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    Brain Circuits

    Leadership OS in 3 ideas 

    by Shlomo Ben-Hur Published May 30, 2024 in Brain Circuits • 2 min read

    What do we mean by “leadership OS,” and why is it important? Here are three key ideas.

    In our book Leadership OS: The operating system you need to succeed, my co-author Nik Kinley and I look to provide a clear and well-defined framework for leaders to navigate challenges and optimize team performance.

    Consider these three key ideas:

    1. Another way to describe the leadership OS is the leadership culture. It’s the culture that you, as a leader, create, and it is the key driver of people’s performance.

    2. There are three elements of this OS that are critical to getting it right: trust, clarity, and momentum. While these three elements won’t solve all your challenges as a leader, we find that they can explain about 75% of what impacts leaders’ performance.

    Trust is the most important because it underpins the psychological safety that enables people to voice their opinions and challenge others.
    Clarity on an organization’s purpose and values and accountability for different tasks is also important in ensuring everyone is aligned around the same goals.
    Momentum involves a range of factors that enable a business to unleash the energy needed to achieve its goals — connections, empowerment, confidence, and motivation.

    3. How we behave as leaders is actually less important than our impact. In other words, whether you are motivational or caring as a leader matters less than whether your people feel motivated or cared for.

    Thus, we encourage leaders to focus on the culture they create through their impact on trust, clarity, and momentum. These are key as you learn more about the levers and techniques to optimize your leadership OS.

    Further reading:

    Leadership OS: The operating system you need to succeed

    Authors

    Shlomo Ben-Hur

    Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior

    Professor Shlomo Ben-Hur works on the psychological and cultural aspects of leadership, and the strategic and operational elements of talent management and corporate learning. He is the Director of IMD’s Leading Behavioral Change program and IMD’s Organizational Learning in Action, he also co-directs the Organizational Leadership program, and is author of the books Talent Intelligence, The Business of Corporate Learning, Changing Employee Behavior: a Practical Guide for Managers and Leadership OS.

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