more often than not – you as a hippo need to be underwater with just your eyes and ears above, listening and supporting others.

What is the role of inclusion and diversity in organisations in an evolving world?

To adapt to a dynamic environment, diverse viewpoints (which can be shared and heard due to an inclusive team environment) are needed more than ever to identify innovative solutions to complex challenges.

Can you provide examples of how a HIPPO leader’s approach to diversity and inclusion contributes to creating a culture of sustainability within an organisation?

Organisations that leverage D+I to make better decisions and create fairer playing fields are likely to retain talent and perform more sustainably in changing environments.

How can HR and L&D professionals leverage technology and data analytics to measure and enhance the impact of diversity and inclusion (D+I) initiatives? What about sustainability initiatives?

Data is key to assessing the effectiveness of D+I. It’s so important to measure inclusion with survey items on engagement surveys. There are also lots of new tools and even AI to help assess inclusion in virtual meetings (like equaltime.io, which tracks the inclusiveness of speaking time and tone in meetings).

Looking ahead, what trends or developments do you anticipate at the intersection of leadership, diversity, and organisational agility, and how should leaders prepare to navigate these changes?

Investing in creating, constantly learning, and adapting leaders is key. Likely topics in which leaders will need tools include navigating external, geopolitical events as they spill over into our organisations, facilitating crucial conversations on polarised topics, and constantly working to make a more dynamic organisational structure to deal with changing environments.

Given the increasingly complex environment in which organisations will be operating, it’s more important now than ever for HR and L&D professionals to be championing skills for high-performing teams (which are diverse, inclusive, and adaptive) in the coming years.

Are you interested in hearing other inspiring talks on leadership, culture, and skilling? The MERIT Summit & Awards is coming up soon on 21-22 November 2024 in Dubai at Hult International Business School. The topic is “Leadership 2030: Navigating Transformation”. Register now to secure your early spot for the 2-day learning event for HR, learning and development, and executive education leaders.