October 29, 2019
October 29, 2019
Contributor: Jackie Wiles
To better equip todays leaders for their ever-expanding roles, HR should enable them to find and join forces with other leaders who complement their strengths.
Leaders today are having a crisis of confidence, with only half of more than 2,800 surveyed by Gartner reporting they are well-equipped to lead their organization in the future. The best way for HR to support leaders — and boost team performance — is to help them to share their growing number of responsibilities with other leaders who have complementary skill sets.
“‘Complementary leadership’ is the intentional partnership between one leader and one or many leader partners with the goal of sharing leadership responsibilities based on complementary skill sets,” said Rina Ong, Gartner Director, Advisory, said at the Gartner ReimagineHR Conference in Orlando, FL. “Gartner research found that leaders who use complementary leadership saw a 60% increase in their teams’ performance and a 40% increase in their own performance.”
Amid the volatility and uncertainty that many leaders face today, complementary leadership also provides the breadth, depth and agility required for both current and future business, for which leaders need to acquire new capabilities at an accelerated pace.
“The best leaders identify others who have a stronger grasp of skills at which they are weak and share responsibilities with them,” said Ong. But complementary leadership can take many forms, for example:
Equally important to understand is what complementary leadership is not — the reassignment of responsibilities or the delegation of unwanted tasks. Whatever its form, practicing complementary leadership demonstrates self-awareness and judiciousness in the face of challenges.
Leaders who share responsibilities in this way have the highest team performance: Gartner research shows that 29% of the leaders who use this approach attain team performance that is 13% above average.
Learn more: Why some leaders build exceptional talent — and others don’t
Organizations that are enabling complementary leadership are doing three things in particular: Helping leaders identify locally relevant gaps, developing leaders for practical application of key skills and creating leader partnerships.
Quality leader partnerships enable each leader to specialize in core skills, develop needed skills and lead in critical areas. This type of partnering can increase leaders’ skill preparedness by 54%.
By supporting leaders and applying the complementary leadership approach, HR leaders can also ensure they meet their goal of preparing leaders for the future, noted Ong.
Join your peer CHROs and senior HR executives from leading organizations to discuss specific HR challenges and learn top HR trends and priorities.
Recommended resources for Gartner clients*:
Complementary Leadership: Supporting Leaders Through Skills Partners
Quick Wins: Developing Leader Partners
Leader Partnership Matching Scorecard
*Note that some documents may not be available to all Gartner clients.