3 Keys To Immersive Leadership

A belief in a cause and a committed team are inspirational components of immersive leadership.

Immersive, by definition, is “to involve or engage deeply.” In the same context, immersive leadership is an approach that focuses on maintaining strong connections to your team as you grow your company. As a company grows, the ability to scale those connections with the team becomes more difficult.

Although you may need to develop a hierarchical structure to organize work, establish repeatable processes and define decision making protocols, you don’t need to develop a hierarchical style of leadership that creates an “us” versus “them” culture—the language of many legacy companies, between employees and management.

Traditional hierarchies and matrix organizations have evolved to address this and can be effective with incremental growth and relatively stable business models and markets.

You don’t need to develop a hierarchical style of leadership that creates an “us” versus “them” culture—the language of many legacy companies, between employees and management.

However, the speed and availability of information have made other approaches possibly more effective. If you can harness that information and maintain alignment to a common purpose through extreme transparency, involving trust and empowerment, then you can create a level of agility and connected workforce that can continuously outpace the market and adapt to changing conditions.

A belief in a cause and a committed team are inspirational components of immersive leadership. As your company scales, it can help maintain the same leadership fundamentals that create the spark for inspiration and engagement among your team.

As you practice immersive leadership, here are some recommendations for maintaining trust, consistency and authenticity:

1.

Understand your leadership style, belief system and personal inspiration to help build authentic connections with others.

2.

Exhibit vulnerability to create an environment where leaders are approachable and any issues can be raised and addressed early.

3.

Communicate coherently with an overall strategy, purpose-driven values and clarity on how time and money are prioritized. As Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline stated, “Until you put the money where you say your strategy is, it’s not your strategy.”

Photo by Charlie Hammond
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