What is leadership crafting?

To craft (verb)

: to make or produce with care, skill, or ingenuity

(Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Many of you have heard about job crafting, which has been a topic of rigorous research during the last two decades. If you have not, a definition by Tims et al. from 2012 sums it up pretty well:

"Job crafting is an individually-driven work design process which refers to self-initiated, proactive strategies to change the characteristics of one's job to better align the job with personal needs, goals, and skills."

So, in essence, it means that everyone can change some aspects of their job to better match what they need it to be. Sometimes those changes are small, but nevertheless they bring the individual a sense of self-determination and control, which is highly correlated with wellbeing at work.In an increasingly complex world of work, it is clear that jobs, roles, and tasks are more interdependent and complex than before and cannot be managed with traditional methods. This means that leadership also needs to be dynamic and tailored to the needs, goals, and attributes of the people forming a company. Cut-and-paste models or pre-fabricated consulting packages are numerous and readily available. The problem is that they don't truly fit ANY of the modern, unique and constantly evolving companies out there. Easy to sell, easy to buy, but often mutually unsatisfying processes.

Leadership crafting is a context-driven, internally motivated approach for assessing and creating the leadership your business needs now and in the future. Context-driven means an understanding of the need to respond to client needs, a turbulent operating environment, or any other external influences that the business faces. What it does not mean, however, is only reacting to what someone else needs from you. In order to succeed and grow sustainably, there needs to be internal motivation to build the kind of leadership your people need. There is a wealth of knowledge on how wellbeing and satisfaction at work influences not only motivation, commitment and productivity, but also client satisfaction.

As two organizational psychologists with over 30 years of combined experience, we have seen (and done) a lot. From well-meaning but poorly planned change projects, to trying to fix deeper issues with band-aid training packages that miss the mark and create more frustration than satisfaction. Now we want to do things differently and, to borrow the definition of job crafting, help organizations go through a people-driven leadership design process that is self-initiated, proactive and leads to better alignment of business and people needs, goals and potential.

Leadership crafting can be done at any stage of the company's life. However, the best time to start this process is as early as possible. The only prerequisite is that you want to craft the kind of leadership that makes your company thrive now and in the future, and dig in deep to see what that might mean. We'd be happy to help!