How Novo Nordisk rebuilt its leadership model
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Leadership
Is your leadership identity still working?
Knowing when and how to adapt your operating mode as a leader is critical to sustained success in volatile and changing times.
Rapid read:
- When circumstances change, the “identity” you bring as a leader may also need to adapt or evolve.
- This doesn’t mean abandoning your core self, values, or inherent purpose, but determining what you need to stand for as a leader at this moment.
- Your leadership identity also needs to align with the message you convey to others, and the way that you sow up in the organization.
When the board at Home Depot announced CEO Bob Nardelli’s resignation after six years, it wasn’t a question of competence. Nardelli had impeccable credentials, and under his stewardship, the firm had actually posted some of its best earnings. Nardelli’s departure was, as much as anything, the product of a collision course – a clash between the militaristic, Six Sigma process-fixated leadership style he’d forged during his tenure at General Electric, and the freewheeling, entrepreneurial culture of Home Depot. Things had gotten so bad that by the time he left, he was no longer even talking to the company’s shareholders.
The Nardelli–Home Depot debacle illustrates something I see time and again with the senior executives I coach and advise, albeit without the same headline-grabbing fallout. And that is how hard it is to let go of the operating mode – the leadership identity – on which successful people have built their success, even when culture, circumstances, or context demand that they do precisely that.
Nardelli’s identity at GE was operational discipline, top-down control, and relentless efficiency: an operating mode that perfectly served a B2B environment where cost-cutting and efficiency determined the bottom line, but was very much at odds with the friendly, customer-first organization he was charged to lead. His abrupt departure was a function of what happens when the context changes, but the identity does not.
I have witnessed this hundreds of times with CEOs. When the pressure hits, when uncertainty surges and the expectation surrounding them becomes intense, these talented men and women will reach for the same playbook, the same leadership identity that has worked well until now. What they so often fail to grasp is that leadership identity is dynamic and mutable.
Your identity as a leader is something that you need to adapt according to the needs, challenges, and exigencies of your (changing) environment. Of course, this can be challenging.
The identity that built a successful career feels like your own – it feels like an integral part of you, your beliefs and your personality. Letting go of it even slightly feels like letting go of yourself. But I want to be very clear about this: leadership identity is something distinct from character or values. Leadership identity is the operating mode and the approach you adopt based on what the moment demands. It’s about knowing how to be or become the right leader for what is needed right now. And that’s about having the clarity to know when your usual leadership approach might have reached its expiration date.
Your leadership identity isn’t your character or core values or who you are deep inside. It’s what you stand for and how you choose to lead in a particular context. It’s not about reinventing yourself; it’s about adapting the way that you lead as needed.
When leaders hit this moment, what I notice repeatedly in organizations is that they start getting lost in how they’re showing up in the system and to the people around them. Very often there’s a loss of consistency and a lack of clarity between what they say and what they do.
But leaders who navigate this identity gap well do something different. They build the ability to adapt and evolve their leadership identity – and they ensure that their message and their presence are fully aligned.
- Identity: What does this moment require me to stand for as a leader?
- Message: Can people understand what I stand for?
- Presence: Can people experience it in how I lead?
I call this process the Throughline. In my years of observing top executives, it works like this:
1 – Identity
You may not spend much time abstractly pondering whether yours is the identity the organization needs right now. Nor are you likely to get a memo from colleagues. And be wary of performance metrics as they often tell an incomplete story. Instead look for quieter warning signs.
Perhaps you keep pushing something, but people don’t get it or convert it into action. Cooperation may have stalled – your people have withdrawn, trust is eroding, your team or board no longer seek you out or engage in the same way. You are working harder but not getting traction. You sense something is not right, but you can’t pinpoint what it is.
Ask yourself these four questions:
- Who were you when you learned to lead? What did you learn leadership was supposed to look like?
- Who have you become? How has your leadership identity evolved since then?
- What do you no longer believe about leadership? What assumptions that once served you are you now willing to challenge?
- And who does this next chapter need? What does the situation require that you may not currently be giving it?
As you answer these questions, think also in terms of what you need to stand for now – what does the organization most need you to uphold?
Just a few days ago I had a CEO come to me complaining about execution in his organization. He had to be on top of everything, he said, “or things didn’t get done.” The question I asked him was this: What do you stand for as the leader of this business? Do you stand for empowerment or control? Do you have clarity on this – and do others?
Translate this to your own context and reflect deeply on what is happening right now.
Is there a problem with psychological safety in your organization? Perhaps you need to stand for radical transparency. Has innovation stalled? Then you might need to stand for experimentation and challenge. If you are in crisis, you will need to stand for stabilization and clarity. Diagnosing your organization’s primary goals and challenges will help you determine the defining features of the leadership identity that the moment demands.
Satya Nadella was a two-decade Microsoft veteran, deeply immersed in its “know-it-all” culture, when he took the reins as CEO. One of the first things he did in situ was to pause and think about the leadership identity the company would need to navigate its next chapter. Microsoft was becoming defensive, at risk of missing the boat on major shifts in the industry. Reflecting on what the moment needed, Nadella decided to do something different. He adopted a growth mindset. As its leader, he chose to stand for psychological safety and experimentation. Under his stewardship, the organizational culture was transformed from know-it-all to learn-it-all.
Adapting your leadership identity isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about recognizing when the situation has changed – and changing how you lead in response.
Start by diagnosing the signals, both internal and external. Identify what it is you need to stand for right now. And ensure that others understand what that is.
If someone identifies anything that could hurt someone, I want you to fix it, and I will figure out a way to pay for it.Paul O’Neill, fomer CEO of industrial giant Alcoa
2 – Message
When you are clear about what you stand for, you need to think about how you communicate it. Your message is the specific expression of your leadership identity. It needs to be consistent, and it needs to be unmistakable. It also needs to be concrete, specific, actionable, and free of buzzwords.
Root your message in a belief about your organization that no other CEO would express. Ask yourself these four questions:
- What do I believe about this organization that I need others to believe?
- Can people tell what I stand for from what I say?
- Do they know what they need to do differently?
- Would people recognize this as my stand?
Your goal here is to ensure your message as leader carries clearly into your organization. People should know what you and they now stand for – the expectations you collectively share, how they connect to decisions and priorities, and what this means for them in their roles and responsibilities.
When Paul O’Neill became CEO of industrial giant Alcoa, his leadership identity was built around ensuring the safety and well-being of every employee. The message was clear: worker safety was the keystone habit of organizational culture. O’Neill went so far as to insist that all injuries were reported directly to him within 24 hours, telling plant managers: “We are not going to budget safety. If someone identifies anything that could hurt someone, I want you to fix it, and I will figure out a way to pay for it.”
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3 – Presence
Presence is how your organization and people experience your identity as leader. It’s how you show up – not through what you say, but through what you do – what you notice and ask about, how you react under pressure, what you tolerate or reward, and the consistency of your behaviors.
Ask yourself these four questions:
- Does my behavior reinforce my message?
- Do people know what I expect?
- Is there any gap between what I say and what people experience?
- Do I ever revert to my old leadership playbook?
You may struggle at times to answer these questions, so bring them to your executive team and invite those who see you operating in different contexts to describe what it’s like to experience your leadership. Be curious rather than defensive. A good rule of thumb is to say this: this is what I stand for. Is it what you experience?
Ford was on the brink of collapse when Alan Mulally came in as CEO, yet everyone in his executive team was afraid to speak up about its failures for fear of losing face or influence. Mulally stood for trust – for collaboration, shared goals, and transparency. But when he introduced a color-coded dashboard to surface problems, Ford’s projects were persistently flagged as green – on track. It wasn’t until the head of the US operation, who was thinking of leaving the company, decided to mark a product launch red due to shipping delays that things shifted. There was silence in the room. Then Mulally began to clap. This was “great visibility,” he said, before asking who could help with the project. Mulally’s presence – the consistency of his behaviors, his core message, his identity – created a throughline for his leadership and helped build the One Ford organizational culture that pulled the organization out of its crisis and back onto the road to success.
As a leader, your operating context isn’t getting any easier. AI is transforming everything, uncertainty is persistent, downtime has become a thing of the past, and you’re expected to deliver in shorter time frames than ever before. The key to sustaining your success in this environment is adaptability. It’s knowing when and how to adjust your operating mode and continually questioning whether the identity that served you yesterday still fits what you and your organization need today.
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