Organizations face many obstacles that affect – and sometimes derail – the leadership abilities of their teams. Things like human resource issues, limited budgets, lack of mission understanding or alignment, and much more lay the foundation of difficult leadership. However, there’s one area that often goes unnoticed. It’s called pace.

Effective leaders are aware of the importance of pace when it comes to leading others.

In this post, we’ll look at 3 specific ways in which pace affects an organization’s leadership ability.

Speed & Task

The most obvious way that pace affects organizations is within its definition, speed. Be the first to market, good things take time, learn to fail fast, patience is a virtue, and time is money. These are just a few of the quotes we use to talk about speed when it comes to an organization. It’s important to note that when we talk about speed, the majority of time it’s in the context of completing a task, not developing leaders or organizations.

Culture & Context

Every organization is different. That’s why the second way pace affects organizations is through culture and context. What we mean by culture and context is this: some organizations are built around action and some are built around methodicalness. For example, an iPhone manufacturer is built around action (creating iPhones) while a IT consultancy is built around methodically implementing iPhones into an organization’s ecosystem. While both of these businesses may value similar things, their cultures and context are two different things.

People & Development

Finally, pace is built around people, and this is the most important point. People are the reasons that organizations thrive, and for leaders who lose that perspective, it won’t matter which speed they are moving at. For people and development the key takeaway is this: leaders must understand the values of their current and future employees in relation to speed, and develop of their roles relevantly as they relate to both the organization and the individual.

Whether it’s speed & task, culture & context, or people & development, organizations must realize that pace affects the success of leading others. Although the above concepts are just icebreaker concepts into pace and leadership, they are a great beginning context for your organization to analyze. To take a deeper look at your organization’s speed, including a situational analysis regarding emotional agility and leadership development, let’s connect.

-WCC Team